Please note that this is a tentative draft -- the price, etc. may change before we make it official.
Folks, can you do me a…
Folks, can you do me a favor? We're tentatively planning to put our condo on the market, and thought that it wouldn't hurt to take a couple of weeks to just send out word through our networks, before we do the whole listing-with-realtors thing. So I've thrown up a quick web page, and would really appreciate your feedback on what info I'm missing, whether you remember any other great photos of the condo from the journal, etc. and so on. In other words, please Rate My Space. :-)
It looks great to me, but I wonder if there is a slip up…you say in the heading “Condo for rent.”
In today’s real estate market, it might well be better to try to rent it. Condos are not moving quickly, from what I read.
How much is the condo fee?
Heh. Will fix to Condo for Sale. We’re actually very lucky, in that our neighborhood has held value well, and condos in our price range are moving pretty quickly. Thank god.
If it doesn’t sell within a few months, we’ll likely take it back off the market and wait a year — we’re lucky that we don’t need to sell this year.
You think I should include the assessment in this listing?
Condo fees scare a lot of prospective buyers. My sweetie would not even look at one, since she says “Condo fees always go up.” (I am guessing that ‘assessment’ is a synonym for ‘Condo monthly fee.’)
Yes, it’s the same thing. But if condo fees scare buyers, should I list them in the initial listing or not?
For what it’s worth, ours have pretty much held steady for three years. Maybe gone up $5 – $10/month max, I think.
I am not an expert certainly, but there is no point in attracting potential buyers who could afford the mortgage but not the assessment. In the new condos that have just opened in Newark, the fee is equal to a significant fraction of the mortgage payment. Do ads for condominiums typically list the assessment?
Condo listings at mlslistings.com always list the association fee. I think buyers often don’t pay much attention to association fees — I think it’s easy to ignore them or not figure them into costs, especially if you’ve never paid them before.
My association fee hasn’t gone up at all in the five years I’ve been here, but my situation is probably unusual.
I think the page does a good job of covering stuff. One thing you might consider is a photo of the whole first-floor open floor plan — I think the photos you have do a good job of conveying the sense of three separate spaces, but don’t do as good a job conveying the sense of a big open space. I dunno, maybe people would be scared off by that–but I suspect that the kind of person who would love your floor plan would be intrigued by a photo that showed the whole space.
…”we’ve run water up to the roof”–do you have a faucet up there now? Cool!
I’m tempted to say you should have an extra photo just showing an expanse of floor, but I guess that would be silly — you do show the floor in several of the photos you’ve got.
as someone in the market for a new place to live (not in Chicago) I think this strikes slightly too personal a tone. I realize you are going through your personal networks but you might not want to be quite so chatty.
Definitely put in the maintenance or condo fees. Not to do so is slightly misleading.
I like to know if there are bathrooms on each floor (if its a duplex) and what floors the bedrooms are on.
My two cents: Put all of the awesome features in a bulleted list (or a paragraph, as you like) at the top. Don’t wait to mention the granite countertops until halfway down the page, or the garden until even farther — those are features that will interest potential buyers, but not if they’re not interested enough to read the entire page top to bottom.