Home Presentation
Strip the home
In order for the home to sell quickly and for top dollar, it needs to be repaired, stripped, and neutralized. It’s not your home any more. Now it’s your product. The better the product presents itself, the more buyers will be interested in making an offer on it. You need to strip it. The more items are in it, the harder buyers have to work to “see“ the home. Sometimes it’s too much effort, so they just move on to the next one.
You also need to depersonalize your product. The idea is – nothing on the refrigerator, no pictures with people in them, no club, sports, or religious items, etc. If you distract them with something interesting, they’ll talk about that, rather than continue to see the house. At the end of the day they’ll remember the interesting item, but not the house. They’ll buy a house with a nice kitchen, not one with a thought-provoking poem on the wall. We’re selling kitchens, not poems.
As is always the case, the transition from “home” to “product” requires as much stuff as possible, including furniture, to disappear. You are going move anyway. Start now. If you move out as much stuff as you can stand to, the house will sell a little quicker, and for a little more money, than it otherwise will. So start moving now, and get paid for it, or move later, and pay for it. If you get to the point where you are cursing my name on a daily basis because so much of your stuff is gone, you’re there!
Don’t be there
Use a lockbox for showings. It doesn’t matter that you know the property better than anyone else, because you’ll intimidate the Buyer just by being there. Let their Realtor tell them why yours beats the competition. You’ll also have the convenience of not having to be home every time a Realtor wants to show it. When you list with Price, Wright, and Dunn, Inc., the Realtor will call you before showing – no lockbox shows on the listing.
Pricing
Property values have been declining in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco counties in Florida. So your listing price should be very close to the market value. Don’t fall for a Realtor who tells you it’s worth more it is, then beats on you to lower the price after you give them the listing. Not a single buyer cares what the realtor has told you. They will buy the best deal out there, considering condition, updating, location, etc.
Don’t overprice. Your first day on the market exposes you to all the current buyers out there. After that you are only exposed to the new buyers. The average listing THAT SELLS is priced at $100 below the next $5,000 mark within 2 or 3% of the market value. Most sellers keep the price just out of range and don’t sell until they finally bite the bullet and catch up. This results in a low sale because they miss they best buyers, who come right in the beginning. Waiting to price it right is not your friend.
More info at http://www.priceright.biz/SellingTipsAndExpenses.html.
