The Sale
Name: Brett and Kelli Munkel. Brett, 33, works for Standard Parking. Kelli, 32, works for DeKalb Office.
The home: A three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home built in 1991 with a basement.
Where: Woodstock’s Wellington Manor neighborhood
Why they sold: “An opportunity came up to move into basically the house that we wanted to end up in, in a school district that we wanted to end up in. The stars aligned,” Brett said. “We weren’t looking to move as quickly as we ended up doing it.” The couple, who have two sons, 1-year-old Wyatt and 2½-year-old Braxton, learned about the four-bedroom, two-bath home with a basement in Alpharetta before it came on the market. It had nearly 1,000 more square feet than the home they sold. “It is a house that we can live in for the next 30 years,” Brett said.
Time on market: 7 days
Original price: $159,000
Sale price: $147,000
What it took: An open house, and being smart about pricing. At first, Brett was adamant against using an agent. “It was just the numbers thing. I knew we were going to lose money, and we were going to lose that much more if we used an agent. That was the thinking at the outset,” he said. But they changed their mind when Laura Dew with Keller Williams First Atlanta was recommended as someone who could quickly sell their home. “She came in with a lot of numbers just showing the rationale behind appropriately pricing your house from the get go,” Brett said. She told them that ultimately they would end up selling their house faster and for more money if they were willing to start a little lower than they had intended (their original thought was to ask $175,000). They also invested about $3,000 to landscape the yard, which included installing new sod themselves over several weekends.
The home went on the market on a Thursday, followed by an open house on Sunday, which Brett questioned because it seemed like it wouldn’t attract serious buyers. “We weren’t too thrilled about it. But at that point, Laura had impressed us so much that we were like, we’re going to do whatever she tells us,” he said. A couple driving in the neighborhood to look at another house saw theirs during the open house and made an offer.
Potential stumbling block: After they agreed on a $156,000 purchase price, the appraisal came back at $147,000. “It was already hard to swallow. We just had to accept the situation,” Brett said.
Seller’s hint: Keep the home spotless. For the brief period the home was on the market, after putting her kids in the car to leave, Kelli would run back through the house and throw stray items into a basket, which went into the car. “The day you put it in the market, it’s not your house anymore. It doesn’t belong to you. You have to treat it as a rental property and barebone it,” she said.
