Sell Them, or Don't Sell Them at All

In this market of falling home sales, it becomes more important than ever to have an advantage over your competition. Many buyers will buy from first impressions, so it's important to make the right one.

There have been worse times to try and sell a home; but none of them were in the last 50 years. Getting a good, quality offer on your home now is getting harder and harder. With the average length of time on the market approaching 6 months, it's easy to see how a few simple, inexpensive steps can make your home more appealing than the similar looking one 2 blocks over.
Expert realtors are finding it harder and harder to make their homes sell quickly, with many realtors coming to the conclusion that, in the best case, the market won't bottom out for another year. That means we're in for the long haul, ladies and gentlemen, so it's going to come down to a little bit of guerilla marketing to get those houses sold quickly and for a price that even approaches what you want.
The first step in marketing your home before a group of prospective buyers is understanding that the market isn't going to rebound any time soon. It's normal to see ups and downs in the market over a 3 to 6 month period; but I'm afraid boys and girls that we're in for a few down quarters. So don't hang onto the house, unless you plan on being in it for another 3 to 5 years.

Secondly, you should always keep your home inspection-ready. The buyers in this market are "drive-buyers" meaning that they form the bulk of their first impression on the look of the outside of the house. So keep it clean, and keep the inside free of clutter, in case you land one of these angels.
You should be pricing your home below what you perceive to be the market value. Because of your sentimental attachment to the roof over your head, you're likely to overprice. In this market, it's not going to work. You need to pick a price that is about 10-15 percent below the comparable homes in your market. Find out what the peak property value was, and start by deducting about 20 or 30 percent of that. That's the market we're dealing with, folks, so make the best of it.

The most important thing that you can do, though, to make sure that your house outsells the rest of the neighborhood, is to follow the same advice that you need when seeking an attorney. Get a bulldog. A friendly, loveable realtor can make you feel good about selling your house, and they can make you feel warm and fuzzy. What they can't do in a market like this is make you money. Give me a viscious, bring-home-the-bacon realtor any day of the week.