Just how much pig lipstick and what shade does it take to sell a house?

One of worst things about buying a house before you sell your old one is that you are under extreme pressure to sell in order not to carry a bunch of mortgages. I had my primary SUBPRIME Mortgage on my Palo Alto house, a Second Mortgage to finance the down payment of the Mountain View house and the first mortgage on the Mountain View house. ...Let's just say it was a great deal of money every month.

My Palo Alto house falls very much into the description of the "Charming Cottage" it was about 1000 sq ft two bedroom/two bath home. On the good side; it had all hardwood floors and an updated kitchen and baths. Plus an oversized garage. On the bad side; it was 1000 sq ft and on a busy corner!

One of the first things I did was move out of the house. It was stuffed with too many things, plus three cats. Staging is critical to getting a property sold quickly and for top dollar in just about any situation. You may love Fluffy or Fido but evidence of pets can turn off buyers very quickly.

I painted all the inside rooms to give it a fresh paint smell. I worked with a stager my Real Estate Agent suggested and we got the house on the market.

Something was off... We got a couple of offers the first week but they were below the asking price and I specifically put the house on the market on a lower price point to generate more offers and to bid up the house not bid it down. There was something going on that was sending the bottom feeders...

Turned out that my house was being featured on the RedFin website ( it is now illegal to do what they did to my house!) in a very negative way about this is the kind of dump you can get in Palo Alto for around a million dollars. Plus they kindly highlighted the atrocious mess that my next door neighbor's house and yard were. I need to sell this house! Crap! Now what to do???

I took it off the market. Even though I needed to sell I knew I could do better than the offers I was getting. I used the feedback from the offers I got and I made changes to the house.

Many buyers are not aware that they can unlist their house any time they want. You may have signed a 6 month agreement to allow an agent to list your house but you can take a house off the MLS and tweak the house to better fit the market conditions.

I addressed some of the issues that were found in the inspection report that were scaring first time buyers away or making them think they should low ball my price. The only buyers interested in my house were first time buyers and they are the most critical and most in need of a turn key option. I needed to make sure my house was turn key or take a low ball offer. So I painted the outside, put on a new roof, tackled some foundation repairs that were minor but were terrifying first time buyers. Funny, I spent the least amount of money on the foundation repairs but the foundation was the scariest thing for a first time buyer to think about fixing. I added some additional landscaping touches and brought in a different stager that was more familiar with Palo Alto than the previous one.

All in all I spent about $20,000.00 to make the changes; including the repairs ( most were tax deductible) , paint and restaging. Was it worth it? I think so; I got about $65,000.00 more for the house than the last offers and it sold the first week it was relisted.

The most important thing I learned from this experience is to know who your most likely customer is and to make sure you are using their shade of pig lipstick not just applying pig lipstick!