Selling a Home?
Selling a Home?
Selling homes is both art and science. There are definite shoulds and should nots and your Pacific Shield RealtorŪ is trained to know the difference. There are twenty-seven commonly used contracts, documents and disclosures either required or suggested by the State of California whether you sell a property yourself or you sell through a RealtorŪ. Failure to provide required disclosures can result in either criminal or civil liabilities, or both. For Sale by Owners, even when they are provided the correct paperwork, are risking significant liability when completing the documents themselves.
National Association of Realtors (NAR) statistics prove that sellers who do not use an agent sell their homes for an average of 15% less than those who do. In short, what you save in not using an experienced agent you will lose in sale price. Does that sound like a good idea? Why would anyone give up that much potential value? Hire someone who knows what they are doing and listen to their advice. It is true that RealtorsŪ are neither brain surgeons nor rocket scientists, but, they have knowledge valuable to a home seller. If you are the kind of person who shows up to a cattle drive without a cowpony, you may choose to go it alone, but most folks like to be saddled with a knowledgeable partner.
What is the Price?
Your RealtorŪ should provide guidance for you in deciding what your house is worth, what your motivation for selling are and what the timing should be.
Motivation
Sellers who simply want to sell can afford to wait for the market to reach some kind of height or level before selling. That motivation is very different from the couple transferred to Hoboken for a job. They have to sell and sell quickly. Explain your motivation to your RealtorŪ so they can best assist in deciding what timeframe, therefore what price, the home should be listed.
Price
There are three basic factors that determine when a home will sell. Price, price and price. No matter what the market is, no matter what condition a house is in, no matter what homes in the neighborhood should sell for, someone will be willing to buy a home that is priced appropriately for them. If you want to sell your house for a buck you will have millions of offers, If you want to sell it for ten million dollars, and it isn't worth that, it is unlikely that anyone will even come look. Somewhere in between is the price your REALTORŪ should guide you toward.
How Soon
If the property has to sell quickly, price will have to be in the lower third of like properties. If there is no immediate need to sell, the property can be priced higher. In a market where prices are increasing waiting or pricing high may be a good strategy. In a declining market, not so good. While you wait, value is withering away.
How Will I Know How to Price my Home?
Your Realtor will be able to help by providing you with a Comparable Market Analysis. This compares your home to properties within the immediate area, usually no more than 1/2 mile. Be prepared. Before you mkee with your agent, look at comparable properties in your neighborhood. You probably know how yours compares to theirs. Has your kitchen been upgraded (number one in improvement cost recapture, but never dollar for dollar)? How's your landscaping? Do you have a spa, pool or view. Unfortunately, regardless of how much you spent or how much it means to you, the best an appraiser is going to give it is $5,000 to $10,000 more for exterior amenities. It won't be worth more just because it is yours or because you put it in. Pools are a mixed bag. They never increase the value by the amount they cost to install and many buyers will not buy a home with a pool.
What you need, what you want, what you would like, doesn't matter. If the CMA shows the property to be worth $345,000 it will not sell for $450,000 no matter what you want. That is why short sales are short sales. In an icreasing market you might be able to wait long enough for the market to catch up to you, but it's unlikely to move all that fast.
Do I Have to Keep My House Clean?
1. CLEAN IT! Look at model homes for examples. There is a reason they do all those things to model homes. Pick stuff up and put it out of sight.
2. GET RID OF IT! Or at least put it in storage. Furniture, decor and pictures are pretty, but not when you are trying to sell the home. Make space. Take things off counters. Remove personal and family pictures. Put the Bible away (God will forgive you). Make the home as impersonal as possible. you want a buyer to mentally make this house theirs and your personal stuff prevents that from happening.
3. REPAIR IT! Don't spend money on making it all pretty (at least not yet). Instead fix the toilet, replace missing light and electrical plates. Fix the gate and fence. Install a new front door light instead of leaving open wires. If there are open wires, cap them. Lenders will require that safety and soundness issues be fixed and the Buyer will send in a home inspector to find stuff. Head them off at the pass and get it fixed so they have nothing to ask for.
4. GIVE IT CURB APPEAL! Cut the grass, remove overgrown bushes, trim overgrown trees. Put in some cheap decorative flowers. Open up the landscape as much as possible. Prevent the pool and spa from being green. Kermit and the Global Warming folks will forgive you.
How many Open Houses? How Much Advertising?
Open Houses
They are a pain in the neck for both the Seller and Listing Agent. You have to clean the home, pack up the pets and kids, and find something that everyone can do for 4-5 hours. You have to put away all your valuables or remove them from the home altogether. Check the medicine cabinet to make sure there is nothing a druggie might want. Lastly make a mental inventory of everything in the home to make sure nothing walks out the front door.
The open house agent has to print up flyers, lug a bunch of signs around the neighborhood, carefully placing them where the neighbors won't tear them down or use them for firewood and in the process avoid being run over by a truck. The agent then gets to return to a house filled with people looking for the deal of the century who cannot understand why offering 70 cents on the dollar is insulting.
According to NAR statistics around 3% of the homes sold are the result of an open house.
With such a low a success ratio, why do agents hold open houses and why do Sellers insist on it. Because 3% is 3%, not zero. Besides, sometimes, though not often enough for agents, an unrepresented buyer will walk through the door offering the agent the chance to capture one more client.
Print Media
According to National Association of Realtor statistics gathered directly from buyers, less than 6% of buyers found information about the home they eventually bought in printed media. As opposed to that, nearly 90% of buyers did some measure of research on the internet before purchasing. This is bad news for companies proud of their print ads, bill boards and magazine presence. Newspapers across the nation admit that people are doing more research on the net than are reading the daily news. As first time buyers grow younger and loan programs aim in their direction, this trend will amplify.
Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
Most homes are sold to the clients of agents. Good agents screen dozens of properties for their clients before taking them by. That means the agent has to be sold before the agent will sell their client. That means reaching out to agents results in more sales than just about anything else one can do. Agents can be reached through caravans and broker open houses but the most reliable way to reach agents is through the MLS.
If MLS exposure is so important, one has to wonder why so many agents put only one photo and such poor descriptions in the MLS. Tell your agent, before you sign a listing agreement, that you want a minimum of ten photos. Help the agent with a description of the house including the reasons you chose to buy it. Whatever was important to you may also be important to someone else.
While Realtor.com, Zillow, Google and Yahoo Real Estate have become good ways of researching property, the MLS is still superior. Other listing services are one, two and some times several days behind. This causes a lot of wild goose chases. Further, unless the listing agent "buys" a premium listing from the service provider, people will be calling a real estate office instead of your listing agent, getting the newbie agent at the front desk interested in selling any listing, not just yours.
MLS systems are getting more aggressive and over the next few years may become statewide organizations which will negate the need for such ancillary services. Besides, only the MLS has ALL the information needed by an agent looking for their clients. Who did we say sold the most properties? That's right, buyer's agents, working for their clients, and buyer's agents aren't looking on Realtor.com.
