SELL FAST AND FOR TOP DOLLAR
These useful tools will help you to maximize your profits, maintain control, and reduce the stress that comes with the home selling process:
Know your motivation for selling, and then keep it to yourself.
Your motivation for selling is the primary driver of your pricing strategy. If your primary motivation is to extract the maximum price possible for the property, you would almost certainly consider a different pricing and marketing strategy than you would if you needed to sell quickly because of a family emergency.
Being aware of your primary motivation will make it easier to you to move through the transaction. You will understand what objectives must be met in any transaction and negotiate accordingly.
However, do not reveal your motivation or your strategy in the negotiations to the other party. By doing so, you run the real risk of having them use that knowledge against you in the negotiations.
Develop your Pricing strategy before setting a price.
Settling on a pricing strategy is the single most important aspect of the entire marketing plan for getting your house sold. In fact, if your don't get the pricing part right, the balance of the marketing and sales plan is not going to produce the results you want.
Once you’ve set your price, you’ve essentially told potential buyers the absolute maximum they will have to pay for your home. In these circumstances, we are all tempted to increase our asking price with the idea that “we can always come down later, if we have to”. This is not a good idea.
Buyers typically look at 15-20 houses before they buy. With the easily available information about any property, buyers will discard many properties, right at the keyboard, if the price seems out of line with the competition or if similarly priced properties have more desirable features.
Either way, they don’t view the house.
High Price = No Viewings = No Sale
As a high priced house sits on the market, it becomes tired and stale. Realtors think that it may be a problem place or that something is wrong with it. Because most realtors don’t have time to investigate, they move on.
Similarly, if it appears that a vendor is stuck on an unrealistic price, many times the clients don’t want to get involved in a difficult negotiation when other, more reasonably priced properties are more easily available. After a time, the house starts attracting ”lowball” offers. This isn’t good.
Perhaps surprisingly, pricing too low isn’t as dangerous to getting the right price as pricing too high. If a house is priced low, there will be instant action from competing purchasers. In these cases, the price tends to be bid up to something close to, if not more than, actual market price.
Ideally, you want to price your house so that it represents good value in the market compared to other similar homes that are for sale. For a quick sale, your price must be lower than any other home with similar features.
When properly priced, homes bring the best ask/sold ratios, the lowest time on market of any houses sold.
How do you arrive at the right price? The next section handles that.
In order to establish that “sweet spot” in the price range, it is critically important to understand the dynamics of the market as revealed through a competitive market analysis or your property and of the real estate market in general.
In preparing your market analysis, you need data on all real estate activity in your neighbourhood in the last six months. This data will include all comparable houses sold with prices, all active listings, expired listings, and any other relevant data.
Comparing your house to this data will bring you to a point where you understand the value of your house in today’s market. You are in a position to know what the price will be, rather than guessing at it.
As your house enters the market, it is important to maintain ongoing awareness of its value relative to the competition. Particularly in the first 21 days on the market, it is most important to assess the market’s reaction to the price and make any necessary adjustments.
Put yourself in the eyes of a potential purchaser of your house. Would you buy your house, when it is being compared with the other competing houses on the market? If the answer is NO, you are in trouble and had better do something about the situation to change that answer or your house will not sell.
If you are serious about selling, the price should be re-evaluated every 21 days until the house sells.
Make it easy for prospects to view your home.
You can’t sell your house if people can’t get in to see it. It is as simple as that. With the number of houses competing with yours to get the buyer’s attention, if a house is difficult to show, it will be passed over.
Once your house is on the market, you should try to keep it “show room” condition to accommodate the showings requests with little or no notice.
Remember that the house doesn’t have to be perfect to be shown. It is far more important to show a less than perfect place than to show nothing at all.
First impressions count. In fact they are the most important thing. Ignore this very simple, most basic fact at your financial peril.
You may not be able to change your home’s location or floor plan, but you can do a lot to improve its appearance. The look and feel of your home generates a greater emotional response in a potential purchaser than any other factor.
You can’t sell the house to someone who won’t even get out of the car to view it because” it doesn’t look cared for” or for something similar. It doesn’t matter what the reason is : you didn’t sell the house.
Clean like you’ve never cleaned before. Pick up, straighten, scrub, scour and dust. Fix everything, no matter how insignificant it may appear. Present your home to get a "wow" response from prospective buyers.
The 4 Ds of Maximizing Value on the Cheap
Declutter: Get rid of everything you can bear to part with and even some stuff you can’t. If you can’t give it away, at least pack it away. You are going to be moving anyway, to this is a first step. Empty closets, cupboards, drawers, nooks & crannies and storage spaces. Rent a storage unit if necessary. Empty the house of ‘stuff”
Depersonalize: Pack away personal photos, mementos, collections, knick-knacks and all other personally identifiable items. Visit some show homes to get an idea how to present your home in its best light. The cost of a consultation from a staging professional is usually worth its weight in gold.
Disappear: You can not help to sell your house. Leave for all showings. If possible, take your pets with you. Be gone before the purchasers arrive and do not return until after they have left. Don’t sit in the driveway or on the front porch. Leave. Go somewhere.
Dream: Allow the buyers to dream that this is their new home. This can only happen if the first 3 Ds are met.
Negotiate wisely and strategically
In the negotiation process, your objective is to achieve the desired outcome, based on the sales and pricing strategy you developed at the outset of the process.
Being in tune to the needs of the other party will ensure that a good negotiating environment is created. Put forward a good faith effort to ensure that everybody’s needs are met and that an agreement is reached that is fair to all concerned.
Be very reluctant to change any contract terms
Except in extraordinary circumstances, changing the contract terms is not a good idea. Once negotiations are re-opened for any reason, unforeseen difficulties could easily flow from doing so. Rule of thumb: Don’t do it.
Of course, there is an element of reasonableness and self-preservation that can’t be overlooked. For instance, if a slight extension is required to remove a subject condition, it probably makes good sense to grant the extension.
It is generally advisable that direct contact between buyer and seller should be discouraged.
No matter how nicely and innocently many of these little conversations have started out, they led to many unnecessary disagreements between the parties and have jeopardized or killed many deals that would otherwise have completed.
Don’t try to sell an empty house
Studies have conclusively shown that people are willing to pay less for the exact same house when the only difference is if it is furnished or not. The empty house is worth less, at least in the eyes of the purchaser. .
Ideally, sell the house before it is time to leave. If this isn’t possible, investigate any viable option to avoid trying to sell the house when it is empty. It does not need to be fully furnished to look appealing, but it should not look empty or abandoned, where it sends out unconscious signals that the seller is in trouble or desperate enough to take any offer.
Go to a few builder’s show homes for ideas that you could use to present your house in the best light. If necessary, paying a consultation fee to a staging specialist will repay itself many times over.
Get Good Representation
Not all Realtors are the same. You can make a big mistake by hiring the wrong person for the job.
