What the heck is a diamond in the rough, anyway?

The standards have gone way up on how much spiffing the market expects when a home goes on the market.  Homeowners can work for weeks or even months prepping their home for sale. We aren't talking major remodel. But packing up and storing lots of stuff, moving furniture to a storage unit, tending to small fix it items identified by their realtor, smoke detectors, carbon monoxide monitors, digging up paperwork for past work such as oil tank decommissions and sewer replacements.  Spiffing the yard, touch up painting where needed and so on.

But sometimes, circumstances are such that sellers just don't have that kind of time and money.  A job relocation with a short timeline, divorce and health issues can all contribute to sellers just needing to get it sold.

I had a listing earlier in the summer, where my clients were moving out of state, and on a short timeline. They have two busy boys, two dogs and had lived in the house for 17 years.  In that time, they had done lots of very valuable upgrades to the house; earthquake retro-fitting, Pella double paned argon filled windows, new water and sewer lines, high efficiency furnace, gas hot water heater, wood stove inserts into both fireplaces, whole house water filter and more.  Where necessary, they  had building permits.

The house had many of the features today's buyers are looking for;  it is  a classic Tudor, has hardwood floors, fireplaces, built-ins, leaded glass accents, roomy kitchen floor plan, mature landscape.  But...the kitchen and baths were kinda tired, and the sellers didn't have the time or energy to do a bunch of prepping. So when the house was shown, prospective buyers had to look past the kids' Lego figures all over the fireplace mantle, the dishes in the kitchen sink, the landscape hadn't been trimmed back and the deck hadn't been pressure washed.

That, my friends, was a diamond in the rough.  Its was a great house in a fab location with good systems.  Just needed a tad of vision and some kitchen and bath work.

A diamond in the rough, is NOT a non-descript house with three layers of carpet and linoleum, old leaky windows, electric baseboard heat and an aging sewer line.  That's just rough.  There needs to be some diamond under the rough.