United States – MANY buyers today — unsure whether prices have gone as low as they will go — aren’t looking for just a good deal. They’re looking for a steal.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times The seller of a two-bedroom on East 14th Street says extensive renovations are what sold it. The asking price was $1.275 million.

For sellers, that means that to create even the slightest frisson to lure in buyers, they must either price their homes at distressingly low prices or present a property that is in turnkey condition.

Even if real estate values have started to level off, most buyers are still intent on paying rock-bottom prices. And once they have bought a place for a song, they are in no mood to spend a penny on remodeling. They want to do nothing more than unpack a toothbrush and move right in.

This means, of course, that any apartment with a 1980s renovation or more than slightly worn countertops is destined for intense scrutiny and many weeks on the market.

Some sellers are making the bold move of renovating their homes to sell them. Brokers say that this strategy can help keep the price out of the basement, and more important, help the home sell much more quickly.

When Renée Fishman, an agent with Halstead Property, first laid eyes on Rik Morris’s two-bedroom apartment at 7 East 14th Street, the rooms were cluttered, the bathrooms were dated and the kitchen was “unsightly, to say the least — it was a little scary.”

Mr. Morris inherited the place last year from an aunt who had lived there for nearly 20 years and used the kitchen so rarely that she had the gas turned off ages ago. Ms. Fishman warned Mr. Morris that “no one in this market wants an apartment that has great potential, but is in original condition, because nobody wants to do the work.”

Mr. Morris, a private investor who lives with his partner, Jim Kelleher, in Philadelphia, resolved to fix up the place. “Otherwise, we didn’t think we would ever get what I considered a reasonable offer,” he said. “But I also wanted to make it so that if we didn’t sell it, we would want to move into it ourselves.”

Six months and $147,000 later, they put the apartment on the market for $1.275 million. It had an expanded kitchen, new bathrooms, a new office area, a 42-inch plasma television, new doorways, refinished floors and freshly painted walls.

The men outfitted the place with contemporary furniture and used it briefly as a pied-à-terre. Three weeks after it went on the market, it sold, going into contract close to the asking price, TV included, in late July.

“I wanted people to walk in and feel like they were walking into my home, not a unit that had just been painted and polished,” Mr. Morris said. “I’m not surprised at how quickly it sold, because we weren’t selling a fixer-upper — we were selling a finished product.”

Ms. Fishman said that in its original condition, Mr. Morris would have been lucky to get $900,000, so she is sure that he recouped his investment.

“Buyers loved what they did to the place,” she said. “There’s no question it made it 100 percent easier to sell.”

A search of listings in recent weeks produced several sellers who went well beyond clearing out clutter, deciding to pour thousands of dollars into renovating their homes before putting out a for-sale sign. The improvements ranged from refacing cabinets and installing new appliances to gut renovations of kitchens and bathrooms.

Some of the owners suspect they may lose money when they finally sell, but they are united in the conviction that the wait will be shorter than it would have been without the renovations.

Carroll Gardens Two-Bedroom

Meagan and Eric Newhart knew they would have to redo the kitchen before putting their two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn on the market. The cabinets were dated, and they were using a pair of pliers to turn on the dishwasher.

Their agent, Heather McMaster, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, initially wasn’t so sure. “Why do a renovation when somebody might not like it?” she said. “But they’re buyers themselves, and they felt it would move more quickly if it was priced well and didn’t need anything.”

The couple are interested in a house in Westchester County.

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By VIVIAN S. TOY

Source: The New York Times – United States