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How To Sell Your Home The FIRST Time It’s Listed…
By Tisza Major-Posner | September 10, 2007
Hi All,
Deciding to sell your home is not something you arrive at lightly. Under the best of circumstances it can be a stressful thing. Under the worst, it can be one of the most difficult business deals you will ever be involved with. One thing that can help to take things from bad to worse is having your listing contract expire before your home sells. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s how to sell your home the first time it’s listed…
Choose a Realtor that knows your territory. An out of area agent may not know your market, your city’s rules about signage or open houses. When I see a home listed by an agent that does not base their business here in Claremont I already know that this seller has one strike against them. Add in the fact that the agent may not be a member of a board which shares it’s listings with my local board and that means unless I drive past the home, I may not even know the home is for sale.
And an agent that lives and usually works in Los Angeles, Burbank, Temecula, Fontana or Corona probably can’t or won’t be able to stop by your home frequently enough to make sure you still have plenty of flyer’s; to see that the signage is still in place and looking good; and most importantly, if a buyer calls and wants to see your home right away, your agent needs to be able to show it to them right away.
Don’t overprice your home. Every day your home spends on the market is a dollar potentially lost. Just like merchandise in a department store, the longer it is on the shelf, the closer it gets to the clearance section. The clearance section means clearance pricing. The same thing holds true for homes. An overpriced home will sit on the market and the more overpriced it is, the longer it will sit.
As a Realtor I work on commission only, so, if I had my way, every listing that I took would sell for millions of dollars no matter what the market was doing. But the market is the market, I don’t control it, but I know how to read and understand it and how to share what it is saying with you. The more competative your pricing is the faster your home will sell and that is what we both want.
Remember that selling a home is a business transaction and treat it that way. Yes, you love your home, but when you decide to sell it you need to think of it not as your personal property, but as an investment you happen to live in.
When I suggest decor changes they are not based on what I personally like or don’t like, but on what I know it takes to show off your home to it’s best advantage to help it sell quickly. Cluttered homes, unusual or extreme color palettes, homes that smell like cigars, cigarettes or animals and homes that appear to be in disrepair tend to take longer to sell unless they are dirt cheap. Once again I want to remind you that the longer a home sits, the cheaper it gets, and that doesn’t help you or me.
Make your home easy to show. Even with the best virtual tour, like the one’s that I produce for my client’s (and for the client’s of some of the top agents in my office) serious buyer’s will want to see your home in real life. Making it difficult to show your home by insisting on appointment only showings and/or not allowing agents quick, easy access with a Suprakey will make it much harder for your home to be seen and what they can’t see, they won’t buy.
Oh and insist on a Suprakey (an electronic lockbox) and not just a combination key lockbox when your home is listed. I can’t tell you how frusterating it is when I have a buyer that wants to see a home and I can’t show it to them because the key is in a combo lockbox, I can’t get a hold of the agent with the listing, and no one in their office has the combo.
But even more importantly, a home that is listed whose keys are only in an old fashioned combination lockbox may not be covered by homeowner’s insurance for any theft. And a combo box can’t tell you who came to show your home, when they came or if they have come before. A Suprakey can and will. By knowing which agents have shown your home and how often they have done that, I can follow up with them faster to see what it might take to turn a showing into an offer.
Seriously consider every offer you receive. Even a lower offer could be your best offer especially if the buyer very well qualified and has proof of funds to close. And, remember that a low offer is just that, an offer, not an insult. You can always counter, but if the offer is fair, reasonable and supportable by the current market conditions, even if it is less than you hoped for, seriously consider it.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard about folks who refused their first offer without even considering it only to find that when they finally did get another offer, especially if the home was on the market for quite awhile, it was not as good as the one they turned down.
Finally, choose the right Realtor for the job. A dedicated professional who does their homework before they even meet with you, understands the market and does Real Estate sales as their profession and not just as a sideline and who also understands where and how today’s buyer shops for their home should be the least you look for. Or you could just give me a call, and make things easy 
Take care,
Topics: Claremont Real Estate, Seller Must Read's |
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September 10th, 2007 at 1:02 am
I just published an article about Long Beach real estate market. It described the smallest house on sale recently. You may find the article at:
http://longbeachproperty.blogspot.com/
John
www.movoto.com
September 28th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Tiza, you give excellent advice for all sellers in any market.
January 15th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Tisza:
Here is another tip that is very successful in my market.
Call your lenders and ask if they have programs to assist in the sale of the home.
I’m not marketing you but you should call me on this one.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 am
“But even more importantly, a home that is listed whose keys are only in an old fashioned combination lockbox may not be covered by homeowner’s insurance for any theft.”
Tisza - I’m the director of member services for the Ann Arbor Area Board of Realtors and one of my staff pulled the above information from your blog to use in trying to get our members using the iBox more. Now I have been seriouisly questioned about that statement and was wondering if you had any further resources to help me back it up with. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance - Michael