Update on my sister's home and staging for sale

Or the listing is expiring and the agent is suddenly concerned about losing your sister's business. Given the agent's performance so far, I would encourage your sister to look for a new agent. 

I agree with this 100%. It doesn't look good to a buyer if a house has been on the market too long.  It makes people wonder what is wrong with it.  I know emptying my house out was a LOT of work and effort, but it was so worth it in the end.  I needed to pack the house anyway, so getting most of it out early helped with the sale because both my realtor and the buyer wanted a very short escrow - 21 days!  I only needed to pack up the rest of my craft room and inside the rest of the kitchen cabinets when we decided to go ahead and take the listing live.  I just staged the craft room to make it look nice and put the already packed boxes in the garage.  I also put many of the packed boxes from the kitchen into the kitchen cabinets.  

I would also strongly recommend your sister use the pod system to pack her house.  Once packed into the pod, she puts her own lock on the outside so that no one else can access her stuff. If she doesn't have a new place to move to yet, they will store the pods at their central location until she is ready. Mine are in Los Angeles and will be sent to Portland unless I already have a house when I call them to go ahead and send them up.  It is so simple and safe. My neighbor came to the open house and said some of the people were so rude.  She said kids were jumping on the beds - shoes on the nice white bedspreads!  And the parents weren't anywhere close by.  My neighbor yelled at them.  The stuff belonged to the stagers, but still, people can be so thoughtless.  Your sister doesn't need people pawing through her stuff and kids climbing on her beds.  If it is packed up on a pod that only she has the keys to, she doesn't need to worry about that.

There is also a lot of theft that happens when someone is looking at a house.  It is just safer to have all of your things off the premises.  The scammers work in pairs.  One party keeps the realtor busy by asking questions in another room while the partner goes back for "one more look" at the bedroom and goes through the drawers and cabinets to steal anything they can shove in their pockets or purse.  

I also heard about one situation where the partner put something too large to pocket in the back yard behind some bushes and then walked back into the house.  When they left with the realtor, they obviously didn't have anything large on their person, but they returned in the dark to pick it up.  The house had exterior cameras and caught it happening.  Fortunately there was a record of who the realtor had shown the house to so they were caught.  Sometimes people suck.

She should have professional movers come in and pack up all her stuff too.   It is so much work!  I did some of each - used their packers and packed a lot of boxes myself, mainly the breakable things because I know I was going to do a better job of that.  The moving crew really rush and leave a lot of empty space in the boxes.  That would be fine, but that means I have to order more pods because so much of the space inside isn't being used fully. They said they could slow down and pack more in each box, but that would end up costing more and taking longer.  Since we were in a rush to get the house on the market before school started, I let them do it their way.

If your sister needs a recommendation for a great realtor, I could ask mine to do that for her.  He said he has contacts all over and interviews the realtor to find a good fit.  He found the realtor I am using in Oregon for me. He has told me he is happy to do this for anyone.  He spoke to her for almost an hour to make sure she had enough experience and knew the area well enough.  He said he wants me to find a great home and not be screwed by an unscrupulous realtor.  He also told me if there is anything that I don't like that she does, he will find me another realtor to work with.  I think referrals are the way to go when it comes to having someone sell your most expensive asset.

Oh an my realtor also paid the $3,000 to have my house staged too.  And I wasn't going to be home when the garage door repair guy that he found for me was coming to fix the garage door.  When I came home from my doctor's appointment, the door was fixed AND the realtor paid for it himself.  He said it was his moving gift to me.  He also came over and he and his son washed all of my windows and he has been doing all kinds of little things around the house that I cannot do.  He is really earning his commission on my house!  I think that I remind him of his mother and I think that is why he feels he needs to protect me and do things for me.  I have been beyond happy with all that he has done to get my house sold.  He carefully vets the offers that come in and recommends the one he feels will not fall through on you.

I would find out how much longer your sister will be under contract with her bad realtor and highly recommend she find another one, get all of her belongings out, and have the house professionally staged.  A good realtor will pay for that themselves out of their commission.  Even if she has to pay for it herself, it really makes a difference to buyers to see how the house could look.  I didn't think my house needed it because the empty rooms looked fine to me, but when they were staged, they looked so much more appealing.  In my case, the furniture upstairs was mine and so was the dining room table and chairs downstairs.  Everything else belonged to the stagers.  They do an amazing job.  And when they came to pick it all up, there wasn't a nail hole left in any wall from all of the artwork they had hung.  I was impressed.

I have been wondering how the sale is going. Do you live near she is selling or by where she is buying?

Is the house priced well? Maybe your sister does need to lower the price, particularly with higher interest rates now.

The "hot" market has cooled considerably -- at least that is the case around here. Before the interest rate rise, realtors didn't have to do anything - houses sold in days if not hours! Now ... I saw 4 different "open house" signs out this morning and several houses have been sitting on the market for weeks!

Her house is only worth what the market is willing to pay ...

That is less than it was six months ago ...

Sometimes improvements increase the price, sometimes not ...

My house is now conditionally sold but we have dropped the price twice ... many improvements have been made and it is completely staged ... I have absolutely no clutter ...

The realtor does sound like an idiot though ... I hope your sister can find a better one soon!

If I were your sister, I would schedule a face to face meeting w/ the realtor and maybe bring another family member along who is business savvy to take notes.

Is the house showing? What are people saying who are looking at the house? Is the house not selling because it's overpriced? Is the house not selling because of location? Is the house not selling because of something that can easily be fixed? In my experience, a good realtor will make follow up calls to the other realtor every time the house is shown and ask for feedback.

I wouldn't drop the price nilly willy just because the market has cooled. I would be open to a price drop but I would ask the realtor to provide a basis for the price drop.

I would make sure I understood everything the realtor thought I needed to do (such as decluttering, etc.). I would also ask the realtor what she was going to do moving forward to better market the house.

I would follow up the meeting w/ a letter outlining the main points discussed.