The story of 2104 Windslowe Farm - CLOSED in Zebulon, NC

WHERE IT ALL STARTED: The heart of this story goes back to my past client Mike who I had helped buy a home and sell in Clayton. He called me in October to say his parents had both had a health crisis and would no longer be able to come back to their home in Zebulon to live.  This is so sad...and truly one of the hardest aspects of my job. Coming in at a stressful, scary and overwhelming time and having multiple clients so to speak - his parents were my clients but they weren't capable of making all the decisions and go through the process but they aboslutely needed to sell their home for as much as possible to help offset their future housing and medical costs. 

The basics: On almost 2 acres, backed up to a pond, brick 3 bedroom ranch with 3 car attached garage with a detached garage/workshop. It's a rare home, but since there had been zero planning to sell it  up until that point, the house had a long way to go to be ready for the market.

 The market was slower in the fall due to interest rates and we knew that we needed to do some updates to have the most market appeal and let the beauty of the property, backing up to a pond, shine through. In addition there were rough spots on the ceiling that needed to be repaired and since they were popcorn ceiling, it was also advisable to scrape the ceilings. 

Do you know how messy scraped ceilings are??? Especially and entire house?

We developed a plan: Get an estate sale going and empty the house, scrape ceilings, remove all wallpaper and paint all the walls a nice neutral, paint the kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets as well as remove the odd overhead double lights and the stylistic medicine cabinets. This was a LOT to take care of and we had a goal date in December to tackle all of it. 

I called several estate companies and nobody was willing to take on the project in that location as they didn't believe it would be profitable enough for them. That meant Mike and Missy had to empty the majority of the house themselves. It was a HUGE endeavor for them. We didn't quite have it empty before the work was set to begun and Sal and his team moved what was left in each room to the middle and covered it with plastic. 

I'll say it again, do you know how messy scraping ceilings is?!

Two weeks later the ceilings were done, all walls scraped and painted, kitchen and bathrooms cabinets done and we needed it to get cleaned so the sellers could walk through. They had come one of the days the house looked like a dust bomb had exploded and I was eager for them to feel like we had done the home justice. I spend two days the week before Christmas cleaning, moving items back out from the middle of the room and cleaning the dust that had made it's way into the tent bubble. 

The final push came at the first of the year included staging and photography. We had a powerwasher scheduled who had to reschedule and that caused a delay for photos. It did give me an opportunity to move the rest of the small yard items from the front that would be distracting -- which led to an epic spider bite that got a slight infection. Never a dull day. 

The final result of the virtual staging and photos came out great and you could really see the property in it's best light which was the whole intent of the updates. 

We had a ton of showings the first weekend and several interested folks at the open house.  Since the pond was back there we also had several questions regarding fishing, water levels (it remained constant) and types of fish in the pond. This might have been one of my listing that had the MOST amount of follow up about fish :). Luckily the preparations and marketing worked and we and were able to get a buyer who fell in love that first weekend. 

We closed at full price without significant incident and the sellers and buyers worked amicably regarding some of the items left in the garage etc.  After a challenging preparations, it was the perfect ending to help the family begin their next chapter for their parents safetly and security.

CHECK OUT THE FULL CLOSED LISTING