Seattle Homeowner Sets Out
To Tackle the Housing Market

Editor's Note: This is the first installment of "Hitting the Market," a feature by columnist Jane Hodges that details her attempt to sell her Seattle home.

It's June, a brisk month for real-estate sales in Seattle, and my house is hitting the market. One word: Stressful. This is my first house -- and my first home sale -- and if the timing and price don't go as planned, I may be left with double mortgage payments. That's because my boyfriend, Dave, and I have already purchased "our" new place on the assumption that my home, a 1918 Craftstman cottage I bought in February 2004 for $230,000, will quickly fetch its $375,000 asking price.

Our plan was to put my place on the market, move into a friend's basement for six to eight weeks during showings (a must since I work from home), and not put an offer on a new home until one on my house came along.

That strategy fell through last month when we found a 1960's aesthetic fixer-upper in West Seattle's North Admiral district. We decided to make an offer in mid-May, before the post-Memorial Day shopping frenzy started. We reasoned that buying now and paying a month or two of double mortgage payments would cost less than paying full price for a home in the summer. (Our logic has held: We got our new house for $16,000 under its $558,000 asking price, which was a reduction from the original $589,000 asking price. We will still stay with my friend until my house sells, but we can move into our new place more leisurely.

In recent weeks, my cottage has undergone a big transformation -- I've poured approximately $19,200 into upgrades and fixes to ready it for market. I spent much more than the $10,000 I planned to invest, but I'm hoping to recoup it.

Rather, I'm fairly confident I will.

Although my house is a starter home and has been sold every three or four years for more than a decade, I took the plunge and financed some long-needed (i.e., expensive) repairs. Some were necessary, while others (new windows) became evident after consulting with my stager, Lynne Nierman of Catalyst Interior Design of Bellevue, Wash.

Some of the work has been cosmetic -- exterior shingle repair, wood-trim fixes and skim-coating mottled ceiling surfaces. Some of the fixes have revealed positive attributes: There's copper plumbing behind my two tub surrounds!

A fair amount of the work won’t be visible on a tour: Will a new buyer know that I gave the home substantial new insulation within its walls and in its new windows, or that the Restoration Hardware-style upstairs bathroom replaced a 1980s eyesore and that I undid a lot of bad do-it-yourself work by previous owners?

The $19,200 in upgrades is in addition to the roughly $21,000 I've already spent in home improvements. Earlier, I hired contractors to put in a new roof and gutters ($8,000), install six new windows ($4,000), upgrade and move the electrical service panel ($3,500, including city permits), refinish an enclosed front porch ($2,000, including demolition, insulation, new drywall, painting and floor tile), install a built-in bookshelf to divide the basement den from the utility room ($400), and complete small tasks such as deck staining ($200) and removing an unsightly chain link fence. I chipped in $2,900 to share the cost of a new wooden fence between my lot and my neighbor's.

I'm financing the work with a home-equity loan, "zero down, no interest for 12 months" Home Depot financing, and, of course, extra free-lance writing. Dave offered to loan me money for the home improvements, but that didn't solve the problem of repaying him, despite literally sweetheart terms. We considered doing some of the improvements ourselves -- as we did with his house when he sold it in 2006 -- but I figure I can earn more doing what I do for a living and hiring others for the home fixes.

How I pay Dave back or my home-equity loan (approved earlier this year for a scary $40,000 limit bump, to a $60,000 ceiling I hope not to approach) ultimately hinges on what I get for the house. Since Dave is putting the roughly $130,000 down on our new place, I'll need to repay him my half of the down payment after the sale of my house. By my math, I'll fetch $83,500 if I get my $375,000 asking price. This estimate is based on a full-price offer, subtracting about 10% for agent commissions and closing and excise taxes ($37,500), my estimated total home repair debt (approximately $40,000), and payoff of the mortgage I still owe ($214,000).

Based on what's for sale in my neighborhood -- fixers in the low $300,000s to mid-$300,000s and new town houses packed like sardines into rezoned lots on a busy street, all in the slowly-gentrifying but close-to-downtown Delridge area within West Seattle -- I have a decent chance of making my expected profit. When homes in good shape come on the market here, they sell quickly, and that's what we're anticipating with my house. But what if I don't get that profit? Well, that's another story.

Check back tomorrow for the second installment.

Ms. Hodges is a a free-lance writer in Seattle.

Email your comments to rjeditor@dowjones.com.