FSBO needs some advice

[Kaplin261]

I made a zillow listing and placed a sign in my yard almost a week ago and I have not received any calls from clients other than realtors trying to convert me. www.millvalleyct.com is the domain I bought and it redirects to the zillow page.

You can use the domain listed above to see my zillow listing or search for 7093 mill valley ct, Mechanicsville VA 23111

Any advice on what I might be doing wrong or things I could do differently would be greatly appreciated!

edit:fixed link

[BlueHouse]

Well, for one thing, your link doesn't work

[mskyle]

I have no idea what the market is like in your area and whether you're pricing your house correctly, but you could definitely stage the house a bit better for the photos. You have some very dated decorating - the wallpaper, the knotty pine - but that probably doesn't make sense to change right now. You could, however, take some of the furniture out of the rooms before you take your photos. They look crowded. Put all the loose kid stuff in a basket or something while you take the photos. And use better lighting for your photos - I think that kitchen breakfast area is actually lovely but it's hard to tell with the lighting.

[Kaplin261]

I have no idea what the market is like in your area and whether you're pricing your house correctly, but you could definitely stage the house a bit better for the photos. You have some very dated decorating - the wallpaper, the knotty pine - but that probably doesn't make sense to change right now. You could, however, take some of the furniture out of the rooms before you take your photos. They look crowded. Put all the loose kid stuff in a basket or something while you take the photos. And use better lighting for your photos - I think that kitchen breakfast area is actually lovely but it's hard to tell with the lighting.

Is the wallpaper pretty bad? We have been looking at for last 8 years and I guess we have got used to it. In regards to the knotty pine, are referring to the Kitchen cabinets? Thank you for your insight, it is very valuable to get the opinion of an outsider.

[Another Reader]

I think you have done a nice job photographing the house and writing the description.  While your decor might be considered dated in many markets, it might be perfectly fine in a neighborhood of colonial homes in Virginia.  The fact that 29 "shoppers" saved the house is positive.  However, one problem with Zillow is that their Z-estimate is $10,000 less than your list price, or about 5 percent.  Even if the estimate is inaccurate, that turns some buyers off.

How did you price this property?  Do directly comparable recent closed sales support your asking price?  Did you talk to any agents to get pricing and updating recommendations before deciding to go the FSBO route?  How long typically do listings take to sell in your neighborhood and surrounding areas?  These are some of the things I would consider before I made any changes.

[ender]

My wife and I have looked at a lot of home pictures recently, here's some thoughts as I look through yours.


Take pictures when the house is mainly sunlit. Your lights look really awkward and make things look stale and I don't think they are adding much to your photos, with rare exception.

Your front photo is ok, but doesn't show any depth to the house. There are also two cars awkwardly parked on the edge of the picture. Consider having the picture show a slight angle to show how deep the house is from the picture, like your 3rd photo.

Front door photo is weird. Doesn't show me much at all or interest me.

Dining room photo- turn the light off. Consider trying to get a photo showing what look like good windows in your dining room instead of the corner. This helps with...

Try to organize your photos so I can "walk through" your home. I see a front door, then a random formal dining room.  The next photos are of a completely different styled room with paint vs wallpaper and I would not have guesstimated they were part of the same home.

You apparently have an open 2nd floor given your picture of your other dining room but no picture of that from the floor. Your kitchen shots both have an awkward car in the background.

Your backyard pictures don't really show me 1) how big is the backyard and 2) whether it's nice. Your deck picture is awkward. The later pictures do a better job of this and the deck could be from further out and less "I'm taking this from a tunnel" feeling.

The "walk through" effect is good when you show the stairs and then the two bedrooms and bath, but I can't see how they go together. Can you get the stairs shot to be less.. just a staircase and also show the hallway it's next to so I can place it? Is it a master bath (looks like it with dual sink) off a bedroom? but you then go apparently downstairs again and have more awkard things in the background (trashcan?).

Also your kitchen/living area in back looks to be a heck of a lot more awesome than the pictures show it, as I've looked through these a few times it looks really neat but your first pictures don't make it look that great at all.  Only in the second round of pictures do I start thinking "woah that's neat" instead of "meh, small kitchen."

Basically from your pictures I have no real idea what the layout of the house is. I can kind of guesstimate by trying to tie in the later pictures to the earlier ones and using the "where is the backyard vs cars" in your pictures but to be honest I'm not going to spend that time if I'm not critically analyzing it or already taken in by the pictures (which they don't for me). I would try to get better relative location into the pictures. For example, I think the formal dining room is right off your front door. If you somehow take a picture of that room which shows the front door, I would know. Some of your stuff is clearly facing back - but it's hard to tell from the photos what all is where.

Some of the pictures are pointless, too, #30, 29, 31, 3, 10, 21 all don't seem to add much other than what other pictures show. I can't tell if some of the BR pictures are extra or not because they are all out of order and I didn't get a good feel for how they are setup or how many there are.

I don't think you show a shower anywhere. You also talk about a "huge crawl space" but don't show any pictures.

I have no idea about pricing but assume you did research on this. You have lots of dates listed in your description about things I don't think people care about - do people really care about the island and when you put it in? What about the irrigation system, how many people care? Ditto the vapor barrier, unless that's a big deal in VA. Those are interesting details but not such that I'd go "oh neat I want to look at this place in person."



I focused on pictures because they tell me, as a potential buyer, a story of what your house is and how it would be to live in it. They are not just a random collection of shots thrown together - that first impression matters, a lot. If you are walking someone through your house showing it, that's the sort of story I want to see in pictures. "So here's the dining room and then we walk through this hallway to the kitchen and breakfast nook. Look at how awesome this is, it's got skylights and vaulted ceilings and tons of natural lighting. Then..." etc. Those sorts of stories are compelling to me as someone who has looked at many, many houses and their pictures in the past six months.