Thinking of selling?

Tips To Sell Your Home In A Down Market

To make sure your home sells in a down market, there are a few things that you can do.

1. You have to be willing to price it right:  If you’re going to sell your home in a down market, you may have to be willing to make some concessions on price.   Try not to get emotionally stuck on a certain price.
2. Make sure the home has curb appeal:  Even if you can’t compete on price with foreclosures, you can do your best to make sure that the your house at least looks better on the outside than the foreclosure down the block.   Get the home power washed, paint the trim and the doors, put on new exterior lights and/or knockers, and give your plants some sprucing up.  
3. Clear the home of clutter:  When you’re living in the home, it may be ok to have stacks of papers on the coffee table, and tons of personal photos on the walls.   But when you’re selling a home you want the potential buyers to picture themselves living in the house.  Remove personal photos from the walls, and replace them with neutral framed art.  Take everything off the countertops in the kitchen to make it  seem like there is more counter space.  Remove any unnecessary furniture and put it into storage.  If you can remove clothing from the closets and put it into storage to make the closets feel bigger.  Reduce all the extra clutter throughout the house to make it feel bigger, more spacious and buyer friendly!
4. Fix big problems:  If your house has a big problem that will turn a lot of buyers off, fix it!   Ugly peeling linoleum in the kitchen? Put in new flooring.  Anything that can cause instant dislike for your house should be fixed, as long as it isn’t too expensive.
5. Fix smaller problem areas around the house:  Go throughout the house and take notes of all  the small things that need fixing that may be a turnoff to a potential buyer.    If you noticed them, the buyer will too!
6. Consider staging the house:  When we sold we actually staged the house to make the rooms feel more spacious, give it a less cluttered look and a make people feel more at home.  In the living room we removed several larger pieces of furniture, and replaced them with smaller more luxurious pieces from our parent’s houses – in a different layout.   We took our personal photos down and put up framed art pieces.  We removed all the magnets and photos from the fridge, and put up nice valances on the windows.  Watch a lot of HGTV and try to emulate what the experts do to stage a house!
7. Offer bonuses to agents or buyers: consider offering a bonus to the first agent to bring in a full price offer, or offer to pay closing costs for a buyer (this might be especially attractive for first time buyers).  I’ve even heard of buyers offering to pay a years worth of homeowner’s association fees. Be creative.
8. Use the power of the web and your personal networks to market your house:  Don’t rely on the listing that your agent has put online to sell your house. Use other online venues to help sell your house. 
9. Get a good agent to help you sell:  Get a good agent to help sell your house, not a friend of a friend – or your aunt Agnes who just got her real estate license. Your house is one of your biggest assets, and this is no time to do someone else a favor.Use someone who understands the power of the internet, the importance of good wide angle interior photos, and an overall marketing strategy for  your house. And someone who is not afraid to be honest with you when you want to list at a higher price!
10. When the house is showing, keep the house clean and don’t be there!:  When you are having an open house, or the house is having a showing, make sure that you aren’t there. There’s nothing more annoying than having the home’s owners in a house when you’re trying to look at it. 

Do you have your own tips for things that can make a home sell faster?  Were there things that you did when selling your house that made it more attractive to buyers?  Share your thoughts about it in the comments!