How Much Should You Ask For Your House?

This is a very difficult question, but top real estate experts from all over the world agree that you should ask $127,500 and ultimately settle for $119,250. Also you should throw in the outdoor gas barbecue system with the charcoal-roasted spiders permanently bonded to the grill.

Getting Your House Ready To Show

Once you’re signed up with a broker and have decided on an asking price, you need to fix your house up so it looks as though clean and tasteful grownups live there, instead of yourselves. Take

a hard look at your house and furnishings, and ask yourself how they’ll appear to prospective buyers. Chances are that with a minimum of time and effort, you can make a number of dramatically superficial improvements. For example, suppose you have an ugly old sofa in the living room with a leg missing from one corner, which you’ve propped up with a copy of The Sex Lusters, by Harold Robbins. You’ll make a far better impression with an acknowledged classic such as Moby Dick, by Jackie Collins. You can also make a big improvement in the appearance of dirty, crayon-marked walls by buying a can of flat white latex paint and using it to stand on while you install a lower-wattage light bulb. And of course it’s always a smart idea to nail all your bathroom doors shut.

The overall effect you’re trying to create with these “homey” little touches is that YOUR HOUSE is a warm, welcoming, and—ABOVE ALL—real kind of place, similar to the set of a 1962 situation comedy. You might want to create the impression that, at any moment, Ricky Ricardo might come bursting through the front door and get a great big welcome-home kiss from Mary Tyler Moore.

But the most important ingredient in the home-selling equation is you, the homeowner, because only you have a really intimate, detailed knowledge of the house; only you, who have lived there, know all the interesting little idiosyncrasies it has—all the special features and hidden “secrets” that make you want to DUMP it like a grocery bag full of armpit hair. Your job is to help your broker make sure that prospective buyers view these things in the proper light.

Unfortunately, brokers don’t always appreciate receiving help from sellers. In fact, most brokers won’t even want you hanging around when they show the house. They’ll let you know this by dropping little hints such as: “Please don’t hang around while I show the house,” and: “If you hang around while I show the house, I will kill you.” The broker is concerned that if you are always hovering in the background like some kind of desperate street person, the prospective buyers won’t feel free to speak their minds.

There is some basis for the broker’s concern. The last time we sold a house, whenever I was in the room, the prospective buyers would always describe everything as “interesting.”

“Hmmmm,” they say, looking at one of my Home Improvement Projects. “How interesting!” Meaning: “I can’t wait to tell the people in my office about this.”

So on the one hand, you don’t want to make the buyers feel uncomfortable, but on the other hand, you want to be available to explain features of the home that the broker might not be familiar with. The solution to this dilemma is to hide in closets when prospective buyers come around. By ducking from room to room just ahead of them, you’ll be invisible, yet still available in case a question comes up that the broker can’t answer.

PROSPECTIVE BUYERS: What is this greenish slime dripping from the ceiling everywhere and eating holes in the floor?

BROKER: Well, it’s, umm, errr, it’s, ah ...

VOICE FROM CLOSET: It’s nothing to worry about!

PROSPECTIVE BUYERS (vastly relieved): Whew! Because for a moment there, we were concerned.

One major problem you’ll have to be on the alert for is when prospective buyers get really interested in your house and start to bring around ...

Horrible Relatives

Virtually all prospective buyers have horrible relatives with names like Uncle Roger who believe themselves to be experts in the field of home construction on the basis of their vast experience as thirty-year subscribers to Popular Mechanics. The prospective buyers will bring Uncle Roger around, and unless he is stopped, he will go into a testosterone-induced nitpicking frenzy wherein he finds hundreds of thousands of things wrong with your house. This is why it’s always a good idea, when you’re darting from closet to closet, to carry a garrote:

REAL ESTATE BROKER: And this is the master bedroom.

UNCLE ROGER: Well, this here is no good. These windows are only double-glazed. You want triple-glazed, plus you don’t want this kind of hinge. Plus you want more electrical outlets than this. Plus you want AAAAACCCCCCCCCKKKKKK!

REAL ESTATE BROKER: What on earth was that?

PROSPECTIVE BUYERS: Somebody just jumped out of that closet over there and garroted Uncle Roger.

AUNT LOUISE: Good.

Sooner or later, if you continue to engage in savvy sales techniques such as these, a buyer will become interested enough to make an offer on your house. The important thing, during these negotiations, is to First remain calm. Do not become emotionally involved. Remember that even though you and the buyers are on

“opposite sides of the fence,” the odds are that they are just regular everyday human beings like yourself, the only difference being that they’re trying to screw you out of all your worldly goods. So while on the one hand you want to be reasonable, in the sense of frowning thoughtfully at the buyers’ opening offer, you also want to be firm, in the sense of hurling it disdainfully to the floor and inviting friends and neighbors to help you spit on it.

Price is not the key issue in these negotiations. As I noted in an earlier chapter, the price you will ultimately settle on is the same one everybody always settles on, namely about five percent less than what you originally asked. Both sides know this, deep in their souls, but nobody really wants to just come out and admit it, for fear of appearing to be a wimp. So what you’ll do—everybody does this—is get into serious, heavy-duty negotiations over which side gets to keep various home accessories such as:

Ugly light fixtures Dingy draperies, and above all Minor grease-encrusted kitchen appliances that nobody really wants

These are the areas in which you want to be as petty as is humanly possible, in an effort to establish that you are a Tough Customer Who Will Not Be Taken Advantage Of. You want to stride in a forceful manner around your family room, cigar in hand, shouting instructions to your broker, such as:

“All right, they can have the Veg-O-Matic, but the sons of bitches are not gonna get the optional grape-peeling attachment!”

And:

“They want the ice cube trays?! Over MY DEAD BODY!!”

Using this aggressive approach, you should be able to retain possession of many of your prized home accessories, which will fetch you a handsome $1.85 when you hold your garage sale.