From: ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld.invalid
On Fri, 05 Apr 2013, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in article
, Adam wrote:
>Would you mind if I forward the part of your post on moving out and
>selling a house to my father? I know this is a public newsgroup that
>anybody can get to, but thought I'd be polite.
It's public - it's _meant_ to be useful to others
Moving out: I'd mentioned the two widowers nearby. They basically
took the "personal" stuff, and then donated a lot of the household
furnishings. When we moved from CA, we left the fridge, a tabletop
microwave (and cart), and the washer and dryer with the house. We also
left spare (new) furnace filters, and spare plumbing parts (the
cartridges for the faucets, aerators, etc.) - actually anything that
was "house specific".
Selling the place: Get address of "nearby" places for sale, and plug
them into your favorite search engine. One of the widower's places is
now for sale, and I get 140+ hits. Several of them refer to other
nearby properties that have sold, so I have a clue to prices/sales
($130-150 per square foot, average seems to be be selling at 92-96%
of listed price) and time (seems to be under 35 days on market).
COMMENT: When we moved in 1997, the agents weren't using the Internet
to the same extent. The local news-paper ("Palo Alto Times") listed
recent sales every Saturday - I'd also been watching the real-estate
ads in the paper, so similar data was available with extra work. The
agent we had used in 1983 to buy our house had spent some quality time
with us, and I had clues of what to look FOR.
Selling the place: Real-estate agent. Don't just pick one at random
out of the phone book. Talk to several who seem to be selling well
(those hits on the search engine). They have incentive to set a
realistic price, and to get the seller to do simple things to increase
that price. Higher price means their cut is higher too, and faster
sale means more time to sell more places, (Money really does make the
world go around.) I had used one of the bedrooms as my library, and
it was full of 6' tall book cases (four 15" wide aisles). The "family
room" had three computer work-stations, book cases and file cabinets,
etc. The agent had me box the library (into a 8x12 storage locker
nearby) book cases, file cabinets and such (and "thin out the stuff
stored in the garage") so that the place seemed more open/airy/bigger.
We'd painted the exterior about two years earlier, but the interior
paint job was ten years old (we took a minor hit for that). The
"wall-to-wall carpets were shampooed. We had a 'tree service' come in
to trim and feed the trees, and a gardener to spiff up the rest of the
landscape. I took a weekday off, and had a house-cleaning service come
in and do their thing. We also laundered the curtains. We were still
smokers at that time, but we stopped smoking _in_ the house. I've
mentioned the "property inspector" going over the place - one thing he
wanted was a chimney cleaning. He also pointed out 4-5 non-polarized
electrical outlets I had failed to replace (house built in 1951). I
didn't have to buy the polarized replacements, as I _had_ them, but
hadn't gotten around to installing them. This being California, he
also wanted us to upgrade the "plumbers tape" that was holding the
water heater and furnace in place (earthquake damage prevention), as
the building code had recently changed to require heavier duty straps
- $4 fix (and five minutes work) for a $LOTS nit. Like I say,
"little/simple" things.
Record keeping/Taxes. See your tax adviser (and I don't mean H&R Block
or similar). Lots of the costs of selling are deductible, so you've got
to keep records/receipts. See page 6 of IRS Publication 523 ("Selling
your home") as mentioned.
Old guy
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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