How to Have a Successful Home Sale
While I am a licensed real estate agent this post will help the For Sale by Owner understand the elements that need to comegether for a succesful home sale. Any home can sell in any market, if you line up what I call the 3P’s of Home Selling. The 3P’s consist of:
- Preparation- What are you prepared to do to you home to make it stand out from the crowd?
- Pricing- The most critical piece and must be looked at very carefully without pricing your home properly there is no amount of pricing or presenting that will sell your home.
- Presentation- What the agent does to put the most positive spin on your home and expose it to the most amount of home buyers.
One critical step of the 3P’s is honest and open communication as well as trust between the real estate agent and the home seller. You need to have an agent you are comfortable with and you feel is providing you with good information. Without honesty and trust between the parties, it makes a successful home sale much more difficult. Read More….
Understanding how Buyers Think- Price it Right!!
There is nothing more important than properly pricing your home for top dollar. It is important to carefully craft a pricing strategy for your home. A misconception that sellers have is that asking for more money , will get you more money. Unfortunately in most circumstances, if you price your home much more than 3-5% over fair market value you will untimately get less money for your home as the buyer urgency is not created and your home is in danger of market rot. Getting the price right creates a quick sale, usually the shorter the marketing time the higher the price you will get for your home.
Reprinted from More on Merrimack Valley Real Estate
Pricing your home right is 70-80% of the marketing of your home. No amount of marketing will sell an overpriced home. The right price should generate showing activity of 12-20 showings in a 3-4 week period. With-in 12-20 showings a properly priced homes will receive an acceptable offer.
Lets look at how the different parties generally view the value of a home for a given real estate market.
Sellers want as much money as possible and it is easy to overvalue their home based in inaccurate data or lack of data. Buyers tend to make decisions based on lack of data and fear of over paying so they try and pay as little for a home as possible. Read more……
As a seller, what can you control?
When you are selling your home, regardless if you are a for sale by owner or not, there are two thing that you have control over…. and that is it.
- Price – You have total control over how you price your home compared to the fair market value of your home.
- Condition- Again, you have total control over the condition of your home and how you want buyers to perceive your home.
- Advertising- You have a fair amount of control over the exposure you give your home to the general buying public.
Things you don’t have control over:
- Location- The location of your home can really impact what buyers are willing to pay for your home, yet you have absolutely no control over the location.
- The appeal and functionality of your home- Lets face it a colonial built yesterday versus the same size colonial built in the 50′s will have a totally different appeal and functionality. Of course buyers want a more modern flow and amenities. But as a home seller you have very little control over that.
- Buyers- You have absolutely no control over what buyers will think of your home and do.
- The overall real estate market- We all know what we could have go for our homes 5 years ago, but real estate markets change. Fair Market Value of a home fluctuates even on a monthly basis.
It is important to know what you have control over and what you don’t when selling your home. Sometimes as sellers we tend to forget that.
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How do different parties view your home?
Here is a page from my Master Marketing Plan of how different parties in a real estate transaction view value.
Home sellers need to understand that they are competing with other houses on the market. It is important to remove emotion and hope and evaluate the market data objectively. Just as a buyer needs to do the same if they would like to buy the house they want.
There is plenty of data out there regarding recent home sales. You need to look at similar sized homes in the immediate vicinity if possible. Appraisers generally try to stay with in 10% =/- of the square footage when they are trying to appraise a home. Appraisers also try to find homes that sold in the past 6 months as well as no more than 1 mile away from the subject property. The closer the comparable property to the subject property the better.
Nothing beats a home that has been prepared for the market place, is priced right at fair market value and has a good digital marketing strategy in place. At the end of the day, you need a buyer to bring the money to the closing table for a successful sale.
Make Your Home Available- Don’t Kill a Sale!!
Activity= Showings = Offers
This seems like a silly post yet I see FSBO sellers do this all the time. Not making your house available for showings will sales of your home. If they can’t see it, they can’t buy it.
In Massachusetts we have entry only listing where an agent only enters the property into the MLS for a flat fee. Once entered the homeowner is responsible for showings, paperwork, etc….
Last week I tried to show a FSBO it took 5 phone calls and three failed appointments. The seller had very limited times he was willing to show the property. It was very difficult to schedule a showing. There was always an excuse…. I would say about 30% of the time, we skip these entry only listing because of unreturned phone calls or difficult scheduling, without ever looking back. Guess what? buyers don’t care your kids are home, or your working from home or any myriad of personal issues. They will move on to another property. Most homes listed with an agent is much more available because of lock boxes and the the fact agents know not to discourage showings.
Ok…. true story. I tried to schedule a FSBO showing on a Saturday at 1pm among a list of other properties. The seller said that was no good but what about Friday at 10pm???!!! Guess what, my buyers never saw this property do to the difficulty of showings.
In many cases if a real estate agent is showing the property they have more than one property scheduled for the buyer. The buyer will skip your property if your property is not available for them to view on their schedule. My listing are generally available all day long and can be scheduled at a moments notice, unless their are issues like dogs or young babies.
If you turn away showing you may be turning away buyers. There is a ton of inventory out there your house is not the only house available. Find a way to be as accommodating as possible. If you are an entry only listing and are making your house available to agents, consider using a lockbox to give agents access when you can’t be there.
If you are listed with a real estate agent this is also prudent advice, be as unrestrictive as possible when it comes to showing your home.
Pricing is Critical
I have posted an article on another blog of mine which I believe is important to the FSBO seller.
“Market Rot” is a danger home sellers run into when overpricing a home for the real estate market. More does not mean more, when it come to pricing real estate more can mean less!!
Learn the relationship to the amount of interested buyers and market time in relationships to a homes price.
Your Homes Photo(s) can Make or Break You
The photographs you have of your home can make or break you. With almost 90% of all home buyers using the internet to search for homes, you need to have a good photographs of your home. Whether you are just running online classified ads with Craigslist or Backpage, have a full property website or are on aggregate websites like Trulia, Zillow and so on… you need to catch the buyers attention with quality photographs.
The preceding photo is a partial Trulia online listing search result. Trulia shows 8 homes to a page. Your lead photo should stand. People are making decisions on whether to click on your home and view in a span of about 30 seconds. If your photo does not capture their attention, you have lost a buyer.
The next 2 photographs are of the same house. The first one was taken by me after the listing expired with another agent. The 2nd photo just isn’t appealing. It was taken on a gray day and highlights the empty lot next door. I quickly sold this home after taking new photos and relisting the home. I truly believe the front photo was what kept it from selling.
The next 2 samples are two identical condos on the market at the same time. The first one was my listing which sold in half the time and for $15,000 more. The second was the other agents photo. The only real differences between these two units were the photographs.
More appealing photos lead to more buyer traffic which leads to more showings which lead to….$$$$$$
Can’t We Just Try? Price it Right!!
“Can’t we just try?” This is something I hear from sellers all the time about pricing their home for an unrealistic price. It is also something that For Sale by Owner sellers struggle with.
Asking for more money does not net your more money. It can hurt you……..
Lets look at why….. first of all a property that is overpriced stays on the market and may require several price changes before selling. Following is the life cycle of buyer activity over the life of a listing. Buyer Activity peaks in the first 4-7 weeks than drastically falls off from there. This pattern repeats itself over and over on website activity that I track. Don’t let your listing get stale… Keep the excitement high!!
buyer activity over period of time a home is on the market
That first 0-60 days on the market is important. Buyer excitement is high, the best buyers are looking at the house. These are the buyers that are educated about the market and have felt some pain. They have viewed all the homes that have interested them in the marketplace and rejected them. These home buyers are hoping your the perfect home. As time goes on you get buyers that are just entering the marketplace and have not been educated. They have felt no pain. I can tell you buyers rarely look back at properties they have rejected. They have put it in their head that they have no interest.
When you get an offer in the first 30-60 days when buyer activity is high you create competition among buyers. They are afraid to lose it and your offers will be stronger.
Another reason not to overprice is your house will not be exposed to the right buyers. Say you list your house at $425,000 and your hoping to get over $400,000 knowing that its a stretch. Deep down you know your house is probably worth about $385,000- 390,000. In my experience buyers realistically search in $25,000 to $50,000 price brackets. If your over $400k the true buyer for your house probably searches from $350,000 to $400,000.
Your showing your house to the wrong home buyers!!
Proper pricing is more critical than you may think. Pricing it right to begin with…..
Syndication Site for the “For Sale by Owner”
Syndication-The act of syndicating a news feature by publishing it in multiple newspapers, internet sites etc simultaneously
Syndication is huge for Real Estate agents when it comes time to advertising our clients homes. As a For Sale by Owner seller you can take advantage of some of the same tools to sell your home that real estate agents use.
Postlets craigslist ad
Postlets is a site that will allow a for sale by owner and real estate agents alike post real estate ads. You get your own little property website to advertise. The free version is limited but you can drive visitors to a more comprehensive property website. Visit my post Free Online Property Website.
Once your ad is created it is very simple to post to craigslist ad a myriad of other sites, like google, vast, zillow and more…..
As well as quickly syndicating your home for sale to other real estate sites, postlets makes it very easy to post to social networking and bookmarking sites which will quickly increase the exposure of your property for sale. In a short period of time you can cover a lot of ground on the internet.
It is important that you also rotate your ads on classified sites like Craigslist, Backpage and Kiijiji so your ads don’t look stale. Drive them one time to a Postlets ad and another time to another property website.
In previous article I have discussed the biggest struggle a for sale by owner seller will have is getting the necessary exposure to ensure an offer.
Postlets is easy and it is quick…. a must have tool if you are a for sale by owner in Massachusetts.
Online Property Website
I have found a free site called Yola that is an easy site to build a customized website for the internet. It has great customizable templates and easy to use features.
This site for 30 Market Street in Lowell MA only took about 15 minutes to set up.
A property website should include:
- High Quality Photographs
- Description of the property
- A way to contact you
- Property details
- Maps
The more information the better. Make your content unique and write for the buyer. Remove your emotion and concentrate on what will be important to potential buyers viewing your property. Other pages you can add are plot plans, floor plans, and recent updates.
Be detailed but honest and factual about your information. If the information is subjective, don’t use it. Unless you are truly in a “quiet neighborhood” don’t use that description. Also be aware of fair housing laws so as not to get in trouble.
The great thing about this site is you can use keywords and submit it to Google so it may be found by the search engines.
OK, You have built your site now what? You need traffic to your site. Think about ways to drive traffic there:
- Sign rider with www.yourstreetaddress.com. Your own URL that can be bought from Go Daddy.com
- Advertise on your Facebook, Linked-in, My Space accounts.
- Use on any internet advertising like craigslist ads. Trulia or Zillow posts, youtube video and more
- Viral Marketing- email a link to all your friends and ask them to pass along to their friends, they might know some one who is interested.
Good Luck!!
