When you are buying, or selling a home, your most important step to take is choosing the right real estate agent or buyer's agent. The process is very detailed and difficult and you will want someone that could potentially save you from mistakes that can cost a great deal of money.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Why isn't my house selling???

As a Realtor® I have the benefit of being able to look at the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) database. I can tell you that when you see homes that have been on the market for a long time, there is one common thread that puts them together in the category of hard to sell houses.

Price!

If the home isn't priced to sell, it's not going to sell. It's that simple. Now here is the tricky part, how do you properly determine a good price to sell your home? To answer that, lets first look at the basic common problems with pricing:


  • - Price per square foot is far above other houses selling in the market.
  • - Price per square foot is far above what houses have sold for in the last six months.
  • - Price per square foot is in par with other houses in the market but condition of the house is far below the competition.


Let's take a look at number 1: This usually is the result of two things. The owner added many upgrades to the house such as new additions, pools, fancy floors, appliances, etc. and their investment has priced them out of the market. In other words, they have made the house too nice for the neighborhood. The second reason would be that the owners did a lot of "upgrades" themselves and their pride inflates the real value of the upgrades. Some of these upgrades could be ill advised yet the owners think it was the best thing they could have done for the house.


Number 2: Selling above what has sold in the last 6 months is usually evidence that nobody did a proper Competitive Market Analysis or CMA. This really requires the involvement of a Realtor® like me because we have access to information that home owners typically don't. The CMA also has to properly account for differences in conditions and features of houses used to make the comparison.


Number 3: When it comes to the condition of the house you need to consider two things; perceived condition and actual condition.

Perceived: I'm sure you have watched the show Design to Sell. There are many things that send signals to a prospective buyer to run! Wild colors, extreme personalization, clutter, uncleanliness will affect the thoughts of the buyer. Even if your house is priced right, buyers sometimes can't see themselves in your house because they can't see the house past all your personal belongings!

Actual: Your house maybe priced right according to the market but what if it has real issues like foundation problems, damaged roof or siding, worn out carpets, etc? The owner has to be willing to either fix these or adjust the price accordingly.



In conclusion, it helps to have a Realtor® that is going to be honest with you. They may not tell you what you want to hear but it is also important that you are up front with them. The most helpful thing I find is when an owner tells me something like this: "I owe $100,000 on this house and I want to walk away with at least $15,000." This gives me clear direction and I can tell them exactly what to do to achieve such a goal.

posted by Patti Lora

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