#realestate #homesellertips #realestatetips
Intro: It’s always fun to see what people write about tips for selling your home. Especially in this crazy market…there are things that we’ve done a certain way for so long…but aggressive buyer pressure is changing how things go
1. Price your home accurately. Yes, this is important, and I agree with this. I recently lost a listing. Here’s why. The house was likely to bring about 420 to 430k IF everything went right. The seller wanted to come to market at $450,000. At this price, the chances of finding just that one perfect buyer was slim….The seller felt like I was less than enthusiastic about the listing price and we parted ways.
My philosophy: Price your home where you think it would sell. Don’t overthink it. If you do price your home too low, you will be leaving money on the table, but, especially in this market, if you come to the market too high, buyers sense you are being greedy and they will penalize you. The more days the house stays on the market, the less the selling price will be.
2. Home Staging Boosts Selling Power and Appeal I agree. However, put it in some context. If your home and furnishings are gorgeous, just clean up and organize a little. In this market, you will be fine. This is a very delicate issue. When I go to houses that haven’t had any improvements done in 20 or 30 years, we might just be better off with no furniture or staging at all. Think of it like this. Let’s say your house should sell for 300,000 without staging. Staging will cost about $5,000. You aren’t likely to get anything more than $300,000 even with the staging, so proceed without it. This is definitely a judgement call. Would be good if you trusted your real estate agent on that one.
3. The Best Day To List Your Home …This is an interesting tip. In St. Louis, the typically hot time for buying and selling is between about the 1st week of April until about the end of July. Knowledgeable sellers will usually try to time the market this way. In the other months, usually buyers don’t come out as much. However, this current selling season is still very strong. Another consideration is holidays. Labor day weekend is coming up this weekend, and I have a listing that we will not make active until after the holiday. Over the years, I’ve found that agents don’t like to work holidays and buyers tend to not want to go look at houses, which I believe gives you less of a chance to get a good sale price. Even weekends that rain or snow can affect traffic, which affects the probabilities of a great sale.
4. Ask about your agent’s standard real estate commission I thought this an interesting tip as well. For some, this might be a bias question in favor of a real estate agent…but as an agent, I think it’s a great point. Think about what your agent is providing for listing your house. Ask to look at their marketing package…many times, I am competing with an agent who is going to do far less to get your house sold, but you have no idea because you are price conscious. There isn’t anything wrong with that, as long as you have some knowledge about what agents actually do. An interesting quote from the article.
“Do not try to pit agents against each other to compete for commission or you’ll increase the chances you’ll end up with a weasel. You don’t deserve a weasel.”
Oddly enough, I use a different phrase…”people who are looking for something usually get what they deserve.”
Go find the cheapest agent in town and good luck with that. Don’t go on message boards afterward and complain about what happened.
5. Be Flexible with Home Showings This is so important. I agree 100% Look at it from the perspective of a buyer’s agent. I may have to schedule 5 or 10 properties to show in a day. If you refuse to let me show the house, I’ll just move on. When my buyer’s ask why we didn’t see a house, they usually say, drop it off the list. Why? Because they are also spending their time looking at houses when they could be doing something else….they want to work on their schedule.
6. Host an Open House I would answer this with “it depends”.
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Source: https://www.thebalance.com/mega-tips-…
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