Shearin Before & After

We helped a client buy a home and he then asked us to sell his home in Eagle Rock on Shearin Ave, north of Colorado Blvd. He wanted to sell Shearin quickly. As we asked questions we realized he only wanted to sell quickly because he didn’t have the time, patience or energy to prepare the home for sale.  He especially didn’t want to deal with contractors.

About this time, a few off-market offers came in for Shearin as high as $1,450,000.  The Agents and Developers were pressuring the Owner to accept. The Developers and Agents argued that based on the nearby recent sales that their offers were reasonable and the Owner wouldn’t get more on the open market.

When the Owner asked us for our opinion we advised them that even though the reputable agents were right about their offers being reasonable, no one knows for certain that the offers were at market value. Market value could only be established if the home was properly exposed to the market. Furthermore, the only way maximum market value could be established was to correctly prepare the home for sale. In this case “correctly” meant: landscaping, repairs, painting, staging and more. The Spanish home definitely had a story to tell and attributes that we knew we weren’t fully aware of yet. I prepared the Owner that it was going to take time to get the property ready for market and whatever I was quoting on cost to do the work would likely increase. Our team would handle every design, staging and repair decision while managing the process as part of our standard fee. 

The Owner said he was willing to spend one dollar to make three. We explained that he wouldn’t have to come out of pocket to pay for any of the work. Our Brokerage had a program called Concierge that would lend him the money interest-free for the repairs and could be paid back at the close of escrow.

The Owner gave us the green light and handed over the keys. For the most part he was hands off. This allowed me to focus my time managing the project down instead of up. We updated him of progress with photos and consulted with him when we wanted to add to the list of improvements.

As our team visited the home daily we began to understand the story of the home and it’s intrinsic value.  Every decision we made was based on the return on investment for the Owner. As we spent time there we realized quickly that the biggest attribute of the home was the light that came from the back yard. That light filled the bedrooms and the kitchen but it was blocked from the dining room and living room by a solid wall in the kitchen. The biggest additional improvement we made was opening the kitchen to the dining room. Our carpenter created an arch opening behind the sink that matched the other two arches in the home. We extended the counter top into the dining room which created a service counter as well as a sitting area. Most importantly it allowed light to flood into the front half of the home and created longer sight-lines that allowed one to see the lush backyard from the front room of the house.

Long story short…. We received 10 offers and accepted a non-contingent offer from a lovely couple for $2,250,000. For every dollar spent the Seller grossed an additional ten dollars.  And the final sale price was over $750,000 more than the off market offer we advised them to turn down. Of course this market helped the final sales price and we can not take credit for that.

If anyone reads this, the takeaway we hope is that a little good effort goes a long way in terms of what this market will pay.

Cheers,

Imraan Ali and TheEastside.co