Getting your home sold in today’s market requires being not only aggressive, but also pro-active. Right now, the lower price ranges in many communities are selling quicker than the higher price ranges. In some areas it is not unusual to see homes on the market over 365 days. After a certain point, your home becomes invisible to buyers. Below are tips to keep your listing fresh and in front of buyers.

Price It Right

I cannot emphasize this enough. When I do a market analysis for a client, one stinking statistic is that the homes in the “sold” column sold reasonably close to their asking price and have also only been listed once (agents usually do a 3 or 6 month listing). The first 6 weeks you are on the market are the most active and the most crucial.

Once your listing goes beyond the average listing term, it becomes stigmatized. Today, it is very easy for buyers to find total days on market and number-savvy buyers have figured out that MLS numbers are sequential (more on that later). Buyers see an old listing and rightly think that many people have passed your home by without writing an offer. They think to themselves that those other people might know something and decide to follow their lead and pass yours by. There are plenty of other homes out there.

A good agent will present you with a COMPLETE market analysis, showing you not only comparables in your neighborhood but also within your whole community. Don’t just pay attention to the properties that have sold, but have a good handle on what is on the market right now. That is your competition. You should never be priced the highest in your market.

Pricing correctly can make the rest of this article unnecessary.

Photos Are Important

When a buyer walks through your door for the first time, that is usually their second showing. They have most likely shopped extensively on the internet before making a decision on what homes to see. A great majority of them will pass on homes with either poor pictures or not enough pictures. The Milwaukee Metro MLS system allows agents to upload 25 photos of each property. Now, it might be hard to have 25 photos of a small property, but your agent should have an appropriate amount online to entice buyers.

Photos can also date your listing. The most obvious way is if an agent has a camera that imprints the date onto the photo. That is a huge “DUH!”

The other way they can date your home is by not being seasonal. During the summer, people don’t want to even think of snow and therefore they might subconsciously attach a negative onto your listing based on a picture. Don’t be one of the only listings out there with white in Summer or green in Winter!

Knowing that people are more intuitive than they realize, a thorough agent will at the very least take exterior photos as the seasons change. I will take photos after the first significant snow, then right after what is expected to be the last melt, then again when the grass greens a little, when the first blooms occur then one mid-summer. I keep that one until the leaves turn, then another photo when they fall. Even further than that, all of your INTERIOR photos should also reflect the seasons – people can see out the windows in the photos and they do notice it. Your agent should be shooting these after the first snow (and again after the Holiday decorations are down), after the first melt, once trees and grass are green then once the leaves fall. Another good practice is for your agent to use different exterior angles each time and even for you to do a little re-decorating or furniture re-arranging each time.

A careful eye should also be used when composing the photos. Photos taken on sunny days ilicit a better emotional reaction in buyers than do ones taken on gloomy days. Crooked photos are unprofessional and can create a certain amount of unease in a buyer viewing them.

Ad Copy

The old sales adage goes “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Which is your listing selling?

The Metro MLS system has fields to designate how many rooms your home has, square footage, style, subdivision, age and many more. MLS then gives your agent 400 characters to really sell your home. How is he or she using those precious few characters? Knowing first that all your home’s statistics are covered elsewhere in the MLS system, your agent should use that description to create mental ownership in prospective buyers. Home buying is extremely emotional and a description that only reiterates the dry stuff like “3 bedroom, 2.5 bath colonial” is not pressing a buyers hot-buttons at all.

While I am on the subject, is your agent using all 400 of those characters to sell the sizzle?

How Old Is Your Listing?

You may not know exactly how long you have been on the market, but you can bet that your buyers do!

Even without a buyers agent to tell them how long you have been on the market, astute buyers know that MLS numbers are sequential. When you look at your listing online (you do so on a regular basis, right?), is your MLS number something like 998754 when everyone else is 1090XXX? Do the math, your listing is OLD!

Taking a listing costs the agent money and many agents will sign people up for a 6 month or even a 1 year contract. This does save the agent some money, but could wind up costing you! In faster-moving sections of the market, an agent interested in YOUR needs will do something closer to a three month listing, while in slower-moving sections a 6 month is acceptable. Should you have to be on the market longer, it won’t be as obvious. Another plus, when you re-list with a fresh MLS number, your property will get emailed to everyone looking for homes that match your criteria!

It is also obvious in any market analysis that older listings sell for less than they normally would have had they been priced and marketed properly from the get-go.

The “Nuclear” Option

I know, you are thinking to yourself “we’ve been listed for a few months and still nothing, what do we do?” Maybe your agent has done everything right, some things right or nothing right. What can you do?

Again, knowledge of the MLS system and how buyers and their agents look at things can help you.

The MLS system will run a total days on market for all consecutive re-lists. So, if your listing ran for 6 months then you immediately re-listed (same or different agent, doesn’t matter) then you will have 2 numbers for days on market – current and total. The total ads the previous 180 days to your count. Agents and buyers will also look at consecutive listings as well, not to mention that even if you did everything listed above, your listing could just “disappear” to buyers. They see it every time they check their listings and just don’t pay it any heed.

What may be your best option is a strategic, but temporary, retreat. If your home is off the market for over 90 days, the total days on market resets to zero. During your “pause” from the market, look closely at the feedback from your showings (your agent shared those, right?) and develop a plan. Did everyone make a comment about the purple bathroom? Paint it. They were’t into the burnt orange shag in the family room? Replace it.

You should also look at what kind of feedback you got on your price, both from buyers and the agents from the office that toured your home when it was first listed (you had an office tour, right?). Remember that it isn’t price that sells your home, but value. Some fix ups or neutralizations may bring your value up to your price.

Finally, even if you are happy with your agent, you should take this opportunity to interview at least two others. What is their price suggestion? Marketing plan? If you liked your first agent, re-interview them. Go with the agent who is best prepared for your appointment with good information on what to do to get you sold and also with strong data to back up their price suggestion.

Today’s market is tough, there is no denying it, but homes are still selling and in some cases there are multiple offers. Choosing the right agent and listening to their good advice will get your home sold, too.

Posted in: Sell Your Home
Tags: agent, First Weber, home selling, Real estate, staging