Carpet & Home Selling Questions
Moms View Message Board: General Discussion Archive: Archive February 2006:
Carpet & Home Selling Questions
My DH is looking for a new job and we are hoping/expecting/planning that we will be putting our house up for sale in the next 6mths. The market here has been TERRIBLE for the last couple of years and with the looming Delphi Auto bankruptcy decisions, it is getting even worse. We know we're already going to have to drop the price of our house for it to even think about selling. We are starting to "get it ready" so -to-speak, and take care of any smaller problems that might be appealing to a buyer. However, we don't want to spend a ton of money. We've already put a lot of money into our home in the 7 years we've lived here, and so much was done for us when we bought it.
We're thinking of replacing our family room carpet. We would get something middle of the road in quality. Questions:
Can you re-use the pad you have?
Would you go with berber or regular carpeting?
Any ballpark ideas on what it would cost? - it's about a 15x21 space.
Any other general suggestions for getting it ready would also be appreciated. I've been researching it online, so I *think* I have some idea, but still will take suggestions/ideas. Thanks!
Also, how would handle these things:
We have vertical blinds in the family room over sliding glass doors. ONE blind at the very bottom was broken into about 4 pieces. We taped it back together and it's not visible unless you're looking for it. Replace them?
There's a stain on the bathroom carpeting that really is from stain (like basket stain). It came off of an apparently cheap basket I had in there at one time. It's right next to the toilet and is always covered, that's why i recently just discovered it again! It's obvious when nothing is there. We have the same carpeting throughout our house. I don't want to replace the flooring in there. ????
Don't know the answer to most of your questions, but I do prefer berber carpet and I would put ceramic tile in the bathroom.
I would not re-use the pad that you have. A good padding is almost as important as the carpet that you put down. Over time it breaks down and really does need to be replaced with new carpeting. Allot of carpet stores in my area offer a "free" padding with the carpet. It usually is a lower quality padding and we always upgrade it, but if your looking at saving money, you could go with it. I would go with berber and I have no idea of a price for you.
I wouldn't worry about the blinds...
I would try to deal with the stain on the carpet in the bathroom. Call a professional carpet cleaning place and have them come out and look at it. I wouldn't think that would cost you anything. It wouldn't shock me at all if they have something that could help you with it. If you can't get it out, I would at least take the basket off the area so people can see the stain. I wouldn't try to cover it. If I were the buyer and didn't see it until after the fact, I wouldn't be happy.
I would have a local realtor walk thru and make suggestions, personally.
Your carpet is going to cost you $19 per sq ft or whatever the cost of your carpet is. Could be $21. It would be difficult to give you an estimate. If you arent replacing pad that will be a savings. You will incur installation cost too. I dont know what they would charge you to install. We figured *roughly* that our mst bdrm and living room will cost $700 to replace, carpet/pad/installation. (it might be less) Everything else is wood or tile downstairs.
As for carpet I would ask at the carpet places what the new *in* type of carpet is in most of the houses being built in your area. Here it's cut berber.(which is what we have already) So when we replace ours before putting house on mkt this spring/summer we will be getting a middle of the road cut berber. We will replace our pad only because we intend to upgrade it a little for the new owners *and* our puppy pee'd all over our carpet in living room. No way I am leaving that nasty pad down. yuk If there is nothing wrong with your pad then I am sure you can get away without replacing it.
As for blinds... I dunno. We are having the same discussion here. We have some wood blinds/plantation shutters that are broken in kitchen. I am thinking we will take them down and see what windows look like without them. Might just hang a cheap valance and call it good. If the windows look bad from where the blinds were (And I am sure they will) then we will have to replace.
As for your bathroom. What we did in our old house that we updated and sold is take the carpet out around the toilet area only and put down an inexpensive ceramic tile. Dh did the work himself in one weekend. We also pulled linoleum out of kitchen and put down ceramic tile. That house sold quickly. So in that case it was worth the expense and effort to update (walls, floors, etc...). We did get our money back. Just something to think about.
We have a list 2 pages long of things we have to do before selling. lol It's a little overwhelming. Dh is slowly repairing some walls, so we can paint this spring. We have already made decision on carpet, but it will be last thing we replace. I had my oven repaired a week or two ago, etc... So many things!!!! argh Just trying to break it down by month and not stress out over it all.
Good luck!
Ditto Vicki RE: the pad underneath the carpet. You can actually get away with using a cheaper carpet if you have a good pad. As for berber - I *personally* don't like it, but it appears to be more *durable* and versatile. So if you DO replace the carpet, I'd go with a good pad and a medium grade carpet.
And if I were you, I'd replace bathroom carpeting with ceramic or vinyl at the very least. Personally, if I were in the market for a house, carpeting in the bathroom would be a big turnoff for me, and I'd prefer to see ceramic in there.
Blinds - you could probably get away with letting that go, although a realtor would probably tell you to replace them. If you do, don't go to a lot of expense, as whoever buys your house will likely change window treatments anyway, which is why I think you should just leave that alone.
Do you have the HGTV channel? They have a couple of really fantastic shows on there related to house selling. One is called Buy Me, and the other is called Designed To Sell. On Designed To Sell, they give the entire house a once over on a $2000 budget. They go through and really do a makeover to make it look awesome. There is always great tips/tricks on the show for making things look great.
We are in the same boat, so I can relate! I was told to allow for a carpet allowance in the sale of the house, so that the new owner can pick the color of their choice and you don't have to stress about it.
I would try to get the stain out the best you can in the bathroom, and far as the blinds I wouldn't worry. Good luck, your gonna need every extra penny for your new move, especially since the housing marketing in your area is difficult.
Take care
Thank you everyone!
Truestori - I know! That's why I DO NOT want to spend a whole lot of $ just to sell this place. Getting a new house always seems to mean $$$$, regardless of how great it is.
I've heard of those shows on HGTV Breann, but $2K seems like a whole lot right now to spend on a house I won't be living in. We're trying to add to our downpayment for the next house (wherever that might be!)and still have $ left over FOR the new house.
Conni-We will be using our realtor that we know well, and I'm sure that she will give us 2 pages of "to-do's" as well. That's how she is. But we will pick and choose until it's absolutely necessary. I'm just trying to take care of as much as I can before, if possible. I'm a little overwhelmed, too. I don't know how far away DH's potential new job will be and I don't want to have to jump on everything in 2 weeks time!
Carpet allowances- I've thought of this. Our carpet is not at all terrible, but it also isn't brand new. AND it's off-white, so everything shows. We are getting ready to have the whole house carpets cleaned. How does this allowance work? Does it come off of the price of your house?
Stain in the bathroom - I definitely wouldn't hide it from potential buyers, it's just covered right now. Karen- Funny that you said you don't like carpet in bathrooms, because I think it means less floors to clean! I prefer the look of tile in the bathroom though, too.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions! We're going to clean the family room carpet first, then go from there. There really aren't "stains" in there, it's just dirty I think.
Tell me if you would like this list, because this is what has been done to our house!! :
-siding, soffets (sp??), gutters, windows
-all exterior doors
-laminate K flooring
-one updated bathroom (the other is outdated but not gross outdated...very neutral outdated)
-new fridge
-new water softener, water heater, furnace, and A/C (all top brand)
-new roof 5 yrs. ago
-new kitchen, 5 yrs. ago
-new plantation blinds throughout
THIS is why I don't want to spend much $ selling this house, but it may be inevitable I know. (Don't want to face it, but it might be.) Our house would have easily sold for $30-$40K more 3-4 years ago. VERY frustrating to say the least.
Try OxiClean for the stain...too busy at this time to type mroe!!1
I read this on MSN a while ago, and finally found it again!
MSNMoney
I found this article helpful to see things from a buyer's perspective, and to look at my house and maybe notice things that a buyer might not see, but that a buyer's agent, who knows what to look for, might find and then advise the buyer against buying my house.
There is also this article 10 ways to sell your home faster
This lady has some other interesting articles on MSN
Liz Pulliam Weston
I'll check them out Cocoa...thank you!!
Forgot to say thanks Heidi...I'm working on the stain with Oxi-clean right now. Hope it works!!
If you can't get the stain out, you can have it repaired. If you have a closet or somewhere kind of hidden that has the same carpet, you can have a professional cut a piece out of that spot and swap it with the stained carpet. That way the stain will be in a spot that noone cares about and the visible carpet is clean. We are doing this with a gatorade stain on our stairs. I called around and it isn't very expensive. If you have no other stains, then I would just have the carpets cleaned really well. I wouldn't replace them. As long as they are clean, it shouldn't hurt selling your house, even if they are a little worn. As far as the blind, can you replace it yourself? If you can then I would do it. You don't really want anything broken if you can fix it with little cost.
We have sold 3 houses and most have been sold quickly, one of them sold in a day. We are also getting our current house ready to sell this summer. We are currently making small repairs that need to be done. Clean, clean, clean and declutter. Also, touch up paint your walls, etc and make sure your windows are really clean. Also, put away all personal items, like family photos. You want people to focus on the house and not your stuff. This is all easy and cheap to do. Also, make sure you have great curb appeal. We are going to power wash our house once the weather gets nice. I would just do all the little things that will improve the look without costing money.
Thank you for the tips, Debbie! This is the first house we've sold. We power washed our siding at the end of last summer, as well as our patios and they look great. We have beuatiful landscaping all the way around the house, and we just replaced all of our mulch with red lava rock also at the end of last summer.
That's a good idea about the stain...never thought of that. It's not coming out. It's like stain from a basket that came off onto the carpet in the humidity of the bathroom. I'll never do that again!
We're going to get a storage unit and put lots of things in there. Thank you again!
Deanna, my sister refers to carpet as *the dirty sock that never gets washed*. LOL We got rid of ALL the carpet in our house last year and replaced it with laminate. I rented a place once with carpet in the bathroom and it always smelled like mildew in there. The way I clean the bathroom floors? After I've finished scrubbing the bathrooms, I use the wet towels and cleaning rags to clean the floors.
Karen, I agree with you... I hate carpet. When we move this summer, I don't want any carpet in our new house, except in the boy's bedrooms. If we buy an existing house and it has carpet, I am replacing it with tile or wood floors before we move in.
I love the look of tile, wood, laminate floors but keeping them clean seems like a pain! Your carpets are always dirty but you don't always know it, LOL Plus, my white dog hair would be obvious everywhere on a wood floor. I've never not had carpeting throughout so that's hard for me to imagine. Don't you ever sit on the floor in the family room??
We thought of replacing ALL the carpeting right before I got pregnant, but we decided against it at the time because it was upwards of $5K and we weren't sure how long we would live here then.
Ditto Karen and Debbie.
It is so easy to keep solid surface floors clean! I vac every day - a quickie - and then just swiffer the floor. It's always clean and I don't have to have someone come in and clean the carpets.
You may find you put in new carpet and the buyer doesn't want it.
A carpet allowance on the price of the house is a great idea.
Ame
Rugs in large areas in rooms with laminate or wood floors look great and add warmth and *comfort*. We are in the process of changing the entire *look* of most of the rooms in our house, and once we get the walls, etc. done, we are going to buy rugs.
How does a carpet allowance work? Does a price come off of the house? Thanks!
I have not read the replies, but we bought a house with brand new "mid grade' carpet, it was a horrible color for us, light beige, we think it was "low grade' stains horribly etc etc etc, bottom line, we would have been much happier with a carpet allowance! You just put in your clause how much you think carpet will cost (get an estimate for allowance, the co you use will know what that means) and deduct that price AFTER selling price on your home. This makes it easier for you, you don't have to clear a room to carpet than again to move, and they buyer can determine what they want.
Yes, like Kym says it comes off the final selling price of the house. You can state on the description of your house that you are giving a carpet allowance, so potential buyers will know.
Thanks ladies...I have seen that on home sales before but wasn't exactly sure how it worked.
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