IT IS NOT A HOME TOUR
When you walk through your own house you see the life you built in it. When a buyer’s agent and an inspector walk through, they run a list. It is a less pleasant way to see a house, and it is the reason offers come out the way they do.
Here is the list, roughly in order.
FIRST, THE THINGS THAT ARE EXPENSIVE
- Foundation and drainage. Water moving in the wrong direction is the most expensive thing in residential construction. Everything else is a line item.
- Roof. Age, layers and what it looks like from the attic side. A roof is a known number, and buyers take it off the price.
- Electrical and plumbing. Especially older panel boxes, aluminum wiring, galvanized supply lines and cast iron drains.
- Addition and conversion history. A buyer’s agent can compare what they see to what the county has on file, and a gap between the two becomes a negotiation.
- Environmental. Asbestos and lead paint in older homes, and whether anything has been disturbed.
SECOND, THE THINGS THAT ARE MERELY BAD
- Kitchen and bathrooms dated past the point of paint.
- Flooring throughout.
- HVAC age and whether it works today.
- Windows, mostly for the energy and noise conversation a buyer will have.
- Water damage history, even if repaired. Repaired water is better than open water and worse than never-happened.
THIRD, THE THINGS SELLERS OVERESTIMATE
Cosmetics. Paint, landscaping and clutter barely move the price a buyer will pay. They change how a house shows, which matters enormously for photographs and first impressions. I have seen sellers agonize over a color that costs four hundred dollars to change and ignore a roof that costs eleven thousand.
I am not saying cosmetic work is wasted. I am saying that if you are choosing where to spend your last thousand dollars before listing, it is rarely paint.
WHY TWO HOUSES ON THE SAME STREET SELL FOR DIFFERENT PRICES
Same square footage, same lot, same street. One sells for meaningfully more, and it is usually three things: condition, access and certainty. Access is the one people forget. If the house is packed, or a tenant does not want to let anyone in, or the seller is hard to reach, buyers read that as risk and price it in. Not as punishment, just as risk.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
You do not have to fix anything before talking to an agent, but it helps to know what you know. Water in the basement, a roof you have been meaning to deal with, a garage conversion you never permitted. California requires you to disclose known problems. Telling me up front lets me price the house and plan the preparation around them, instead of discovering them in the middle of a negotiation, when they cost the most.
Question for you: what is the one thing about your house you would rather not talk about? It is usually the thing that matters most, and I would rather hear it in the first call.
