The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Sellers – Serious or spurious?
Are you a seller or a tester? The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Sunday Edition, May 4, 2008) offers excellent advice for sellers:
1) Know If You Owe More On Your House Than What You Will Walk Away With. Most sellers are still able to walk away with a profit. However, I’m seeing an increase in the number of sellers that will need to bring money to the table to sell their homes. If you believe that this is true for you, then you might not be able to afford to sell.
2) Know What’s Important To You – Selling Your Home Or Making A Profit. If you focus too much on the profit piece, then you will find that the market doesn’t see the value of your home. If the desired result is to sell your home, then by pricing your home to meet the value the market assigns will reflect in a successful sale.
3) Know That The Market Doesn’t Care What You Spent On Improvements. I tend to use accounting terms to describe this statement. The price you paid for your home and the price you paid for improving your home are “sunk costs.” Therefore, when you price your home, don’t reflect on the money you spent on maintaining your home. Buyers and the market simply don’t care. The Journal Sentinel suggests that if you “over-improved, you may have to relinquish expectations of getting back what you spent.” For more on the topic of appropriate pricing techniques, see the section that follows this list.
4) Get Your Home Ready To Show Before Entering The Market. I always advise my sellers to do the following before we launch our marketing campaign: (1) Declutter, (2) Depersonalize, (3) Neutralize, and (4) Pack and Clean. My advice for sellers is to walk through the home as if they were a critical buyer in this market. When they enter a room, what do they see? Do they like what they see? Are there any distractions in the room which will leave the buyer questioning any aspect of the room? First impressions are key – not only for the outside curb appeal, but with every single room of the home. As soon as a seller has done the four steps above, then I return to the home to take pictures and launch the campaign. In today’s market, buyers won’t see a home unless there are pictures included on the internet. I want to make sure that every picture looks its very best before I include it on the property’s website.
5) Get Prepared To Negotiate Low-Ball Offers. Usually, the first offer received is the best offer. However, in this buyers' market, the first offer is usually a low-ball offer. If your ultimate goal is to sell, then don’t be too quick to reject the offer. In today’s market, buyers are looking to steal a home off the market. They realize that sellers don’t have to accept what’s given them. Sellers have four choices with every offer: accept the offer as is, counter the offer and negotiate, reject the offer, or simply ignoring that the offer exists. The deal will die over the passage of time.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Some Pointers For Pricing A Home (Contributed by the Washington Post)
Here are some dos and don’ts for pricing your home
DON’T base the price on you paid. We touched on this in the previous section. Again, the price you paid is a “sunk” cost. Therefore, this amount should be not be used to determine the fair value that today’s market demands.
DON’T base your price for what your neighbor received for his home that sold a few years ago. The market is constantly changing. However…
DO analyze the market and examine comparable homes in your neighborhood that sold during the past three to six months.
DON’T pick an agent simply because he suggested the highest list price. There are some agents in our industry who will tell you a high price just to get your listing. When your home doesn’t sell, you will find that you’re upset with the agent for misinforming you for your business. However…
DO choose an agent who offers a thoughtful explanation for the suggested price. An agent who does his homework and provides a thorough explanation of the marketplace is looking out for you and your best interests (success in selling your home for the most money, in the shortest amount of time, and for the least amount of inconvenience to you and your family).
DON’T go overboard with remodeling as you prepare your home for the marketplace. Rarely will the benefits outweigh the costs of remodeling. However…
DO incur the costs of making minor repairs and improvements so your home is in move-in condition and appears to be more valuable to a buyer than your competition.
DON’T be stubborn. If weeks go by without any showings or offers, the price most likely doesn’t reflect the value of the home. Your home has the greatest chance of selling in the first three weeks upon entering the market. If it isn’t priced correctly, your home will be often overlooked. After the third week, you will soon be entering the next stage in the selling process, called “Reacting to the Market.” Buyers usually ask three questions while visiting a home: (1) How much are the sellers asking, (2) How long has the sellers been on the market, and (3) What’s wrong with the seller’s home (if the home has been on the market for a period of time)? You never want a buyer asking what’s wrong with your home. However…
DO be patient. It’s a buyers' market and buyers have many options to choose from. In addition, we’re working with a smaller number of buyers this year as mortgage providers have tightened their lending policies. It seems that buyers with perfect credit are able to obtain a loan. You may have to wait longer for buyers to pull their money together as a result of these new lending practices.
According to the article titled “The Clock Is Ticking” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sunday Edition, May 4, 2008), “every house gets only one shot at being brand-new on the market, and sellers gamble with buyers’ attention and patience if they set the price too high.”
Joanne Cleaver, writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes more about the importance of being a proactive seller in this marketplace. For more house selling tips and suggestions, click here to read the entire article titled, “The clock is ticking: Agents tell buyers, sellers to be efficient”>>>----------
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