A Couple Tidbits to Sell Listings
April 20, 2015
By Those Callaways
Joseph & JoAnn Callaway
Make the Home Famous
When you put your listing on MLS, it is time to tell the world how wonderful your listing is. Prepare every home, stage every home, clean every home and even wash the windows. Even a sad home suffering deferred maintenance and offered “as is” can benefit from positive presentation. Cleanliness alone can send a powerful message of pride that buyers receive positively. We have a reputation for having the “good” listings because we work at it. Not surprising, we also have a reputation for getting top dollar and that is something you want to emulate because sold listings are your number one track to more listings.
We get sellers who want to know if they should remodel to improve their chances of selling. Our answer is almost always no. The minute you change the countertops the cabinets look shabby, the minute you finish the cabinets, you need new appliances, then new flooring, then the bathrooms look dated and one thing leads to another. Remodeling is a long and bumpy road better taken when you move in to a home so you can enjoy the fruits of your labors. There are fixes that make sense; however, and you must advise your client of glaring deficiencies. Repair the obvious. A leaky faucet will spoil the whole showing. Paint and carpet are the two best improvements often turning nickels into dollars, but be careful. At the end of the day, sellers feel they must get that money back and they will want those dollars from the buyer. The more the seller can sell what they have – the better satisfied they will be.
A quality brochure elevates a property. Buyers look at five or ten homes and at the end of the day, the only thing they have to remember them by are the flyers they collected along the way. Advertised open houses are busier open houses and busy open houses inspire a sense of buyer panic as they look at all the other people looking at the home they like. A virtual tour becomes a digital tool for the buyer to get approval from family and friends. A broker tour increases the chances of finding that agent who likes the house and starts showing all her prospects the good deal she found. These are just a few of the added tools available to sell your listing.
Patience
All good things come to those who wait. I had a seller call the other day looking for some gimmick to sell the house. I knew he was a sportsman and I said, “Sometimes you just have to have the patience to fish.” I went on to explain that you might decide to go fishing and you put together a plan. You put together the best equipment. You hire the best guide, you go to the best spot, and at some point you have to just fish and sometimes the fish are just not biting. I went on to explain that for any given week or even month for that matter there may not even be a buyer looking in your neighborhood and your price. Yes, you can reduce your price until the greedy bargain hunters come out of the woodwork, but sometimes it is just best to fish. He understood and we waited.