Home Ownership

Let's reopen the home ownership thread, post any questions or thoughts about DIY projects, buying/selling a home, repairs, etc

I'll kick it off with a question: how long is too long to keep a realtor if you're not satisfied with his performance? We've had our home on the market since 1st week of May, and I'm not happy with how things are going. Seems like the realtor doesn't give too much thought to our property, doesn't attend the showings and only holds open house when we insist. He doesn't give much feedback, constructive or otherwise

I was thinking of hiring another realtor, one who lives in the neighborhood and is a woman. I've been getting advice to hire a woman realtor, but I'm thinking in the neighborhood is the more important part of the switch. Any experiences y'all want to share?
 
Officially got the keys to a new house last week. In the process of moving out of our rental house of 8 years. It's bittersweet. I love our rental place, and it's cheap AF, but we felt like it was time to bite the bullet. Huge yard at the new place, which will be awesome for our chickens & I'll get to have a gigantic garden. But there's so much fucking shit to do inside. I feel like I'm constantly fighting off a panic attack.

This is so much fun! At least the actual home buying process is over.
 
Let's reopen the home ownership thread, post any questions or thoughts about DIY projects, buying/selling a home, repairs, etc

I'll kick it off with a question: how long is too long to keep a realtor if you're not satisfied with his performance? We've had our home on the market since 1st week of May, and I'm not happy with how things are going. Seems like the realtor doesn't give too much thought to our property, doesn't attend the showings and only holds open house when we insist. He doesn't give much feedback, constructive or otherwise

I was thinking of hiring another realtor, one who lives in the neighborhood and is a woman. I've been getting advice to hire a woman realtor, but I'm thinking in the neighborhood is the more important part of the switch. Any experiences y'all want to share?


How’s the market where you are selling? If the comps around you are selling, and short on the market then it’s likely time to do some changes. Priced right? Amenities people are looking for? Obviously the realtor needs to want to move the house for it to be brought up and shown to prospective buyers, so worth a shot.
 
I'll kick it off with a question: how long is too long to keep a realtor if you're not satisfied with his performance?

If you are asking this question, find a new realtor. IMHO, there is no waiting to sell a home if you think the realtor is a contributing factor and you do not foresee any future working relationship with them.

You are the client, and if unhappy time to move on.

Also, I am a proponent of a neighborhood specific realtor. When we bought our most recent home, we had a realtor near our old house and one near the new area. In this market and area it is good to have realtors for different areas. They are quite different, even if the entire market is high AF.
 
How’s the market where you are selling? If the comps around you are selling, and short on the market then it’s likely time to do some changes. Priced right? Amenities people are looking for? Obviously the realtor needs to want to move the house for it to be brought up and shown to prospective buyers, so worth a shot.
If you are asking this question, find a new realtor. IMHO, there is no waiting to sell a home if you think the realtor is a contributing factor and you do not foresee any future working relationship with them.

You are the client, and if unhappy time to move on.

Also, I am a proponent of a neighborhood specific realtor. When we bought our most recent home, we had a realtor near our old house and one near the new area. In this market and area it is good to have realtors for different areas. They are quite different, even if the entire market is high AF.

Market is OK, the area hasn't really had any noticeable appreciation in value so I won't be getting anything more than I bought it for. The realtor who lives in the area lamented the fact that prices have been stagnant, but it is what it is. What I put into the home will likely get me back to parity with what I bought it at

Called the old realtor at lunch and asked him to release me from our contract. He did without issue, so I'll be hiring the woman who lives in the neighborhood ASAP

She was very forthcoming with the fact that we are priced over market, so I'll be dropping it when she relists. I just have to get out from under the mortgage - paying rent and a note at the same time is going to kill me if I don't act fast
 
we are finally attempting to build sliding “barn doors” for the storage space in our attic. We cut the walls open when we moved but never put doors on. Once this is done, time to repaint. Hoping this is the only project we need to do this summer. Next year is the pool.
 
My wife and I recently moved into our first house on May 1st. It's new construction so there's not much in the way of "fix it up" stuff to do (especially since we're still under new home warranty) but I'm enjoying the little things around customization. I'm currently in the process of converting a front coat closet near the kitchen into a pantry and installing a home gym in the garage. The wife has some dreams about a custom entry way bench/shoe rack and backyard pergola so I'm sure I'll have plenty to do until it's not "fun" anymore :cautious:
 
CC Strife&Upheaval for bench and pergola talk
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Let's reopen the home ownership thread, post any questions or thoughts about DIY projects, buying/selling a home, repairs, etc

I'll kick it off with a question: how long is too long to keep a realtor if you're not satisfied with his performance? We've had our home on the market since 1st week of May, and I'm not happy with how things are going. Seems like the realtor doesn't give too much thought to our property, doesn't attend the showings and only holds open house when we insist. He doesn't give much feedback, constructive or otherwise

I was thinking of hiring another realtor, one who lives in the neighborhood and is a woman. I've been getting advice to hire a woman realtor, but I'm thinking in the neighborhood is the more important part of the switch. Any experiences y'all want to share?

I thought really hard about switching realtors when I sold my home back in 2016. I butted heads with my realtor from the start, she wasn't very thorough or good at communicating. Plus I thought her performance was poor and turned out that it took 3+ months to sell our home. In retrospect, I REALLY wish I would have. I would say if you are having second thoughts, I'd move on to someone else. She definitely never gets a referral from me.
 
My wife and I recently moved into our first house on May 1st. It's new construction so there's not much in the way of "fix it up" stuff to do (especially since we're still under new home warranty) but I'm enjoying the little things around customization. I'm currently in the process of converting a front coat closet near the kitchen into a pantry and installing a home gym in the garage. The wife has some dreams about a custom entry way bench/shoe rack and backyard pergola so I'm sure I'll have plenty to do until it's not "fun" anymore :cautious:

Check your existing entry for a box that was delivered around 11:10 local time. It came from the other site....oooooh...
 
Need to get some first and now photos of our yard. Complete renovation. Not immediate but I never would have imagined spending what I did to rip up shit, and pay for grass, dirt, and plants that I can otherwise kill with little effort.

Hoping to put house on market and capitalize on the hot market.

Still having trouble finding contractors for tile work and bathroom updates. Trying to figure out if there is a season for this shit.
 
I've restarted the process of building my storybook-style brick retaining wall. I swear I posted about it on TB but I can't find the image of where it was when I started this year. You can kinda see it here:

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It was a disaster. Covered in dirt, way too low to have stopped work, just a big mess. I was very demoralized, I think I last worked on it in late September and had so many problems (mixing mortar to the right consistency is hard, cleaning old-ass bricks by hand is hard) that I just gave up. Well, then we had a super rainy spring and I had a large backlog of other stuff, so I didn't make any progress at all for months. I finally worked up the courage to start again, and here's where I am after laying 19 bricks tonight:

15RIQDL.jpg


It's finally above where the dirt wants to fall to, and I think it's starting to look like a real wall. I learned a couple things:

1) While the bag says "avoid a soupy mixture", it's definition of "soupy" is not the same as mine. I think this was my big issue, I was mixing the mortar too dry so it didn't stick well. I've been aiming for something along the lines of a nice thick potato-leek soup and it's been working great.

2) Power-washing to bricks is a goddamned lifesaver. I had borrowed a neighbor's crappy old power washer for other tasks, and when I finally started work on this again used it on my giant pile of bricks that were covered in tree litter and dirt and moss and spiders and it just tore through it all. Until my first major setback where the dumb thing broke (I did post about this in TB). I eventually figured out that there's a real issue with it and gave up and bought this one. The main reason I never got a power washer was space, but this thing is small enough that's it not a big issue. It's also a lot more powerful than the old one, the crap on the bricks just flies off.

It's to the point where I'm pretty excited to work on this wall and I want to do a few more masonry projects in the future. I'm optimistic that I can largely finish the work with a dedicated push this weekend, we'll see.

Oh, and I don't know how you people who live in hot places manage. Working on this when it was 95 out was miserable, and this isn't even a high-effort task! God that was miserable.
 
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