Case Study - Downsizing

“Chris quickly looked over our situation with experience and penetrating intelligence and gave us definitive advice. He brought in the right people to help us with everything. It’s difficult for an old person to downsize, but Chris made it easy.”

 

Deciding to move from a long-term home and downsize one’s possessions can be an overwhelming process. Not only are there decades of belongings to deal with, but often there’s also work to be done on the home to get it ready to sell. Making all these decisions and finding the right people to do the work can be daunting. Luckily for Ed Feigenbaum and Peni Nii, Chris Iverson managed everything for them. He got their house on the market quickly, with as little stress as possible, and sold it for an astonishingly good price.

 

 

When Ed and Peni decided to sell their home of 40 years on the Stanford campus, they knew they would need a lot of help. They began talking to Real Estate Agent two years ago, asking for advice about an outbuilding on their property. They consulted with three local real estate agents, and Chris Iverson immediately stood out from the rest.

 

“Chris quickly looked over our situation with experience and penetrating intelligence and gave us definitive advice,” said Ed. “Chris’ suggestions were way better than any other Real Estate Agent. He was very businesslike and he could an- swer all our questions about our circumstances, like how do we downsize and how do we go about the process
of selling. Every step of the way, he gave us very good, rational advice.”

 

Chris continued to advise them until the time was right to make a move. “The most important thing for me was that he was very patient,” said Peni. “He wasn’t pushing us to sell the house. He gave me time to deal with it.”

 

One of the biggest issues of getting ready to sell was what to do with their lifetime of belongings. “We had been living here for 40 years and we had a lot of stuff. There were a lot of memories to process,” said Peni.

 

Chris brought in a company that specializes in helping seniors manage their moves. They were able to guide Ed and Peni through the process of deciding what to keep, and what to give to their kids, donate, sell, or throw away. “They gave us a lot of options and they had people who were knowledgeable about everything,” said Peni. “They had people who knew about auction houses, consignment, tax deductions, and all the different places to donate things.”

 

“All we had to do was make decisions. They took care of all of the execution and it happened immediately,” said Ed. “That was great because making the decisions takes a long time and the execution is painful and dull.”

 

 

In addition to deciding what to do with the belongings in the house, there was also all the typical pre-sale preparation of making repairs, painting, landscaping and staging, Chris managed it all, while respecting the owers' timeframe and getting it on the market in time for the spring selling season.

 

"I worked the prep and sales, process around them, as opposed to them working around the process,” said Chris. “In January I started laying out calendars and timelines of what needed to happen to get the house on the market by spring.” When the time was right, Chris managed to get all the prep and staging work done in two weeks and put the house on the market the next week.

 

After their children moved out, Ed and Peni made some changes to the home to better fit their empty-nester lifestyle. They had converted the living room into Ed’s home office, removed the dining room, and made two upstairs bedrooms into one big office for Peni. While that floor plan was perfect for them, it would likely not appeal to people Chris had identified as potential buyers.

 

Chris tackled this with creative staging, arranging Peni’s office into two separate rooms and focusing on an open family room with eat-in kitchen dining. He also was prepared to explain how the home could easily be converted back to its original floor plan.

 

Looking at the most current comparable proper- ties sold and on the market, Chris set a price of $1,998,000.

 

 

Once the house went on the market, things moved very quickly. Chris held a brokers’ tour and weekend open houses, and he accepted offers the following Wednesday. There were four offers and the house sold for $2,223,000, with no contingencies and a free two-month rent-back. “The house sold for over $1,000 a square foot, which is a big number for a house on the Stanford campus,” said Chris.

 

Ed and Peni were thrilled with the results. “I loved working with Chris,” said Peni. “He was always cheerful. He was available any time and he was helpful with even the most minute details. He was wonder- ful and I would highly recommend him.”

 

“Chris has experience moving people our age,” said Ed. “He was calm, cool and straightforward and he had answers that made sense. A word comes to mind when I think about Chris. That word is ‘classy.’ Chris is a classy person.”