I walked a house last week where the owner started apologizing before I had both feet inside the door. Sorry about the kitchen. Sorry about the carpet. Sorry about the cabinet door that has been hanging off one hinge for longer than anybody can remember. Three apologies before the hallway.
I want to tell you what I was actually doing while that was happening, because the list of things I do not care about is longer than most people expect, and knowing the difference might save you money you were about to spend. Let us talk about the things that do not move my number, and the short list that does.
THE APOLOGY IS USUALLY FOR THE WRONG THING
Almost every apology I hear on a first walk is about a surface. Paint chosen in a decade the owner would rather not discuss. Carpet that has been down long enough to have opinions. A kitchen that was lovely when it went in and is merely fine now.
Nobody apologizes for the roof. Almost nobody apologizes for a stain on the ceiling that has been growing slowly since last winter. The things people feel bad about and the things that actually cost money are two separate lists, and they only rarely overlap.
WHAT I DO NOT LOOK AT, AND I MEAN GENUINELY
This is not me being polite. There is no version of my walk-through that starts with the wall color.
- Paint, inside and out.
- Carpet, wallpaper, and whatever is hiding under them.
- A kitchen or a bathroom that is dated, as long as the fixtures work.
- Cabinet doors that hang crooked, and the one missing knob.
- A lawn that has not been mowed, and the landscaping around it.
- Appliances that are old but running.
- Clutter I can walk around, and furniture I can see past.
- Popcorn ceilings, mirrored closet doors, and anything else from 1978.
None of that changes what I can do with the house, what it costs me, or how long it takes. It changes how the house photographs. Photographs matter enormously to a listing. They matter very little to somebody who is buying the property rather than the room it is standing in.
THE SHORT LIST, WHICH IS THE ENTIRE LIST
What I am actually examining is a much smaller set of things, and it comes down to water, movement, and what happens when you turn something on.
Water, and where it has been. A roof at the end of its life. A foundation that has moved, or a floor that tells you it has. Drainage that pushes water toward the house instead of away from it. Plumbing and wiring from an era when the parts are no longer made. Heating and cooling that may or may not run. The paperwork side is access, occupancy, and anything the county has on file that does not match what is standing there.
Every one of those is a real number. Not one of them is improved by a fresh coat of paint.
AND NOW THE PART WHERE I DISAGREE WITH MYSELF A LITTLE
Do not hear “does not care” as “does not matter”. Condition does affect what I offer, because it affects what the house is worth when it is finished. A house with a tired kitchen and a house with a new one are not the same house to me.
What is different is who pays for it. The usual advice on a listing is that you spend the money first and hope to get it back later. Here, nobody has to spend it, and the same difference shows up in the number instead.
And since I am being straight with you, you will probably be offered less than a strong listing would bring. That is the trade and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Weighing it against a faster sale, no repairs and no showings is the decision in front of you, and it is yours to make.
THE SHOE WITH THE HOLE IN THE SOLE, AND WHERE THAT COMPARISON BREAKS
The closest ordinary thing I can think of is a pair of shoes. A scuff across the leather is annoying, and it polishes out in ten minutes for the price of a tin of polish. A hole worn through the sole is a different animal. The wet has been getting in for a season, and everything inside has been quietly breaking down the entire time.
That is roughly the shape of the two lists above. The cosmetics are the scuff. Water, movement and dead systems are the hole in the sole.
Now let me break my own comparison, because it does not hold all the way. A cobbler picks up the whole shoe and tells you in half a minute whether it is worth fixing. A house is a closed box. You can see a small share of it from any doorway and none of it from the street. Its version of water coming in for a season is sitting above a ceiling or underneath a floor, and nobody knows how far it has traveled until somebody opens the wall. So the two categories are not really visible and invisible. They are cheap to fix, and expensive to find out about.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO SPEND ANYTHING, SPEND IT HERE
The mistake I see most often is money spent in the wrong order. Somebody repaints the whole interior, replaces the carpet, clears out the yard, and then sells as-is anyway, and none of it comes back. Meanwhile the roof has been leaking into the same ceiling for two winters.
If you are going to spend something before you sell, spend it on the short list. A roof that is actively leaking gets worse every time it rains. A dated kitchen gets no worse sitting where it is for another six months.
If you would rather not spend anything at all, that is a legitimate answer. Selling it to me exactly as it stands is a real option rather than a consolation prize, and the point of it is that the list of things you have to fix is empty. What I ask in return is honesty about the short list. Telling me the roof leaks does not cost you anything. Me finding out later, after the number has already been written, costs us both.
If you want the whole sequence, the process is written out here, and the part worth reading is how many points there are where you can still walk away. On condition, what as-is actually means to me is worth ten minutes.
Anyway, thanks for being here. Question for you: if you walked a friend through your house tomorrow and had to point at three things, which three would you pick, and how many of them are on my short list?
