Selling a House - TIPS!!!

[ZAEM]

I don't have any experience buying so I don't know if this is the norm-but in our area most buyers want sellers to pay all closing costs.

[jamesblonde]

I just went in and pulled up your listing. It sure looks like you have it priced right. Two suggestions - get some interior pictures posted. Currently there are 6 pics, all of the outside. Also try to get some sort of progressive broker's open going. There are two other homes for sale on the lake. If the three agents can do a broker's open together you should be able to get some good opinions. The market is picking up.

UGA - as Jan said, all listings show the cumlative DOM here. And like she said, unless you take it off for 90 days or more it'll still show how many days.

[UGAplaya]

Originally Posted by xqqzme

You are all full of great ideas...thanks

I had to laugh at the soft music and candles routine Jeff is the one left to sell the house while I'm in Vegas. That may be a little beyond him.

I am going to contact our realtor and ask him about refreshing the pics; love that idea! I've been watching the waterfront listings in Mason County WA and we seem to now be below the norm for a house. We are now in the range of 'lake cabin' kind of places.He's been sending me the stats of how waterfront is selling in that County and very little has been selling.

Do buyer rebates help at all? "We'll give ou $$$ to buy our house?????"

Just remember that first impressions are everything. From the time they pull into your driveway to the minute they step inside your house. And as silly as soft music and candles seems, it works. :-)

[Donna]

Originally Posted by StewartG

I like the idea of staging... How much does it normally cost?

Stewart that's what I do in Austin is staging for all our condos on the market.Maybe I can come to H-town one weekend and help you guys out with it.

[PlayaGroom]

Recent homebuyer here!

Things we looked for when hunting:

1. Pictures! Obvious, but the more the better. As Jami said, get a bunch of interior pics, particularly the kitchen/dining room, bathroom(s), and main living area. And make sure they're recent (and in focus). It was always a turn off to walk into a home and everything looks different than the pictures.

2. As for the staging, we actually didn't like staged homes. We preferred them empty as can be so we could see every nook and cranny. It was nice to smell the bleach in the air and the smell of a recent carpet cleaning rather than an aromatic candle. It was easier to be able to picture the house/layout of furniture the way we would want it when it was empty as well. But that's just our opinion.

3. It's pretty much the norm for buyers to ask sellers to pay closing costs around here. Nearly every home offered it actually when we were hunting, so we didn't have to ask.

4. If you're having a showing, please put the other realtors cards away. It felt really tacky to be walking around a house, then to walk into the kitchen to find a stack of realtors cards from other people checking out the house. Kind of felt like we were just getting the sloppy seconds....

[Sol]

I have seen real estate ads where owners will include carpet allowances. Would this help?

[penalipee]

Originally Posted by StewartG

I'm in the same boat.

Kelli and I just yesterday closed on our construction loan for the house of our dreams. We are hoping to have a foundation poured w/in 30 days! (BTW, if you've never designed and built your own custom home, you should try it. Challenging and time consuming, but very rewarding!)

Since we are hoping for completion by the end of November, we are planning on putting our house on the market June 1st. We are DESPERATELY trying to get the place clean, get clutter moved out, etc.

I like the idea of staging... How much does it normally cost?

It'll just cost you a plane ticket..honey!! Of course the odd meal while I'm there wouldn't hurt either!

[himynameisjan]

Originally Posted by xqqzme

You are all full of great ideas...thanks

I had to laugh at the soft music and candles routine Jeff is the one left to sell the house while I'm in Vegas. That may be a little beyond him.

I am going to contact our realtor and ask him about refreshing the pics; love that idea! I've been watching the waterfront listings in Mason County WA and we seem to now be below the norm for a house. We are now in the range of 'lake cabin' kind of places.He's been sending me the stats of how waterfront is selling in that County and very little has been selling.

Do buyer rebates help at all? "We'll give ou $$$ to buy our house?????"

Ask your Realtor about virtual tours. They can really show the inside and the outside of the house to great advantage, on the waterfront, especially the outside.

Check to see if offering cash back to the buyer is acceptable in your area, it may not be. Buyer rebates and realtor bonuses are usually the first thing to get negotiated away anyway. It may be better to offer to pay up to a certain amount of the buyers closing costs with an acceptable offer.

[UGAplaya]

Here's my philosphy about what sells a house. I think you can have too many pictures. I also don't like virtual tours. Both can work negatively against you. In my opinion, take a few pictures from the best angle you can get and let it ride. You want people to be curious enough to actually come INSIDE your house. You don't want them making up their minds off the computer. Also, I think a lot of homes are sold by how creative the wording is on the MLS for your house. You want to grab their attention and then get them inside your house. Too many gimmicks will make people leary. Just my .02 worth. :-)

[himynameisjan]

Originally Posted by UGAplaya

Here's my philosphy about what sells a house. I think you can have too many pictures. I also don't like virtual tours. Both can work negatively against you. In my opinion, take a few pictures from the best angle you can get and let it ride. You want people to be curious enough to actually come INSIDE your house. You don't want them making up their minds off the computer. Also, I think a lot of homes are sold by how creative the wording is on the MLS for your house. You want to grab their attention and then get them inside your house. Too many gimmicks will make people leary. Just my .02 worth. :-)

I would agree, you can have too many pictures, and virtual tours may not show a house to it's advantage, but only if THE PICTURES AND THE TOUR ARE POORLY DONE. An overwhelming majority of my buyers want more pictures not less. And, almost everyone who is computer literate wants to see virtual tours. Of course, real estate is regional, and this may be different in your part of the country. As for gimmicks, I don't agree that paying buyers closing costs or offering rebates, warranties, etc. are gimmicks. They may be the one thing that makes your house stand out in a crowd.

[PlayaGroom]

Originally Posted by UGAplaya

Here's my philosphy about what sells a house. I think you can have too many pictures. I also don't like virtual tours. Both can work negatively against you. In my opinion, take a few pictures from the best angle you can get and let it ride. You want people to be curious enough to actually come INSIDE your house. You don't want them making up their minds off the computer. Also, I think a lot of homes are sold by how creative the wording is on the MLS for your house. You want to grab their attention and then get them inside your house. Too many gimmicks will make people leary. Just my .02 worth. :-)

You and mynameisjan both make great points. But I want to say, from a buyers perspective, we made up our decision to go to a showing almost solely from the computer. We knew what type of house we were looking for so we used the MLS wording to narrow it down. Then, the pics narrowed down our list pretty easily. When it comes to pics, Quality over Quantity for sure, but when there were more quality photos online of a property, it was that much easier for us to make a decision.

The market is flooded right now. There were a lot of choices out there when we were looking, so we could be picky and go to only the homes that showed us quality online. If we just went with a list of homes that met our specifications, we'd have looked at over 200 homes (we ended up looking at about 35). Gotta narrow it down somehow.

As for virtual tours, make sure you or your realtor know what they're doing and can make a quality one. Crappy ones just look...well...crappy and don't really do anything.

[Mamacita]

I agree with PlayaGroom. The buyers I work with tell me which homes they want to look at. So they are narrowing down their choices based on photos and descriptions. I can see that if you only have exterior pics, few people are enticed to want to go inside. You can't use the curiosity of the buyer, because as stated, there are far too many homes and not enough time to see them all.

A poorly done MLS listing will hurt in many ways. Agents that are searching for homes might not send yours to a buyer because they can't see that it would meet their needs, also those MLS listings are what show up in local searches on realtor.com and the like.

Every seller I work with now insists (as they should) on excellent web marketing because it's the reality of how buyers are first going to see your home.

[Just Lucky]

This may a regional difference.

I would advise that instead of parking the truck on the front yard, you park behind the trailer.


First impressions are so important.

[E in DC]

Another recent buyer chiming in here! We purchased our home in December. We knew what town we wanted to buy in and I "shopped" obsessively on the internet before we actually went looking at places. The more pictures, the better. And a virtual tour goes even further. The house we wound up buying made it onto our "go see" list because it had great photos - a lot of them - on the web. If I'd only seen exterior photos, I am not sure it would have made the list.

And sprucing up and de-cluttering goes a long, long way - especially in a buyer's market. I can't tell you how many houses just completely turned me off because they felt crowded or dingy. The house we purchased is actually smaller than a lot of the ones we toured, but it was clean, bright, uncrowded and in good repair (even the basement). Made it easy to picture ourselves living happily in it. I knew before we even made it to the second floor that it was the house for us.

[jamesblonde]

Originally Posted by Mamacita

I agree with PlayaGroom. The buyers I work with tell me which homes they want to look at. So they are narrowing down their choices based on photos and descriptions. I can see that if you only have exterior pics, few people are enticed to want to go inside. You can't use the curiosity of the buyer, because as stated, there are far too many homes and not enough time to see them all.

A poorly done MLS listing will hurt in many ways. Agents that are searching for homes might not send yours to a buyer because they can't see that it would meet their needs, also those MLS listings are what show up in local searches on realtor.com and the like.

Every seller I work with now insists (as they should) on excellent web marketing because it's the reality of how buyers are first going to see your home.

Too many pictures........never a bad thing IMO (we can only do 15 here) dark or fuzzy pics........terrible. I don't think you entice a buyer to enter by leaving out pictures. Most buyers won't even look at listings online anymore if they don't have pictures. And in my experience, they want pictures of the "main living areas" i.e. kitchen, family room, master bdrm (if you can get the right angle).