How This Eugene Home Sold $40K Over Asking in Two Days

By Darren Ricketts

Darren Ricketts is the Team Leader of the Ricketts Group at eXp Realty, serving clients throughout Eugene, Oregon, and the surrounding areas.

When I was young, I played a lot of baseball, and my coaches always said the same thing when you step up to bat: don’t swing for the fences. Here’s why. If you swing for the fences, one of a few things happens. You strike out, you fly out, or every once in a great while, you connect and send it over. But if you’re just swinging for good contact, you’re far more likely to get on base. I’ll take solid contact every time over swinging for the fences, and it turns out real estate works exactly the same way.

When I sit down with a seller to talk about pricing their home, this is the first thing I tell them. Don’t swing for the fences on your list price. Sure, maybe once in a while you set an aggressive price and a buyer connects and sends it out of the park. But far more often, that swing-for-the-fences price lands above market value, and your house sits. Then you’re stuck striking out, or dropping the price so much lower than if you’d just started at the right number in the first place. Make good contact with the market, price it realistically, and you put yourself in the best position to win.

Let me show you what that looks like in practice, with a house I listed just a couple of days ago. We went on the market Thursday. We had multiple showings Thursday and Friday, an open house scheduled for Saturday, and we ended up with two fantastic offers. We accepted one for $40,000 over list price, after just two days on the market. That didn’t happen by accident, and it didn’t happen by swinging for the fences on price. It happened because of five specific things we did to prep the listing.

First, a pre-listing inspection. Disclose everything you know about the house up front. Selling for top dollar is great, but if there are unknown risks waiting for the buyer, that sale price can drop fast once repairs come into play. Handle those things before a buyer ever walks in, and you protect your number.

Second, staging. Every study out there shows you net more as a seller when the home is staged properly, whether it’s vacant or you’re still living in it. If you’re living in it, we prep the listing so it looks like nobody does. Invest a little into staging, and it makes a real difference in what you walk away with.

Third, fresh paint. Always. I’ve never once had a buyer walk into a freshly painted home with nice, neutral colors and say they don’t like it. It doesn’t happen. Spending a little to freshen up the paint and get the house clean is vitally important to netting the most money.

Fourth, presentation. Professional photos, a video walkthrough, and a floor plan are critical, because everybody and their dog is looking at your home online first. The whole goal is to move them from looking online to seeing it in person, and that only happens when your online presentation is on point. Professional pictures of a well-staged home, a video walkthrough, and a floor plan are what earn that next step, the showing, which is what earns the offer.

Fifth, curb appeal. Some basic landscaping goes a long way. We want buyers to pull up, look at the property, and start imagining what they’d do with it, not see an enormous project. Whether that’s a really nice garden and a water feature or just clean, basic landscaping so nothing feels overwhelming, that first impression from the curb matters.

Do those five things, price it realistically, and just try to make good contact with the market. That’s how you sell your home successfully. If you want to talk through the details for your own home, reach out. I love talking about this stuff, and in case you can’t tell, it’s what I do all day, every day.

Call or text me at 541-852-2565, email me at darren@rickettsgroup.net, or visit blog.rickettsgroup.net. A full-time professional in your corner is exactly what you need to net top dollar for your house.