The Good Enough House

The Good Enough House - Perfection Isn't Possible, So Compromise Is Key

By Dan Rafter
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, February 17, 2007; F01

Jeff Wynne looked at more than 30 houses before he finally purchased his Colonial in Chevy Chase.

And even that one had not been an instant hit. Wynne toured the house at least five times -- with so many houses, his memory is a bit fuzzy -- before making an offer in late 2004.

Why so much debate? Two factors about his new home bothered him so much that he was almost willing to forgo all the positives, which included a great neighborhood, dream kitchen, 10-foot ceilings, stellar floor plan and loads of amenities. The problems? The house had no garage and barely any back yard.

Few people are fortunate enough to find their ideal home, that one residence that has everything they want and nothing they don't.

More often, buyers find a house that is perfect in many ways. It may sit in an ideal neighborhood, be close to good schools and boast the right number of rooms. But there might be an in-ground swimming pool in the back yard and the buyers don't swim and don't want the hassles of maintenance. Maybe there's a huge wet bar in the basement and the buyers haven't had a drink in years. Maybe there's a mother-in-law suite that serves no purpose.

In such cases, buyers face a decision: Do they purchase the house anyway and ignore the items they don't like, remove them or find another use for them? Or do they continue their search?
The answer depends on whether buyers are willing to overlook one negative for all the positives. And it's what Wynne had to ask himself: Did the good things about the house outweigh the two problems?

He struggled to picture his three children squeezing all their outdoor fun into the sliver of a yard. He struggled, too, to imagine himself happily scraping ice off a car parked in a driveway instead of tucked inside a garage.

But after seeing so many houses, Wynne realized one thing: No place is perfect. This house, despite its problems, was a far better value than any of the others he had toured.

So Wynne decided to live with a small back yard and no garage.

"I'm very happy here," he said. "It's a great place for my kids to be, too. The neighborhood is wonderful. Yes, I had to sacrifice something I thought I wanted. But, as it turns out, that hasn't been too much of a sacrifice at all." After all, winters here aren't all that long, and modern kids spend more time in supervised activities than they do running around the back yard.

Other buyers, though, might have passed on the house. The key, agents say, is for buyers to understand which negatives they can live with and which they cannot.

"There is almost always something about the house that isn't 100 percent what you want," said Melinda Estridge, a real estate agent with the Bethesda office of Long & Foster. "When you're dealing with couples, very few times will both buyers absolutely love it. There is always something they'll have to give on, one way or the other. For some, it's storage space. Others, it's the kitchen. To please everyone, there are always going to be compromises."

Sellers can make the process easier by providing potential buyers with the information they need to make an informed decision. If a buyer loves a house but hates its in-ground pool, the seller may provide the buyers with the names of contractors who fill in unwanted pools.

The buyer then has an idea of what such a project would cost and can plan to fill in the pool after buying the residence, request that the sellers handle it before the sale or simply pass on the home and continue searching.

Buyers may also conclude that a home is a bargain even with problems. "They might decide that the home is a good enough value that they'd be willing to overlook or work to change those features they don't really like," said Ethel Mayer, a real estate agent with the Bethesda Gateway office of Long & Foster.

There are certain features of a house that can't ever be changed. These are mostly location issues: A house sits on a busy street. Railroad tracks run past the back yard. But many other features can be changed easily. That bar in the basement can disappear with a call or two to a contractor, for instance.

If a house offers enough positive features and is priced reasonably, buyers rarely allow a curable defect to prevent them from making an offer, said Reid Butterfield, a real estate agent with the Bethesda office of Re/Max Realty Services.

But negatives can make a difference when buyers are debating between two similar homes. Here's an example from Butterfield: Buyers find a house they like in all ways except for one. They want a master bedroom on the main level, and all the bedrooms are on the second floor.
Say these buyers then find a house that does have a bedroom on the first floor. The home's other amenities, its kitchen, bathrooms and finishes, aren't quite as nice as those of the first house. But because of the ground-floor bedroom, the buyers decide to sink their money into this residence instead of the other.

"Most of the people buying houses in this area, especially, are a pretty savvy bunch," Butterfield said. "They know what they want when they see it. There are certain features that they won't like, and will influence them to look elsewhere."

One such feature may be a pool. There are a lot of buyers who have absolutely no desire to deal with one.

"I've found that it's much better to have a friend or neighbor with a pool than to have one yourself, especially when you're selling your house," Butterfield said. "There are people who won't even look at a house with a pool."

Charlotte Peyton has been dealing with this issue for a few weeks.

Peyton put her home in McLean on the market early this month. She's confident that the house has enough strengths, and is priced well enough, to attract interest. However, it does have a pool, and that may be a problem.

The pool, which drops to six feet deep, was there when Peyton bought the house a little more than three years ago. At the time she didn't want it, but she, her husband and her children have since learned to love it. Maintenance hasn't been much of a burden, she said.

But she is aware that many buyers have no interest in a pool. She has obtained an estimate for how much it would cost to fill in -- about $6,500 -- and is now debating whether she should simply pay to fill it in herself or provide the estimate during showings so that would-be buyers can have the information.

"I don't want people to think it will cost $40,000 to fill it in," Peyton said. "If they find out it's under $10,000, maybe they'll be more willing to deal with it. Or maybe we'll just find a buyer who really does want a pool. You never know. It'd be a shame to fill in the pool. It's really a nice pool."

Harry Brubaker, a real estate agent with ZipRealty in McLean, recently worked with a couple who toured several houses around the region. They finally found a house in Arlington that they liked -- mostly.

The home was in a nice neighborhood, was close to good schools, had nice features and was near both of the buyers' jobs.

There was only one problem: an extensive mother-in-law suite with a separate kitchen and its own entrance. The buyers had no interest in a separate suite and could think of it only as wasted space.

After much thought, the couple decided to buy the house -- its upside outweighed its one negative. Instead they will renovate to turn the mother-in-law suite into a play area and recreation room for themselves and their children.

In many cases, Brubaker said, buyers will overcome an objection if the rest of the house works. Inevitably, he said, people are creative enough to envision the home without the objectionable feature.

"We basically looked at the pros and cons of all the houses we had seen that day," Brubaker said of his clients. "They decided that the mother-in-law suite was something they could overlook for the time being. They could work with it in the future, they decided. And, not more than a couple of months after they bought the house, that's exactly what they decided to do."