This is my first flip and I think it turned out great, the problem is I can get it to sell. I have done "for sale by owner" and now with an agent. Had a bunch of showings when I started with the agent but it has now died off.
The house blows everything out of the water in oak forest IL, so I cant understand why it will not sell. I am losing money every month having it sit around any suggestions on what to do? Places to post, marketing ideas, agents that want to show it.
It is listed all over the place this is the one on craigslist.
http://chicago.craigslist.org/sox/reo/4121227757.html
Did all the work myself so I take pride in my first flip.
Another thought: If you aren't getting feedback from your real estate agent, do not use that person next time. Your agent needs to be giving you good advice and helping you in your business. For example, if your house is overpriced (which seems to be the case), the agent should be telling you that. They should also be probing potential buyers, getting feedback from them, and relaying it to you. If the agent is looking at you and shaking their head saying "It's a beautiful house, I don't know why it's not selling", you need a new agent.
I still have not sold this home it has been almost 6 months. I have taken peoples advice and staged the home and lowered the price. I have a new agent now and the pictures and videos are great!
This is my first home that I am trying to flip, now I am thinking about renting because I am losing every month.
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15613-Ridgeland-Ave-Oak-Forest-IL-60452/4222970_zpid/
This house is WAY better than anything around it. The only thing is my taxes are 2k higher than anyone else. I am in the process of lowing them, but it will not be done for along time.
Please let me know what you think.
@Ryan S. I don't know much about your market. We bought a burnt out house in Hackettstown, NJ a couple of years ago that was in a good neighborhood but directly on a very busy Route 46. That was the drawback. When we completed the rehab I staged the first floor of the flip, included lots of photos on craigslist and other sites and had a buyer quickly. Can you please include some pics here? I may be able to give you some perspective from a designers point of view if you're amenable to it.
You are on point on everything. Your problem is timing. A flip like this needs to be put on the market in Spring or Summer. People in illinois don't move in winter unless they have to. So you have to be lucky and find a motivated buyer from most likely out of the area or have a price thats worth moving a king size bed in the snow.
Ps: I live in Champaign IL. When I buy my next house for myself I want you to come down and rehab it for me. This place is awesome.
To be honest, it doesn't look very different from when you last posted in Oct. You still have very taste specific paint jobs in all the rooms. What is that painted clock and the diamond pattern still doing there? :) Because there is SO much trim and because it's all contrasting, the rooms all look super busy in pictures so I'm not sure how they appear in person.
I looked at the other properties for sale and I do not agree that your house is the best that's available in that price range. You added some specialty finishes in the baths and you've got the modern AV system installed. All very nice, but you still have a tiny kitchen and for a lot of buyers the house will need a paint job before they can move in. The exterior is pretty dated, and if I remember correctly from looking at it last time, it's right across the street from a school?
What's the feedback been from the showings?
How much can you drop the price to get some action? Is there currently appreciation in the area?
I agree with @K. Marie Poe. You have better pictures and its staged but you are still missing key points- You do have an extremely tiny kitchen and specific taste- The clock on the wall hasn't changed and there are at least two bedrooms - One with the diamond pattern with two or three colors. There is another bedroom that looks like wall paper - vertical 2 toned.
You still have a fan in your dining room as opposed to a chandelier. Nice looking laundry room but no washer and dryer- Is that hardwood in the laundry. And you still have office chairs in your dining room.
I think the problem is you are under the impression you have fantastic taste but unfortunately you don't. I hope I'm not coming off as cruel- That's not my intent. You need to have an open house if possible- have buyers come thru and give you opinions on what they like and don't like. You are viewing everything thru your eyes and its not working.
I think in order to be a rehabber you have to understand one key concept- A buyer who buys a rehab property doesn't want to actually have to do work once they buy. They want it all done- They don't want to paint walls to cover up your specific tastes. They don't want to go spend more money buying a washer and dryer. They don't want to do anything- They want to feel like for the next 3-5years they wont have to do anything. They want to unpack from the moving truck and that's it. If they wanted a project they would buy a fixer upper.
Hey Ryan, I know that neighborhood. And I'm going to be honest, please don't take it personally. Many times in My life I would have paid cash for honesty.
If I came over to Your house as a guest, I would think cool, Ryan has some nice stuff.
If I was looking to buy that home, I would wonder how My kids would brush their teeth in the sink, it would be a mess, how do you clean that thing? I wouldn't want to shave in the master sink either, it's about 4 inches deep and water slides out easy from both sides. The bathrooms are just not practical to Your target buyer.
You've personally decorated someone else's house. And they don't want to fix it.
The kitchen is a hit, the sitting room ceilings a hit and that would have been enough to do what You needed to do. The faux tray ceiling molding light thing is a bit over the top and just reinforces the fact that You've put a half million dollar condo interior into a 200k blue collar house.
And please please, get rid of the clock most kids cant even read a real clock anyway. The tile wainscot in the bedrooms also needs to go.
You keep saying, "This house is WAY better than anything around it". Your probably right, but that's not what selling in Oak Forest IL.
If I have offended You, I apologize, it was not My intent. I'm just giving You an Honest opinion.
John
I don't think you got what people were saying by drop the price.
Looks like you have made 3 meaningless price drops totaling $4K since you last posted.
Nobody that thought it was overpriced at $229K is going to think it is a good price at $225K. $4K moves (at one time) would be meaningful when you are around half the price point you are at.
What are your monthly holding costs? I have to imagine unless you did this with all your own cash that you have to be out way more than $4K in 7 months since listing it.
For gods sake at least drop it to $219,900 so you get people that are looking for <$220K! Still not really enough but at least you MIGHT start to get seen by a few buyers that might not have it on the radar now.
I feel so bad for you, this is quite the lesson. My advice, do whatever you can to get out from under the house. Forget what you have in the house, what you did to the house, how great you think everything is and consider this from a buyers perspective. I would argue these homes would require as much work to get them to suit my taste as yours would, except these houses sold for much less.
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Oak-Forest/15327-Orogrande-Dr-60452/home/12975852
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Oak-Forest/6300-157th-St-60452/home/12974181
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Oak-Forest/15621-Rob-Roy-Dr-60452/home/12973567
Can you price to compete with these homes?
Ryan, I can see you put a lot of love into the design of this house but the result is somewhat schizophrenic. You started with an 80's ranch. The grand, traditional living room is nice but looks completely out of place. The fact that it still contains some leftover 80's touches, such as the brass fireplace surround just accentuates how wrong the style is for this house. Then you went with an ultra modern feel in the bathrooms, but they are very different from each other which makes the house feel even more disjointed. The kitchen is the only exception to this, it's updated nicely, but still works with the bones of the house. Also, I see brass, chrome, oil rubbed bronze, and satin nickel all mixed together. Not everything needs to match but it needs to look deliberately mixed. Here it looks haphazard.
For your next flip, come up with an overall theme for the design and carry it through the entire house. All of your finishes should coordinate with each other.
I hope you get this one sold so you can get to work on your next project and take advantage of all the good advice you've received here.
Good luck!
@Ryan S., I love some of what you've done with the decor and I hate some of what you've done with the decor. Exactly what falls in my love or hate column doesn't matter, because I'm not looking to buy a house in that area. By the same token what you love about it is also irrelevant, since you're not the potential buyer.
You need to make this house closer to what most successful flippers in your area would do with their houses. They know what gets buyers. That probably means tone down the walls to a modern neutral color. Paint the vertical stripe bedroom like the last one in the photos, a light brown, or an even more neutral color. Same for the diamond wainscoating bedroom. Undo the clock.
I'd drywall the laundry room that currently clearly has old siding painted over. It's jarring when compared with some of the more over-the-top treatments like the coffered ceiling and the heavy crown in the DR.
One more thing, the main bathroom with the cool vanity has oil-rubbed bronze sink fixtures, gold shower/bath fixtures and chrome or satin nickel vanity drawer/door pulls, and a gold door knob. It can be hard to coordinate all your metal finishes, but it's worth a try.
It also has what looks like an older woodgrained door. At this point I'd paint that white, though that may have been a good candidate for replacement with a six-panel door during rehab. Are all the doors like that one? It looks out of place.
Finally, the price. You are fighting the market. The market has been telling you for seven months that you're overpriced. You need to do more than token price drops. Your carrying costs and opportunity costs will eat you alive while you wait for the 1 in 100 buyer who shares your taste and will pay top dollar for it.
I don't know what you have in this project but at this point you need to look at it as what economists call a "sunk cost". Do the fairly inexpensive things suggested to depersonalize the house. Then drop the price to where it needs to be to sell in 30 days. If you and your agent are not sure where you should be pricewise, try a $10K drop, then $5K per week until sold.
I know that sounds like "giving up" on making the money you probably had in mind but your profit margin on this was established when you bought and when you made your rehab and selling price decisions. You're just trying to minimize future damage at this point.
If this had sold 30 days after you listed it last June you could have been closing on the sale of your second flip right now. And taking into account lessons learned on this one, you'd probably have a pretty nice payday. That's the opportunity cost of not accepting that you need to address the price and appearance issues.
Don't take this too hard, there are some real positives to what you've done, we're just all pointing out the issues so that you can fix them and get on to the next one.
Ryan,
Sorry to say, but I don't think you're listening to what everyone here is saying.
They told you many months ago the house was over-improved and was priced well above the local market. I believe I read figures of around $190k early in the thread. You respond to this by dropping the asking from $229k to $225k?
Even if you are at the top spectrum for the market, you need to make sure your asking price IS within the spectrum. Too far over and it will sit idly by, as it has.
They told you the interior design was disjointed. The rooms may look good individually, but taken together their styles clash. And some of it (the clock and the diamond pattern) is universally agreed upon to be too taste-specific. You're alienating some of your possible buyer pool by leaving the stuff as it is.
Lastly, if you're going to market a house as fully renovated and price it at top dollar, it has to be perfect and move in ready. A variety of comments in this thread show that isn't the case here. For example, personally, I wouldn't consider buying a home with carpet in the living room. Maybe its a regional thing, I don't know, but where I've lived nicer homes have tile or wood flooring in the common spaces. That is just one example to add on to what others have discussed here.
My advice is to lower the price, get the house sold, and learn from this experience. You've clearly shown a propensity to over-improve. Just take steps to make sure you don't repeat the mistake.
Hi Ryan,
I am going to try to take a somewhat different tack than some of the other posters. I am not a flipper, and anyway you have seen their advice (most of which strikes me as on-target, but again, not my area of expertise.) But let me see if I can help a bit on your original question. What you SHOULD have done doesn't help you now, right? What you need to know if what you can do now.
I am going to assume you are simply unable to reduce the price siginificantly and therefore have no choice but to hope someone comes along and falls in love. So I'll leave that alone.
Things that would make the house much more appealing to ME, would be:
1. The cofferred ceiling. I actually love cofferred ceilings and am considering adding one to me own residence. But the room I would do this in is about 15x20 and has 11.5 foot ceilings. To me, having the cofferred ceiling in a room as loarge as yours, with a ceiling height as low, feels like you have something looming over you like the Sword of Damocles. I wouldn't tear it out now that you have but in the time, but I would paint it all white, and consider a subtle vertically-striped paint scheme on the walls to raise the ceiling visually;
2. Fixture finishes. Been mentioned a couple of times above, but they have to match. Have to. Even if it means fixtures of lower quality than the ones you have in place. Especially in a small space like a bathroom, having the doorknobs, light and outlet covers, faucets, etc all coordinate is really noticable;
3. I am sure that the flippers may say don't spend anymore in a lost cause, but to me, wall-to-wall is a low-end floor covering. I realize this may vary by region, but to me that room with the cofferred ceiling out to have hardwood;
4. Landscaping/exterior. Not up to the standard of the inside. To me, the variegated masonery looks very dated, and if I owned the house I would paint it all a neutral color. And landscaping can be done on the cheap if you are using your own labor.
Sorry for your troubles. I have been a pretty inactive member here for a couple of years, and I am positive that even the the harshest-sounding advice you are getting is well-intentioned.
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Oak-Forest/15327-Orogrande-Dr-60452/home/12975852
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Oak-Forest/6300-157th-St-60452/home/12974181
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Oak-Forest/15621-Rob-Roy-Dr-60452/home/12973567
Can you price to compete with these homes?
I had looked at these comps and others. What is noticeable is their neutrality. Nothing fancy, many have their original kitchens and finishes. Clean and basic seems to be selling. The exteriors on all the comps I've seen were all more neutral. The OPs rehab has an odd and dated exterior with black trim, and it's location is not as neighborhoody. All that said, it only takes one buyer who loves the TV room, or loves the modern sinks and is approved for a loan in the right amount.
I am going to assume you are simply unable to reduce the price siginificantly and therefore have no choice but to hope someone comes along and falls in love. So I'll leave that alone.
Things that would make the house much more appealing to ME, would be:
1. The cofferred ceiling. I actually love cofferred ceilings and am considering adding one to me own residence. But the room I would do this in is about 15x20 and has 11.5 foot ceilings. To me, having the cofferred ceiling in a room as loarge as yours, with a ceiling height as low, feels like you have something looming over you like the Sword of Damocles. I wouldn't tear it out now that you have but in the time, but I would paint it all white, and consider a subtle vertically-striped paint scheme on the walls to raise the ceiling visually;
2. Fixture finishes. Been mentioned a couple of times above, but they have to match. Have to. Even if it means fixtures of lower quality than the ones you have in place. Especially in a small space like a bathroom, having the doorknobs, light and outlet covers, faucets, etc all coordinate is really noticable;
3. I am sure that the flippers may say don't spend anymore in a lost cause, but to me, wall-to-wall is a low-end floor covering. I realize this may vary by region, but to me that room with the cofferred ceiling out to have hardwood;
4. Landscaping/exterior. Not up to the standard of the inside. To me, the variegated masonery looks very dated, and if I owned the house I would paint it all a neutral color. And landscaping can be done on the cheap if you are using your own labor.
Sorry for your troubles. I have been a pretty inactive member here for a couple of years, and I am positive that even the the harshest-sounding advice you are getting is well-intentioned.
I actually think a lot of what is disjointed could be fixed with paint. I would get ALL the ceiling surfaces one shade of white, no matter how much trim or architectural features, and ALL the walls one color, regardless of chair rail. I would get rid of the picture frame trim (or whatever that stuff is called), and would spend the weekend patching the walls if I had to. All the doors should be white if the trim is white. The interior of the bookshelves in the TV room should be painted out too. I think a Home Depot $129 vanity/mirror combo in the small bath would really help to make it blend.
The layout isn't my taste, but some families will love the TV room. Just got to get the house neutral enough and cheap enough so it's getting a lot of showings.
Has this house sold yet? Give us an update and what you've learned...
It is something: price or some other factor. If it was me I would do some homework and find the most active agents in the area (take a drive around and look at yard signs or something) Set up appts with 2-3 of them and tell them you're considering changing agents and want to interview them. Tell them in advance what's been happening and any concerns about prop and your thoughts about why it's not selling. Tell them you want them to be "brutally honest" with you and you want it sold quickly and their pricing recommendations must not be inflated to get the deal. See what they recommend. It's probably price but there could be some other things that they would recommend that would help you get it sold quickly.
It looks like it's still on the market although he has cut the price another $5k but it's still not a meaningful price cut. I'd like to know what the holding costs have been for the 9 MONTHS it's been listed for.
I still think the list price needs to go down to $199k to attract a buyer.
In general I like $199K as a price better than something just over $200k.
it says it's contingent but over a month now at that status. Assuming your accepted offer does not have finance secured
2 things -Oak Forest isn't a hot area so it will sit longer than other areas and second the house is way over personalized.
@Bryan L. Your comment about Zillow helped me find at least one issue with my listing. I bought a REO that was waaaay out of code on many levels, and paid less than the value of the lot, tore it down and built new ( for my own residence) . Now when trying to sell it I found, thanks to your comment, that Zillow shows the old REO listing, and that I paid $90K AND they show the old REO listing with a value of $275K plus the offer required dates that have long since passed That could definitely scare off buyers.
So far Zillow has ignored my requests to fix it, other than telling me to "log in to my account and fix it" . But I am not willing to agree to their TOS and want them to just fix it. Since harm is being done by their inaccurate data, and they have been notified, I am considering the possibility of involving my lawyer.
This listing has finally gone "contingent." Currect list is $219,000. So maybe the poor guy is about to be out from under this.
Of course, the property taxes alone are $750 a month, so I can't imagine there is any profit left to be had.