The Lovely Ladies' Landon: Getting under roof

It was a very busy weekend for the two of us. We have been devoting all of our attention to the house transition since May. This weekend we had maintenance of items in our lives we have been neglecting……our cars. Our cars needed tons of work. The Jeep needed new tires and the Nissan needed new brakes, rotors, and calipers. It made for a stressful weekend.

Most of our weekends are stressful because we are always working on things to help sell our house. This weekend we had an open house. I’d like to share the experience of the open house and what I have learned in the process of selling and moving to Ryan Homes.

1) Agents in general don’t think open houses are worth it. My agent refused to tell me why she won’t sit or organize an open house for my property. She basically notes that an open house is for agents looking for buyers.

2) This is the 2^nd open house that we, the owners, actually put out the Coldwell Banker signs, put out cookies, and hosted buyers.

3) I found open houses trigger extra advertising. Coldwell banker would do an ad in the local paper, and all the major home sites such as Zillow and Realtor.com note it. It’s really cool that Zillow sends an email to those who saved the house as a favorite about an open house. Open houses seem like a good thing from the extra advertising.

4) I also noticed that weeks where I have an open house, there is less traffic of special showings. I think some buyers’ agents save time by sending their clients to open houses.

5) I have spoken to a few friends/associates who have sold their houses via an open house. This is contrary of what Realtors post online and my agent even told me.

6) I noticed that if your schedule to show the house doesn’t work for a realtor and their client, they normally just write the house off. I had roughly 4 people ask for showings at 10am which is impossible for us since we work and have dogs. I offered lunch time showings, evenings, and weekends but never heard back from them. I think an open house makes your house more available and worth the time.

7) We seemed to average 8 groups per open house.

8) The scorecard for our house is that 1 lowball offer came from a private showing, I was told last night that someone at my open house is working on an offer for today, and the last open house an agent stopped in and she brought her clients through twice and they are considering it also. It looks like the open house strategy will pay off for us.

Enough of the home selling drama and now to the Landon. We stopped up Saturday to find the remaining big framing items completed. The trusses on the garage were finished, all the plywood was laid on the roof, and they installed the porch roof. I didn’t notice any internal work or fixes. I think their goal was to get the house under roof as fast as possible.

My PM called me Friday to respond to me emails. He noted that the framer will go back and fix various damage items. In many cases it’s installing a new board, butting another board up to add structural strength, or fill the gap with spray insulation. Our call went really well. The PM noted the roofers should be shingling today and if they can get the roof finished, the inside stuff can start. He also set the pre-drywall meeting date for 2 weeks. He said we might make a closing by the end of October but it depended on the weather. Rain today or tomorrow will push back the rough in until next week and high humidity will push back drywall.

While we lost nearly 2 weeks waiting for framers, everything seems to be coming together. If the house sells this week, the final remaining hurdle will be nailed down.

Here is the updated photos