Tucson Vacant Homes For Sale
September 12, 2007
Post Tags: deferred-maintenance , no-toilet-paper , stinking-carpets , stuff-scattered-everywhere , Tucson-vacant-home , very-hot-homes , weeds-in-the-yard
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A buyer comes to your vacant home with their children; any one of then needs to use the restroom and they find this, how long do you think they are going to stay?
About as long as the roll of paper on this tube.
In Tucson there are a lot of vacant homes for sale. These Tucson homes are vacant for a variety of reasons.
- The home owner has already relocated
- The home was bought by a speculator who is now selling
- The home was a second home and owners aren’t coming back to Tucson
- The owner closed on their new home and moved (still in Tucson)
- The home has been a rental and the owner is selling their investment properties
These are just a few of the reasons a home might be vacant.
There is nothing wrong with a Tucson home being vacant
There isn’t any reason a vacant home can’t sell as quickly as an occupied home. So don’t worry if the house you have on the market is vacant. However, there are some things you can do that will greatly enhance your home and the probability of getting a buyer to take a good look at your home.
First Step get someone interested in the property
The first step in marketing your vacant home is make it appealing to get buyers to come and see the home in the first place. This is usually the responsibility of your listing agent but not always. It depends on a lot of things. I might talk about this step at another time.
Get the buyers to the house
Getting buyers to your vacant home often starts with getting the buyers agent to preview the home. If that doesn’t go well, there is a good chance their buyer won’t even see it.
Get the buyers to spend time at the house
Getting those buyers to spend time in that vacant home is the next step. If they stay long enough to start placing furniture and measuring the rooms, that’s a good sign.
This post is prompted by previewing homes in preparation for going out with our buyers tomorrow. We have spent the last two days going into vacant and occupied homes.
Some of these homes we were in long enough to sign in lock up and leave.
Here is my incomplete and quick list of things I would recommend which don’t cost much compared to leaving the house on the market and continuing to make mortgage & insurance payments. Every month a house sits empty on the market cost. This cost of a house sitting empty is overlooked by sellers all too often. Take care of the things in this list and you will reap huge dividends.
I’ll start this list by saying it has been over 100 degrees for the past two days and is expected to be over 100 degrees for at least the rest of this week and probably much of September. Here we go:
- Leave the AC on and set to at least 80
When a house is 120 inside and no air moving buyers don’t stay long - Keep the furnace filters replaced and clean
- Have the carpets shampooed
They might have smelled fine when you lived there but when they get really hot they smell terrible - Make sure the water & utilities are on
They have to be on for the inspection period so you might as well leave them on - Flush all the toilets before you leave (please)
Do you know what happens when someone uses a toilet then realizes the water is turned off? - Leave hand soap, paper towels & toilet paper
If someone needs to use the facilities and there’s no paper they are gone quickly - Clean up the landscaping and (remove the weeds, trim the shrubs and trees)
- Place air fresheners in the home a vacant home can become stale
No overkill here you still want people to be able to breath - If you had pets, double make sure the carpets are cleaned and a call to stink busters might be in order
- A little staging can go a long way, shower curtain, towels on racks scented candles etc.
- Fix the little things around the house, loose door knobs, cable tv outlets, broken light switches and covers, leaky faucets and tubs, etc.
Here is an example of what I recently found when checking out the back porch and yard.
There are odds and ends concrete blocks in the back yard.
Oh, yeah, there is a broken kicked out TV on the back porch.
There is a loose cable hanging from the porch roof
There is a used and non-functional sink sprayer outside the sliding glass door.
“Hey, at least I coiled it up nicely and swept up the glass”
If you look closely you can see where they drug the TV across the porch leaving nice black skid marks. Believe it or not this is the kind of stuff that leaves little red flags in the minds of buyers.
When they find things like a cable just dangling out of a wall, it makes them wonder what else might need to be fixed or repaired. Buyers like to know the home has been cared for and there isn’t any deferred maintenance issues.
Finding thing like this makes them wonder about what they can’t see.
Most of these things are simple and really don’t cost much compared to your house sitting for months waiting for buyers to come only to have them leave almost as fast as they walk in. When your Tucson vacant home is clean, neat, landscaping clean, and the home inviting even though vacant, your home will stand out from the ones that are Hot, Stinking, Unkempt, Dirty, Overgrown, and in Disrepair.
September 13th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
The comment about the toilet paper is spot-on. I’ve had a few experiences in that department, but those war stories are for another day. . .
September 13th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Dave, Nice article about “staging” a vacant home. FYI, I entered your site into StumbleUpon. Hope you don’t mind :0
September 13th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Steve,
StumbleUpon, Gee lets see lots of clicks, new traffic possible pick up a reader or two along the way. Introduce new people to Tucson.
Oh, Yeah, I mind : ) Thanks