The real estate market has finished the freefall and is now sitting at the bottom of the value curve. Buyers are rare, as many families are deciding to stay put instead of move. Finance is still in short supply and the lending criteria is ever increasing.
But it isn’t all doom and gloom. There are buyers out there, with money in their pocket but it is their market, and they know it. Marketing a property to meet the new demands isn’t easy, but proper planning and application can make it happen.
Barbara Forks, 53 of Sarasota had her home on the market for over six months without a bite.
“The real estate agent kept telling me the market was too slow, that there were too many other properties for sale in my area. There was always some excuse. I think in all that time we only had about three viewings.” Said Barbara in a recent interview. “We decided to take a friends advice and withdraw the sale, which we did, much to the agents chagrin. Then we took a step back and looked at our home through the eyes of a buyer.”
“That was quite difficult, because you have to be critical about somewhere you have lived for years and thought of as home. The ‘to do’ list grew longer and longer as we looked at everything we could think of. It annoyed me that the agent hadn’t done this with us months ago. We could have been in a new home somewhere by now.”
Barbara’s story is by no means unique. We have heard of many others who have done much the same thing, often through watching home makeover shows, of people asking friends to act as a buyer.
Barbara then talks about what work they had done. “We did as much of it as we could, but we aren’t as young as we used to be so I called John Sweet of Sweet Sheldon Homes to come and talk to us. He was nice, straightforward and honest with us. The quote was a bit more than others we had received, but he seemed much more genuine, and spend over an hour talking to us about things. Even about some of the things that can go wrong.”
Sweet Sheldon Homes are Naples renovation contractors who also do remodeling and new home building. They have been in business since 2003 and is run by John Sweets. His website propounds his business ethos of being straight and honest with people and telling them what they need to know, not what he wants them to hear.
Barbara’s house was refurbished by Sweet Sheldon Homes, a Naples Remodeling company over a four week period. The exterior was painted, the driveway cleaned, the interior decorated and new cabinet doors in the kitchen we added.
The house then went on the market again, with a differed real estate agent and sold eight weeks later, for just under the asking price.
“Sweet Sheldon Homes worked miracles, and turned our tired old house into something someone wanted. Everybody who is having trouble selling their home should do this.”
