1918 Hidden Lake Place

The situation

Homes that need work aren’t hard to sell because buyers hate renovating. They’re hard to sell because buyers have no idea what the work costs.

Faced with that, a buyer does the sensible thing. They assume the worst case, then add a cushion in case the worst case is optimistic. The seller pays for that guess, and the guess is almost always several times what the work would have actually cost.

What I did

Got real numbers. I pulled quotes for the outstanding work from contractors I use. Having spent six years in the trades, I knew which line items a buyer would actually fixate on and made sure those were the ones priced.

Answered condition questions with a figure and a phone number. When a buyer asked what something would cost, they got the quote and the contractor’s contact details. Not a shrug, and not an immediate price reduction.

Turned an unknown into a project. A house that needs work with a costed plan attached is a completely different proposition from the same house with a question mark on it. Buyers price those two things very differently, and only one of them requires you to discount for their imagination.

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