How to Sell Your House in a Bad Market

Here's a piece that recently ran in our local paper (I hope the link works -- they sometimes are quick on the trigger to take pieces down) that give some success stories on how people have sold their houses in a bad real estate market. And when I say bad, I mean bad:

At the end of June, there were 11,643 homes for sale in this area -- a 32 percent increase over the past two years.

And estimates have that the average home price is down 6% to 9%. Believe me, it's bad.

If the article remains up, you can read all the stories, but the tips included basically come down to these:

• Make your home look as good as possible (complete cleaning, staging, small repairs, remodeling terrible areas)

• Price it competitively -- for what it's really worth in the current market

Simple? Sure. Followed? Not usually.

I've been in several houses recently as we may be buying a new house, and I can tell you that most people ignore both of these tips. Sure, they run the vacuum over the carpets and dust a bit, but there are still nicks in the walls, bad paint, cracks in the ceiling and the like -- all simple things that could be repaired and make the house look a 100 times better.

Furthermore, most people are pricing their home at what they'd like to get out of it -- not the actual market selling price. We've seen several properties that we looked at two months ago already come down $10,000 or so. And there's more room to drop. As such, our strategy is just to keep looking and take our time doing so -- prices are going nowhere but down.

Comments

[cindy@staged4more]

It's very true! I am a stager who stages homes for sale. Prior to open house, I generally come up with a list of to-do and reminders or make recommendations prior to putting the home on the market. However 9 out of 10 sellers don't do it, which really makes me ponder... Do you really like to risk the possibility of more equity in a crazy market like this? But the truth is, like you said, most home sellers are OVER-CONFIDENT in their homes. They think their homes are worth millions of dollars, like McMansions. But for buyers who have been touring, oh say at least 20 houses or so, it just looks like anything else. Additionally, I am in San Francisco bay area where our housing market is incredibly competitive, in makes me ponder how long these agents would last in the business when they don't believe in staging, whereas other agents know to stage it well and photograph it well to attract online buyers.

Whatever it is, ultimately PRICE and CURRENT MARKET determines the sale. It really comes down to how much the BUYERS are willing to pay, not how much sellers are wanting to make. And I can't tell you how many times I have seen transactions coming apart when the sellers get too greedy.

Cheers,

Cindy

[Anitra]

We closed on our house at the end of May, and we've done a lot of work on it since we moved in. But we've probably spent less than $500 on the work we've done so far (landscaping, some minor electrical, and remodeling one bedroom). Yet, if the sellers had done this much work, they could have easily gotten $10k more than it ultimately sold for. Many sellers are either lazy (don't want to bother) or skinflint (can't stomach spending money to make improvements that they won't "benefit" from).

Had the sellers of our house not followed rule #2, we wouldn't have given this house a second look. As it is, we feel we got a great deal, spending less money than we expected for more house than we thought we could afford.

[Travis Williams]

Curb appeal is a major consideration when selling your home. My last house had very nice landscaping that made it look fabulous on the outside and that helped it sell in only six days. Other houses in the same neighborhood are taking months and a few over a year to sell.