Selling Our House For 3x What We Paid (7 Viewers)

It was easy enough to list for free as For Sale By Owner on Zillow. However be aware of a few quirks:
Wow, thanks for the really detailed reply. That's a lot of good info - I'm definitely curious how much not being on the MLS impacts the ability to find a buyer... sounds like you haven't had any issues!

Did you pay someone to stage/photo your home? Or did you do that yourself?
 
Wow, thanks for the really detailed reply. That's a lot of good info - I'm definitely curious how much not being on the MLS impacts the ability to find a buyer... sounds like you haven't had any issues!

Did you pay someone to stage/photo your home? Or did you do that yourself?

We're occupying the home so staging would be a major pain in the balls, not to mention I think that usually costs thousands of dollars. So we opted to take photos ourselves and update the zillow listing, since it had a bunch of outdated pics from before we purchased the home.

Be aware those updated pics do not spread across the listings for the home on other sites like Realtor.com or Redfin.com, but neither does your for sale listing either.

It being a sellers market we're fortunate that we don't really have a ton of listings in our town at all, so there's isn't a lot of competition where we're trying to upstage the next house. The inventory is so low compared to the number of buyers that I see plenty of homes listings that look like absolute pigsties where folks didn't even bother to tidy up, because they don't care and they know they're going to get eyeballs anyway because folks are hungry for homes.

So you don't NEED to stage the house or have professional photos, and most cell phones these days have really nice photo taking abilities that you should be able to take some nice shots yourself and get them uploaded.

Not to mention my home is in a price point that is half what the entry point is for the majority of homes that are listed in our area, and we own our own land (a lot of places you don't get as much land as we have here in FL, or you pay a lot fee of $500+/month on top of your mortgage and you don't own the land at all).
 
This is a really cool thread, thanks for posting @Anthony Martino

Is the real estate appreciation in your new state the same as/better than your Florida home? Otherwise, I guess it means you can earn better returns investing/playing poker with the difference in home prices less taxes/fees?

I only ask because I thought Florida would have been one of the more attractive places to own property in the US, especially if you got in 5 years ago and investors are pushing prices higher.

Post in thread 'Selling Our House For 3x What We Paid'
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/selling-our-house-for-3x-what-we-paid.89608/post-1841732
 
Last edited:
This is a really cool thread, thanks for posting @Anthony Martino

Is the real estate appreciation in your new state the same as your Florida home? Otherwise, I guess it means you can earn better returns investing/playing poker with the difference in home prices less taxes/fees?

We haven't settled on a new state just yet. We're looking at multiple states. Home appraisal numbers so far have been much lower than what our home will sell for here in FL, whether that will continue I don't know, or what we'll face in another state when the time comes.

We aren't overly concerned with that as a factor though, mostly concerned with getting a larger/nicer home and a decent amount of land in an area with a climate we're happy with.
 
We haven't settled on a new state just yet. We're looking at multiple states. Home appraisal numbers so far have been much lower than what our home will sell for here in FL, whether that will continue I don't know, or what we'll face in another state when the time comes.

We aren't overly concerned with that as a factor though, mostly concerned with getting a larger/nicer home and a decent amount of land in an area with a climate we're happy with.

Oops, I edited my post right after you replied. I see what you’re saying though - it’s a QOL decision rather than an investment decision
 
Oops, I edited my post right after you replied. I see what you’re saying though - it’s a QOL decision rather than an investment decision

Yeah, when I quit my job a few years back to play poker for a living I pretty much switched a lot of my mentality towards focusing on quality of life and the pursuit of happiness.

I mean, I could probably make a killing as a midget exotic dancer, but would I truly be happy?
 
Don't move to Dallas. The house a few doors down just sold for $385/sqft.
12 offers, 4 days on the market.
I’m in the N.Dallas area and you ain’t lying. Our house has more doubled in less then 3 years and in my area people are still get competing offers for more then a $100k over asking!

We want to sell, but then what - lol.
 
Anthony, come on up to New York kid!

We have long, cold, winters (for all you Cinderella fans)
The highest combined tax rate in the country (winning!)
An unelected governor (we are 2 for 2 on having the most recent elected governors chased out of office)
Online poker is illegal here (but weed is legal)
We have LESS sunny days a year the Seatac (melanoma is bad)
Tons of arrogant, uptight, douche bags (if your into that sort of thing)
The local casino couldn't fill a 5/10 PLO table if they had 6 shills (shill jobs are plentiful)
Housing prices are only double the national average (but shit, who wants money anyway)
and if that doesn't seal the deal, the Senate floor leader is our rep (braggin' rights baby!)

:cautious: Wait, what the hell am I doing here. How much you selling your house for?
 
We thought about selling since our home jumped up this past year, but if we sell then we have to buy which is crazy here in NoVa.

I think we’re just going to add on to our home. We got 4 kids and it’s stop small now. Thinking of adding about 1500sqft
 
Lol wow. We've been inundated with people during the week that are like "oh, can we come see the house in 20 minutes?" Even had a guy sitting outside our house in his car at 8:30pm with his headlights on for a good 15 minutes whose agent told us the next day he was super interested in the property.

So we setup a showing today at 1:30pm because we don't want to be doing showings every fucking day at every fucking hour. We had four parties that had said they would be here. Not one of them showed up, not a single one of them had the fucking decency to even let us know they weren't coming.

I spoke with our neighbor at the end of our shared driveway who had expressed interested a few years back when he saw we had gotten the house painted and put in pavers, because he thought we were prepping to sell at that time. There's potential he may come with a cash offer, so will see what develops there. But otherwise likely going to talk to my old bosses son who is a realtor and work out an arrangement for him to list us on the MLS and get more eyeballs on the place and hopefully less flakey buyers who no-show.
 
I'd offer to show the house at pre set times in 2 or 3 hour windows, Let the droves see the other interest in the house.
 
Lol wow. We've been inundated with people during the week that are like "oh, can we come see the house in 20 minutes?" Even had a guy sitting outside our house in his car at 8:30pm with his headlights on for a good 15 minutes whose agent told us the next day he was super interested in the property.

So we setup a showing today at 1:30pm because we don't want to be doing showings every fucking day at every fucking hour. We had four parties that had said they would be here. Not one of them showed up, not a single one of them had the fucking decency to even let us know they weren't coming.

I spoke with our neighbor at the end of our shared driveway who had expressed interested a few years back when he saw we had gotten the house painted and put in pavers, because he thought we were prepping to sell at that time. There's potential he may come with a cash offer, so will see what develops there. But otherwise likely going to talk to my old bosses son who is a realtor and work out an arrangement for him to list us on the MLS and get more eyeballs on the place and hopefully less flakey buyers who no-show.
Out of principle, I'd disqualify anyone that's being that creepy from buying. Their offer goes right in the trash. That takes some nerve.

I would have called the cops on anyone sitting in my driveway for longer than a minute uninvited.
 
I'd offer to show the house at pre set times in 2 or 3 hour windows, Let the droves see the other interest in the house.

That's why we were trying to get folks here today around the same time so they'd see there's competition for the house and encourage higher bids. I guess 3x'ing your home investment isn't as easy as it looks lol
 
Out of principle, I'd disqualify anyone that's being that creepy from buying. Their offer goes right in the trash. That takes some nerve.

I would have called the cops on anyone sitting in my driveway for longer than a minute uninvited.

We had done a showing at 6:15pm that night so figured it was someone who was supposed to come earlier that didn't show, but we were already dressed down and watching a show and didn't feel like dealing with someone wanting to see the house when it was dark out.
 
Have you looked at far north tx by the OK casinos? About an hour north of Dallas.

Denison, TX
Sherman, TX
Gainesville, TX

Those seem like good value, and quite close to Winstar/Choctaw. But not much else out there.

We're checking entire states rather than specific areas but found a lot more to go on in states outside of Texas unfortunately. Still, we don't have the house sold yet so there's always time for something else to come to market, we'll see when the time comes what is available.
 
Lol wow. We've been inundated with people during the week that are like "oh, can we come see the house in 20 minutes?" Even had a guy sitting outside our house in his car at 8:30pm with his headlights on for a good 15 minutes whose agent told us the next day he was super interested in the property.

So we setup a showing today at 1:30pm because we don't want to be doing showings every fucking day at every fucking hour. We had four parties that had said they would be here. Not one of them showed up, not a single one of them had the fucking decency to even let us know they weren't coming.

I spoke with our neighbor at the end of our shared driveway who had expressed interested a few years back when he saw we had gotten the house painted and put in pavers, because he thought we were prepping to sell at that time. There's potential he may come with a cash offer, so will see what develops there. But otherwise likely going to talk to my old bosses son who is a realtor and work out an arrangement for him to list us on the MLS and get more eyeballs on the place and hopefully less flakey buyers who no-show.
That really sucks that people would noshow like that... hope that things turn around.
 
That really sucks that people would noshow like that... hope that things turn around.

I'm meeting with my old bosses son this week to get paperwork signed to have him as our agent. We'll get the house on the MLS listings and I'm sure we'll get plenty of bites.

With any luck that home that's pending for 315K will go through and we'll get a significant boost to our own pricing.
 
We wound up not signing with him. He wanted 5% to split between both agents.

I let him know I have realtors knocking down my door to do the same at 3% and asked if he could do better than 5%

He said his brokerage wouldn't approve it and gave me a sales schpiel

So we're going to use Houzeo and pay around $400 to get it listed on the MLS which will get us a ton more exposure and eyeballs than just a FSBO on Zillow

Plus a few days ago a home with similar features sold for 350k down the street, they just have lake access which bumps the pricing. But still helps my sale value
 
Found a glass shop that was able to duplicate two missing pieces of glass from our kitchen cabinets, cost was only $27 and they did it while I waited.

Just bought some self-adhesive stone tile backsplash to put in the kitchen and ordering a tile cutting saw so I can get everything to fit right around outlets and edges, pretty excited to add these touches and get some new pics when I repost the house on the MLS using Houzeo
 
Anthony - get something in the Lake Tahoe area and we will come play poker regularly!

The furthest west we've considered is Texas

Working on the backsplash

20220519_174809.jpg
20220519_191053.jpg
 
If there is any gaps in the stonework you could paint the wall behind black first. Then it won’t like white in the small gaps that you will never be able to paint again.
But that may have an opaque back or be tight enough, can’t tell.

Yeah, there is a slight gap there. But......I have small paintbrushes used to paint dungeons & dragons miniatures, plus black paint, so maybe I can sneak a brush in that little gap and darken it up?
 

Create an account or login to comment

You must be a member in order to leave a comment

Create account

Create an account and join our community. It's easy!

Log in

Already have an account? Log in here.

Back
Top Bottom