Thread: Scary Dilemma

There are several approaches that may help you sell your home.

1) Offer to pay buyers closing costs. Usually, a maximum of 3% of the selling price.

2) Offer a bonus commission to the selling agent. For example, in Seattle the bonus could be $1000-$5000 in the under $500k bracket.

3) Use a professional photographer for all of your photos. Staging can be expensive but a clean uncluttered house is the next best option. The yard should be pristine.

4) When agents or clients come to your front door, what objections would they have to buying your house? You must remove as many objections as you can.

5) Put higher wattage light bulbs in the fixtures and leave the lights on for showing. (Don't burn the place down) Make sure the temperature at a comfortable level.

6) Have your real estate agent put your ad on craigslist by using postlets.com.

7) Look at fliers from different agents in the area. Compare and adopt wording if it seems more appealing.

8) Real estate agents are like most other professions. There are good and bad agents. Open houses, brokers open, even weekday open houses my be required. Based on the information you have provided, I can't say if your agent is one or the other. You can fire an agent if they are not up to the job but you may be liable for some minor marketing expenses.

There is so much to a good listing agent, it's hard to put every idea into print. Good luck with your sale. If you have more specific questions, I'll be on and off this week to answer them.

4 Factors Sell Homes:

Price

Condition

Location

Marketing


Overpriced homes do not sell. Homes that are poorly marketed might sell eventually, homes with poor condition/location will sell with proper pricing & marketing.

One thing to keep in mind.... sometimes the price can be too low... true story - had a listing that should sell around $900k - the seller got scared - lowered the price to $624k - and the showings stopped.... even in a slow market if a home is priced too low - the buyer can and sometimes will assume that there is an issue with the home...

If your home is not complete - you may have trouble with the buyer getting financing... a good heart to heart with your agent may be in order.

Your house is for sale and you are not getting showings means only one thing. You are overpriced for the market.

How much you have come down in price only indicates how unrealistically overpriced you were to begin with. Now you are chasing the downward price curve.

Start systematically lowering your price until you start getting showings and then lower it until you get an offer.

There is no amount of advertising or selling gimmicks that will get an overpriced home sold in this market.

You want to pay for an appraisal to see where your price should be, after all, your house won't sell for more than a buyer can borrow and they can't borrow more than it appraises for.

I can't thank you all enough for your responses.

Maybe it did start out overpriced ....but at the time we were getting broker's telling us to list it higher.

The house is pristine...we've done everything to it in the past 10 years...new kitchen flooring etc. etc. It's approx 3500 sq. feet....in a rural area...

I have it staged ..I'm on 2+ acres with a new pool...

We lowered the price a week ago..still no calls...open house this sunday....then a brokers open again in 3 weeks...I wanted it sooner..but my agent said whe wants to wait for her office caravan....and for our upstairs bathrooms to get new sinks put in.

I will try all the things you all have said...

Much much appreciation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!