Kyle Rohlfs - Realtor

Your house gets one week with the best shot it will ever have.

When you go live, every buyer watching your range sees it fresh. That is the biggest audience your house will ever get.

I would rather price you low and have five offers than have you sit for months and get one. Or none.

Because an offer is not a yes. Five of them means you are the one choosing.

Priced right you pick. Priced high you wait.

It costs the number you were hoping for. It buys you week one instead of week nine.

If you know someone about to list, send them this.

There is one question you can ask an agent that tells you almost everything.

Opening doors is showings, letting you into the house, sending you listings. You can find the listings yourself now.

The job starts the second you want the house. What goes in the offer, what stays out, what happens when the inspection turns up something real.

That is a conversation you are not in the room for.

So ask this. Walk me through the last time an appraisal came in low, and what you did.

It is awkward to ask someone you just met. Ask it anyway.

If you know someone about to pick an agent, send them this.

There is a difference between being ready to list and being ready to launch.

Ready to be listed means the paperwork is signed. Ready to launch means the house is actually in the condition you want people to see on day one.

The photos you go live with follow the listing around. They are what gets shared and saved and scrolled back to three weeks later.

Two weeks of inconvenience buys you the only first impression you get. You can change almost anything about a listing later. That is the one you cannot.

Ready to launch, or just ready to be listed?

Builders in North McKinney mostly went up, not out. Two stories gets you more square footage on the same lot, so that is what got built, and that is most of what you see when you shop this area.

Which is why a one story on a greenbelt lot is a smaller slice of the market than people expect.

2813 Black Walnut in Timber Creek is one of them. Highland Homes plan, built in 2020, one owner since. 2,079 square feet, three bedrooms, two and a half baths and a separate study, all on one level. $530,000. It backs to a treeline, so there is nobody behind it, and it faces north, which in a Texas September is not a small thing.

Straight talk on it. That works out to about $255 a foot, and 2,079 feet is not a lot of house. You are buying the single level and the lot here, not the square footage. If your list starts with how many feet you can get, this is not your house. If you are done with stairs, or you want a backyard that stays yours, it is worth walking.

Here is the part I would check on any greenbelt lot, so I checked it on this one. A dedicated greenbelt stays trees. An undeveloped parcel does not have to. The land behind this house is Lot N-1, Block N of Timber Creek Phase 6, about eleven and a half acres, platted as common area and owned by the Timber Creek homeowners association. It is not a builder's parcel waiting on a permit. That is the version of this you want.

Open house is this Saturday, September 5, 1 to 3. Come walk it.

Can't make Saturday? Comment TOUR and I will get you in another time.

Listed by Lindsay Reyes, , and Rosa Collins.

When your lender tells you what you are approved for, that number is not a budget. It is a ceiling. It is where they stop saying yes.

A ceiling is set by what a lender is willing to risk, not by what you are comfortable living on.

Out here a MUD or a PID can put the same priced house at a very different monthly payment. Two houses, same sticker, different life.

So shop for the payment, not the price. You can figure that number out in an afternoon, and nothing after that scares you.

What payment actually works for you?

You have a budget before you list, and two places to put it. Making it look
better, or fixing what you already know is broken.

Most of it should go to how it looks. Paint, carpet, fixtures, and getting your
stuff out, because that is the stuff that is in the pictures.

Repairs usually do not get you a higher number. Buyers see a sound roof as a
baseline, not a bonus. But anything you already know about goes on your
disclosure, and fixing it first is just the version where you are not fighting
about it later.

So it is not either or. Fix what you know, put the rest into cosmetics. How it
shows gets the offer, but the repairs keep it together.

Kyle Rohlfs, Realtor
Christie's International Real Estate

Comment NEWBUILD and I will send you the new construction guide.

New construction and resale are two different deals, and you push in completely different places.

With a builder, the price barely moves. It sets the comp for every house they still have to sell. Where they have room is rate buydowns, closing costs, and upgrades. Just read what is attached, because those usually run through their lender.

With a resale, the price itself is usually on the table. One seller, one timeline.

Neither one is a bad choice. They are different problems, and you get to pick which one you would rather solve.