It is a Cape Cod with cross-gable, four bedrooms, 1428 sq ft plus a large garage, built in 1939. It has recently been renovated, and has polished wood floors throughout, except for tiles in the kitchen and bathroom. It has three large opening skylights upstairs, solar hot-water heating, pellet stove for winter heating, and a developing organic permaculture garden with many fruit trees, berry bushes and grape vines. The house is fully weatherized, and recent pest-and-dry-rot and whole-house inspections (available to buyer) show it to be in a good state of repair.
It is in one of Eugene's best neighborhoods, on a quiet street close to downtown, from where you can easily walk or bike to most places in Eugene, including the University of Oregon, the Eugene Library, whole food stores and the Hult Center.
Front of house, showing Red Bartlet pear and Fuji apple trees. Also in the front are two cherry trees, a Persimon, two grape vines, five blueberries bushes and two strawberry beds. In the back yard are peach, apricot and fig trees, three grape vines, blackberry, raspberry and marionberry patches, and vegetable beds.
Roses and strawberries under front gable.
Part of living room.
Larger living room window
Pellet stove in living room. Wood pellets are the one form of energy that has not increased in price very much in five years -- $2.97 per bag five years ago, and $3.79 a bag now -- and one bag keeps this house warm for two days in all but the very coldest winter weather. I will show the buyer how to operate and maintain this stove, and leave detailed instructions on its use.
Kitchen from the living room.
Butternut and other squash in the kitchen, just harvested from the garden.
Berries from the garden.
Across the lettuce patch to Camus Lilies in May. The Camus Lilies and Oregon Ash trees growing among them are native to this area, and have probably been growing here for thousands of years.
A closer view of the Camus Lilies in May
Close up of a Camus Lily flower in the garden.
One of two rainwater collection systems in the garden.
The solar hot water heating panels.
On the trellis beside the large back deck. Roses and grapes grow like weeds here.
Part of bathroom. I have drawn up plans for another bathroom upstairs, right above this one, that would have its bath and shower under an opening skylight (see last illustration).
Part of one of the downstairs bedrooms, showing part of closet (no photo yet of the master bedroom downstairs, but it is of a similar style to this). I will leave touch-up paints for all the interior and exterior house colors.
Bottom of stairs.
Part of the L-shaped south side upstairs bedroom showing one of its two opening skylights. Behind the chimney on the left is a large walk-in closet.
Looking from the south side upstairs bedroom through to the north bedroom. The alcove to the left under the other opening skylight is where another bathroom can be added by partitioning it off, and raising the ceiling and pushing the wall out with a small shed dormer (see plans, following).
The north side upstairs bedroom with airconditioner and its four foot square opening skylight with its venetian blind down to reduce sunlight entry.
The same room with the skylight blind open. This skylight has just had new "tempered over laminate" safety glass installed to give the ultimate in safety and filter out UV, since it is directly over the bed. Sleeping under the stars at night is wonderful.
Snow on the deck and in the back garden.
About every second winter we get snow in the valley.
Plan for an additional bathroom upstairs. The Residential Plan Reviewer at the City of Eugene has confirmed that these plans (which I will give to the buyer) meet city building codes, and are drawn well enough to submit for a building application. This bathroom would be cheap to add, as it fits largely into existing floorspace, requiring just a small shed dormer to be added, and is directly above the other bathroom, making the plumbing easy. It would be ensuite to the bedroom with the 4' square opening skylight. A Feng Shui advisor told me this would be the ideal master bedroom for the house, so this new ensuite bathroom would work very well to complete the house. (The current master bedroom is directly below this one, so is also well placed from a Feng Shui point of view.)
Phone me, Mark, on 541 485-3905 if you would like to further inquire about the house, or arrange to view it.
A few years ago, when a house like this cost about $100,000, the 6% agents commission was around $6,000. Now because of the property boom, their 6% commission on $300,000 is $18,000. Though the cost of living has not gone up by more than about 50% during this time, their commissions (incomes) have gone up by 300%. This is not reasonable, and I believe their high commissions are actually fueling the inflation of property prices, as sellers have to get a whole lot more than they paid for the house a few years earlier, just to pay for the huge agents commission. Homeowners don't benefit from this inflation of property prices, as they have to spend an equal or greater amount more to buy the new house they are moving to, and end up paying much higher property taxes. If agents would recognize this problem, and work for 3% (1.5% for sellers agent, 1.5% for buyers agent), then I would use an agent. This is the case in other counties with a similar culture and standard of living to ours -- Australia for instance, where there are no separate buyers agents, and the total agents fee to sell a house is 3%.
What I hope to achieve, if I can succeed in selling this house myself, is to share the savings of not having an agent with the buyer. This means you could buy the house for about $9,000 cheaper than it otherwise would be, and I can net about $9,000 more than I otherwise would -- surely a win-win situation. And I have priced the house accordingly. An agent recently gave me a CMA (comparative market analyis) suggesting a price of $312,000 for this house, and was confident she could quickly sell the house for me for around this figure. My own research (through going to open houses, etc) suggests that for a quick sale an agent would be more likely to achieve $299,900. At the $289,000 I now have listed it at, you would save $10,900, and I would save around $7,000, over what it would have cost us if it was listed with an agent and sold for $299,900. You would also continue to save money year after year, as with a $11,000 lower recorded selling price, your property taxes would not go up as much after the sale as they otherwise would.
But what about the argument that it's "safer to have a buyer's agent in your corner?" On this point I can assure you that I will use the standard real estate contract to sell this house, that your earnest money check will be made out to an escrow company (Cascade Titile), you can get any inspections done you wish to, and that all the legalities of the sale will be handled by the escrow company in exactly the same way as they would be if the sale were through an agent. And if you are worried about the wording of a contract, or any other matters, you can hire a contract attorney to go over it with you for around $200 -- a lot cheaper than effectively paying an agent nearly $9,000 for the same service!
So, if you already have a buyers agent, how do you go about not using them for this sale? Simple. Just leave them out of the picture, and once you have decided to buy, let them know you have bought from a "sale by owner" and thank them for showing you the houses they did. If they are unable to show you the house you want to buy, then they have not earned their commission, and you are under no obligation to pay them anything. Most agents are perfectly understanding about this.
If you do come to look at this house with a buyers agent, bear in mind that if you do want to buy it, I will not be able to pay any of their commission, as I have already taken more than this amount off the price of the house. To buy it using an agent, the agent's commission would have to be added to the price of the house. For the usual 3% buyer's agent commission this would bring the price up $8,938 to $297,938. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to raise them with me.
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