House for sale, how do I convience DH to rent a storage unit?

[SammyeGail]

We have a huge basement, but its packed. Our RE agent said to just neaten it up, people will understand that we 'live' here.

We have a couch, chair, set of queen mattress, set of twin mattress, 2 broken down dining room tables, with 8 chairs, a bid padded rocking chair, and loads of tools, misc on shelves. Oh, and since our bedroom is small and our bed is huge, we are taking it down and putting our bed on a queen frame. AND we are taking a dresser, filling cabinets and a bookshelf out of our guest (lol) bedroom, all going in the basement. Not mention all the misc junk down there.

I think we should rent a small storage unit to put the extra furniture in. There is just too much. DH agrees with the RE agent (why did she have to say that!!) and we are fighting over this. Renting a trailer to move it, paying the monthly fee....its $35, we live in a small town in TN. There is just he and I to move things. Come on DH, we have a nice large daylight basement, its a great feature. Cramed full of stuff people can't get their vision of it for themselves.

How do I get him to understand this? I have thought about calling the RE agent and asking her to recommend it to him. We had planned to do it until she said not to worry about it. Again, WHY did she have to say that!?!

Samantha

[JustMe]

I am surprised she said this as well. Maybe you can call her back and ask her (genuinely) if she thinks it will sell better if the basement is really cleaned out so that you can see how great it is? If she says yes (I cant imagine she wouldnt), ask her if she has a general idea of how much quicker or for how much more money houses sell when they look their absolute best as opposed to when they don't

Robyn
single mommy to an almost 4 yr old from Guatemala

[BeachBum]

I'd have my hubby watch a few episodes of that HGTV show where they spend $2K to get the house ready to sell. They always clear out tons of stuff and "stage" the whole house. Even my DH realized how poorly we did marketing our last house after seeing the reccomendations on the show. I think most of the time real estate agents dont want to hurt your feelings so they don't tell you the truth about what needs to go.

[Momof3Labs]

I'd recommend getting a POD instead, if you can in your area. www.pods.com, I think, or check at your local Home Depot. You don't have to haul stuff to a storage area, and then haul it back to the new place. Just pack it up in your driveway, and they haul it away, then they deliver it to the new house when you are ready.

Getting stuff out of there will show people how big it is and how much potential it has - unless your market is really hot (few are right now), do anything and everything that you can to make your house stand out! Plus, you have to move the stuff eventually anyways, why not get some of the moving out of the way now?

[dawell0]

I agree with Lori. Unfortunately, moving is expensive and there are just certain costs with it. I think that you would get more money out of it if you stage the house and make it extra clean. We are in the process of moving from a condo to a new house. I convinced DH that we needed to move out before we started to try to sell just so that we didn't have to worry about "staging" and cleaning. I would recommend the pod system too because it would give you a heads up on the storage.

[SammyeGail]

I love the pods things! There isn't one around here : (. When we saw the house empty the basement looked so huge.

I'm going to call the RE agent and be insistant if I have to. Ask her to call DH and say she's reconsidered. At least she did go to a stadging class in CA a few months back and had good ideas. They were the same as I thought about, lol! You can tell I used to watch alot of those shows. We just can't now with 14 month old twins.

The storage unit it about 2 miles away, not bad at all. He's downstairs now aggrivated going thru boxes, lol! I start saying S-T-O-R....thats about as far as I've gotten before I get 'the' look.

She even said we didn't need to re-paint the bathroom and extra bedroom. They are a light ocean blue. We searched and she is the best RE agent in the county, so she's knowledgeable. Everything else is neurtalized, but I'm going to at least do the bath while DH is at work and the boys will watch baby einstein : ).

Tks! Hope it works....

Samantha

We do have it priced right, below appraisal (not alot). Sell baby Sell!!

Samantha

[Mommy Of A Little Angel]

Don't a lot of places have a deal where the first month is $1 or something? That is super cheap - who can argue with $1?

[gordo]

We are in the samce situation. We have a ton of stuff stuffed into our closets and our "office" which is really a storage room. My relator came over this week to start getting our place on the market, and she immediately told me to empty everything out and get a storage unit. She said if people look at the house and see our closets filled to the brim, they will automatically think the house does not have enough storage. So we are in the process of begging our parents to take our stuff so we don't have to pay for storage, but if that doesn't work it will be Pods or a storage locker for us. Pods seems very convenient, but it is double the price of a storage locker.

[dules]

Rent a unit and hire some high school kids to move the furniture out for you. You drive the truck and they unload it. :) Get a sitter for a couple of hours on 2 or 3 days and then ask forgiveness from DH later.

ITA that a "room" should not be stuffed with "stuff" - otherwise potential buyers won't see the advantages. I am struggling convincing DH that our storage also should not be full, because it looks bigger when it's not. :)

Good luck!

Mary

[Jen841]

Have your agent tell you in front of him. Our agent told us to try to reduce 1/3 of what we had at least.... it was the kick for us to donate!!!!