There’s a Reason Your House Didn’t Sell
Are you fighting mad and ready to do something about it?
If your home has just come off the market and hasn’t sold, don’t be discouraged. The reason it didn’t sell may have nothing to do with your home or the market. In reality, your home may have been one of the more desirable properties for sale. If your listing has expired and you still want results, before you put your home back on the market, take a step back and review your situation.
Four important tips that will get your house SOLD:
- Teamwork – Your home is a major financial investment, and your relationship with your agent should be a full partnership where your needs and wishes are heard, and you receive detailed and dependable feedback on the progress of your sale. Your agent has a responsibility to source this feedback from the agents who have shown your home, and to communicate this to you so together you can make the right decisions about what to do next. How well did this occur the last time you had your home up for sale?
- Pricing – Did price work for or against you? The “right” price depends on market conditions, competition and the condition of your home. Pricing it too high is as dangerous as pricing it too low. If your home doesn’t compare favorably with others in the price range you’ve set, you won’t be taken seriously by prospects or agents. To help you to establish a realistic selling price for your home, ask your agent to provide you with an up-to-date competitive market analysis to give you: a review of comparable homes recently sold or currently for sale; an idea of how long other homes have been listed in order to calculate an average time in which a home can sell in today’s market; and a review of homes whose listings have expired to understand what issues were at play.
- Condition of Your Home – Is your house someone else’s idea of a dream home? When buyers enter are they inspired? Do they think, “I love this house!” Remember, the decision to buy a home is based on emotion, not logic. A house in move-in condition invites a sale.
You need to consider:- fixing all the little squeaks and cracks
- keeping it clean for all showings
- making it uncluttered
- brightening it up
- how your home looks from the street, concentrating on outside curb appeal
- Marketing – One of the first steps in your marketing plan involves finding an agent who will best represent you. When interviewing agents, test and compare their knowledge and ask each to demonstrate how they will market your home to buyers. Compare, too, how much money each spends on advertising the homes they list, in what media (internet, social media, etc.), and the effectiveness of one medium over the other. Remember, it’s not just how much they spend, but how they spend it. Say goodbye to any real estate agents using old, traditional methods to sell your home, because they don’t work in today’s market! To be competitive in today’s marketplace, agents who use new and innovative, non-traditional marketing approaches are the ones who are getting more homes sold fast and for top dollar.