The reasons why some homes sell and others don’t often have nothing to do with the home or the market. In reality, a home that sits unsold may be one of the more desirable properties for sale, with the lack of buyer activity usually reflecting a problem in one or more of these four major areas:
- Marketing
- Pricing
- Condition of Your Home
- Teamwork/Accountability
One of the first steps in your marketing plan involves finding an agent who will best represent you. When interviewing agents, test and compare their knowledge and ask each to demonstrate how they will market your home to buyers. In fact, ask them point blank how they will attract buyers to view your home and how many buyers they’re working with right now. Compare, too, how much money each spends on advertising the homes s/he lists, in what media (online, newspaper, magazine, etc.) and the effectiveness of one medium over the other. Remember, it’s not just how much they spend, but how they spend it. To be competitive in today’s marketplace, agents who use new and innovative, non-traditional marketing approaches are the ones who are getting more homes sold fast and for top dollar.
The “right” price depends on market conditions, competition and the condition of your home. Pricing it too high is as dangerous as pricing it too low. If your home doesn’t compare favorably with others in the price range you’ve set, you won’t be taken seriously by prospects or agents.
Is your house someone else’s idea of a dream home? When buyers enter are they inspired? Do they think, “I love this house!” Remember, the decision to buy a home is based on emotion, not logic.
Your home is a major financial investment, and your relationship with your Realtor® should be a full partnership where your needs and wishes are heard, and you receive detailed and dependable feedback on the progress of your sale. Perhaps most importantly, you need to work with a Realtor® who is committed to being accountable to you and who will shoulder the risk on the outcome of your home sale.
You see, in most cases, there is no penalty or consequence if the Realtor® doesn’t perform as s/he promised. You owe it to yourself to select an agent who GUARANTEES his/her performance in writing.
This accountability simply doesn’t exist in most Realtor®/Client relationships. If your home doesn’t sell during the listing period, your only recourse is to start the process all over again. We give you a commitment in writing that if your home doesn’t sell within the timeframe promised, we’ll put our money where our mouth is. If your home sits on the market for longer than the promised timeframe we agreed on, we will continue to market your home aggressively but pay you a previously agreed cash amount, out of our own pocket, upon its sale.