Sale fell through on a hard to sell home primarily because of items in and condition of basement

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Also when it's empty, the place looks bigger.

When you have a lot of stuff, they get distracted by the stuff instead of imagining themselves living in the place.

You're absolutely correct. I've been there as a buyer...forgot about the property and got sucked into all the stuff I was looking at.
 
Geneva is a awesome town, a rare gem in Chicago area. This home is in west Dundee, a nice town but the town next to west Dundee annexed mega farm land and allowed it to be developed with zero master planning. The shopping centers have huge vacancies, banks shut down and vacant, even a newly built Ashley home center quickly shut down.

Illinois overall is very troubled. Safeway, the monster nationwide grocery chain excited the state not selling any stores, just shut down and left. Bank of America just did the same thing. Shame, very good people in Illinois.
Caterpillar and Boeing announced moving their headquarters out of state recently.
 
Real estate professionals will tell you that to show a home you need the bare minimum of furnishings and nothing else—no clutter, stored items, any of that. Once it's time to sell, even the bare minimum of furnishings goes.
There is an alternate approach. Your home is "staged" to look like what people would like their home to look. There are professional stagers who bring in nice furniture and furnishings for the viewing period. We have really nice furniture and though we've never actually staged our home, several times we've thought that people were "buying our lifestyle".

I agree with the sparse look. There should be no clutter at all. We put stuff away, particularly family photos.

To me an empty home has a desperate look about it - "These people really need to sell. No-one even lives here."
 
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There's nothing wrong with the basement, how could it be a way for someone to not want the home? It's just a little bit unfinished.
 
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When my neighbors moved they had two dumpsters filled with their junk to empty the house and garage. They even had a piano that got the boot.

My place will be the same when my time comes......
 
So did you lock your basement away from your tenants?

Sounds like you found a hustler, like you yourself are. In any deal there's an arbitrage of knowledge and because you're equal with the buyer the deal fell through.

These rising rates are rough but hang in there the house looks really nice.
 
It's [basement] just a little bit unfinished.
It's so unfinished, it can't even be considered started. It doesn't have any of the things a finished basement needs, like electrical outlets. That bare stud wall frame in the middle of the room isn't doing anything but making it look smaller.
 
There is an alternate approach. Your home is "staged" to look like what people would like their home to look. There are professional stagers who bring in nice furniture and furnishings for the viewing period. We have really nice furniture and though we've never actually staged our home, several times we've thought that people were "buying our lifestyle".

I agree with the sparse look. There should be no clutter at all. We put stuff away, particularly family photos.

To me an empty home has a desperate look about it - "These people really need to sell. No-one even lives here."
Depends on the price point. For cheaper properties, we don't bother staging them, for more expensive ones, yes, it's worth staging. However considering the owner is that far away and the cost of staging and the value isn't really there to make it worth the cost of staging.
 
I hear you-It seems nonsensical to drag stuff all over the country as well.
I seem to recall that GON had to drag his motor oil stash across the country in the past year as well.

I'm so glad I'm not a hoarder, I have the opposite problem - I can't stand keeping stuff around that isn't being used or won't be used in short order.
I'm the same. My wife, on the other hand, isn't. We recently got a shed and the primary intention was so we could park 2 cars in our 2-car garage 😳. Problem is, the garage had some large, heavy-duty shelving so whenever someone didn't want anything anymore, instead of throwing it away ("I might want it later"), it ended up in the garage.
 
I put stage "two" of the basement cleanout on hold, I will complete phase two later this morning.

In the past 36 hours I installed a dry well, fixed a related landscape rut from not having a dry well, had the carpet replaced on the staircase (only carpet in the house, and removed an eyesore of a grass mound at the front entrance of the home and installed mulch

At the middle of the where the deck meets there was a runoff problem. Over the years a rut developed in the back yard, and it was an eye sore, the only eye sore in the back yard. I had a new but cracked sump well in the basement, so I installed drains in it and repurposed it. I am not sure the work I did was cost effective to repurpose it, but it is 1000 times stronger than the $30 sump well liners than Home Depot sells. Don't laugh at the drain caulk job, it was just old gutter caulk I found in the basement, no one will ever see the caulk, only reason I caulked it up was to make sure the drains didn't fall out until the pea gravel was in the hole. This may have been the deepest hole I ever dug by hand in my life. Glad I have a very large stash of retaining walls hidden out of sight in a densely wooded part of the property.

I removed the carpet from the staircase. The prior tenants had a cat the urinated on one stair. Removing the carpet staples was tedious. After sanitizing the stairs, and then covering in pet urine enzyme neutralizer, I painted the stairs in Kilz II (latex). It took about five hours for the Kilz to dry, and I wasn't happy with the outcome. I then purchased Zinsler sealer primer, it dried in under 30 minutes. Zinsler is much harder to clean but a much better product for something like stairs. I bought a remnant for the carpet, and end of a stocked cheap carpet at Home Depot at 50 percent off ($75). The carpet installers labor cost was $350. I was happy to find these installers. The guy that installed floors in this home for over ten years is simple too busy to be bothered with a staircase job. I usually install a higher quality carpet, but none of the Home Depots have had any remnants available. Sign of the times.

At the entrance to the home is a large area for landscaping. It is an awesome place to install things like large ornamental grasses, or shrubs, etc. One could even do an awesome flower garden. I can't do anything because new plants need daily watering, something not feasible. This area became a catch for dead grass. I killed the weeds in this area, and then covered in mulch. Not the best solution, but the area is no longer an eye sore.

Today's plan is to finish the basement cleanout, install two new screens that were not installed when all the replacements were ordered a year ago, clean the kitchen appliances, and find a place to park the trailer. Fly back to Seattle tonight. was glad to have all the tools I had available for the landscape/ dry well job. I am also much better aware that nobody wants my stuff in their new home. Thanks for all the input.
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eye sore.
 
Phase two of the basement cleanup complete. A ton more stuff was in that space than I ever imagined. Need to look at my hording tendacies.

I was supposed to fly out tonight, chang d the flight to tomorrow, more work than anticipated getting the basement empty.
 

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Home was built in 1988. Custom built, 2x6 construction.

But the design, especially the floorplan is like a 1970s home. formal living room, formal dining room, all things 95% of buyers don't want in a home at this price point. Has some features like two full kitchens, a six teared garden (awesome if maintained, horrible if not), you can sled in the backyard in the winter; canoe, rowboat and fish in the summer.

Crappy floorplan and poor eye appeal in the original design. Has a sunken family room with a wonderful fireplace and two huge windows overlooking the water. Issue is, the home is a ranch and a ranch should never have a "sunken floor", especially in a room required to get to the kitchen, hallway, bedrooms, defeats the benefit of a ranch. Retired people have looked at the home, they run away when they discover the sunken family room floor.

Exactly like my first house my parents bought off me for my younger sis to live in. Sunken family room next to the kitchen. The family room steps out to the garage and patio, but the kitchen is a large eat in kitchen, separate dining room, now used as a den, living room in the front, downstairs laundry. A ranch for those in good physical shape.

But when I had it, I could be in the family room watching what I wanted to on my TV while my wife could be watching American Idol/Americas Got Talent on her TV in the living room. The dining room was a den and the laundry in the basement with clothes lines and a dehumidifier kept the clothes in good shape not needing to use the dryer which wears clothes out faster.
 
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