A Get Happy at Home Listing in the Making: The Meridian Tower Condo (11th Floor)

When we started working with a condo listing on the 11th floor in the Meridian Tower, we had some helpful information to start with. The same listing on the 5th floor had just sold with Redfin. The 5th floor unit sold for $750,000 and included 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 2 parking spaces. It sold for 6% over asking—so, much better than the average.

This particular unit, being on the 5th floor, looked at a wall of another building, and it didn’t shine like new—there were a lot of improvements to the home that could have been made for the price point it was at. For example, the kitchen’s backsplash looks old and isn’t a great color, the lighting fixtures were outdated, and the carpet rested alongside tile, stopping the eye and making the space feel smaller in person and in listing photos.

Our unit on the 11th floor had the same issues, and we really needed to make the unit match its great building and amazing location. Located right in between Downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill, people will pay a lot to live in the area, and they want their home to match their lifestyle.

After taking into account the upgrades we needed to make, I decided we needed to spend $26,000 on getting everything up to snuff. Here’s a list of what we did:

• We painted every wall.
• We changed out all of the trim—the previous trim was beveled, and we changed out baseboard moulding and door moulding so it was square white with a modern finish.
• We gave the doorframes a more modern look.
• We upgraded the lighting.
• We changed the backsplash tile in the kitchen.
• We added bright wood floors with a flat, matted finish and open grain. (Shiny wood floors are out right now!) With flooring that flows from room to room, when you look toward the kitchen, your eyes flow instead of stopping at the tile that was there before. It feels bigger and looks better on camera, too. Plus, all of the furniture and decor you add on top of it really “pops”!
• At first we were going to leave the carpets in the bedrooms, but we ended up deciding to extend the main living area’s flooring into the bedrooms as well.
• We updated the bathroom (we gave the bath a new marble look and added new flooring, so the dark floor contrasts with everything and still looked good with the cabinets).
• We matched the backsplash to the cabinets and counter.
• Added cabinet lighting—now the kitchen really glows.
• We always get rid of anything covering windows, because we really want to open up each space.

Did we bring the listing to 2017? Not quite—but we did bring it to 2012 or 2013, which was new enough to attract the buyers we really wanted. We did a lot to work with what was already there, but updated it enough to make it look fresh.

We we listed the condo, we didn’t underprice it—we priced it at what the comparable listing on the 5th floor suggested (although of course with ours on the 11th floor, it had a better view). We listed it for $775,000 and sold it for $885,564. Our listing sold for $180,000 MORE than the 5th floor unit, even though everything else was the same.

A comparable unit on the 15th floor sold for $775,000—5 floors HIGHER than our 11th floor listing. (It only has 1 parking spot, but was the same otherwise). In the end, our 11th floor listing sold for 80k more than it should have.

Have you been thinking about listing your home in the Seattle area? We’re happy to chat—get in touch via the form below!