Almost 2 years ago, I started working with Clients Brittany & Russ who were relocating from North Carolina to Columbus for Russ's work. We had focused on searching for homes in Grove City and Canal Winchester. We saw a lot of homes but two really stuck out, a brick home in Canal Winchester that beautiful but was at the top of their budget and needed updating and a home in Pinnacle The Greens that was well below their budget but was pretty beaten up by the Owner at the times daughter and her dog that had been living there (He lived in California and had bought the home for her in lieu of renting). Brittany & Russ have a little girl, Emily, who was just a baby at the time and considering two factors, she wasn't going to be in school for another 5 years and he may get transferred again for work in the next few years, the home they bought wasn't going to be a "forever" house. I was pretty adamant the Pinnacle home was the better investment and considering at the time the home was vacant and had been on the market for 3 months and had been listed at $189,999 and was currently priced at $177,900, I knew the price would be negotiable. Just as another option, without Brittany & Russ, I stopped by the M/I Homes Sales Office to see if there were any home building options and I found out that M/I was building the same home for $139,000, so I asked for the documentation from the Builder Representative and we submitted an offer for $139,000 with the documentation from the builder saying we could build a new home for the same price, we got the home for $139,000 (that's $38,900 under the list price). After closing, we went to pick out granite with a granite company I had been working with and flooring and I connected them with someone to get a good price on appliances. Brittany & Russ removed the existing 1st floor flooring themselves and had hardwood laminate installed on the entire 1st floor which made a HUGE difference and would have cost a fortune as an upgrade to do with a builder. Over time they did several other updates including adding a patio, painting, etc. A few weeks ago I talked to them again and they were relocating to Mississippi, we listed their home for $174,900 which was comparable to homes currently on the market. Within minutes of being on the MLS, we had a showing scheduled and then another, within the 24 hours, we had two offers and more showings scheduled plus a planned Open House. We are currently sale pending for over asking price, the feedback has been incredible and at the Open House there were lots of comments about how beautiful the home is and how they had seen the same model of home before and did not like it but for some reason loved this one, which I attributed to the hardwood laminate on the entire first floor made it feel much more spacious. There were several people at the Open House that were interested in the home if the offer in place fell through. I asked Brittany to give me an estimate of how much total they had spent on the updates on the home and she told me it was about $10,000. The moral of the story: It really does payoff to update a home!
