How To Sell In a Buyers Market
The days of being able to put your house on the market, receive multiple offers, get more than the listing price, and accept an offer in a matter of just a few days or a week are over. We have been in a buyers market now for the last couple of years and it looks like it’s here to stay for a while longer, at least until the economy picks up and the real estate inventory finds balance.
Because interest rates are so low and there is such a huge amount of homes on the market, buyers can be very picky with what they are willing to purchase. Therefore a seller has to do everything they can to set their house apart from the rest.
Here are some helpful tips if you decide to sell your house:
Interview real estate agents. It’s vital that you have the right real estate agent working for you. You want to make sure you know the right questions to ask.
- What is their level of experience
- What is their marketing plan to sell your house
- What is their broker commission
- How much of the commission do they offer to the co-broker
- Will they be doing open houses and broker opens
- What is their availability
- What’s the average amount of time it takes their office to sell a home like yours
- Does their office belong to the multiple listing service (MLS)
- Will they be spending money on advertisement
- Will they aggressively call other real estate offices to promote your house
The agent interview is a very important part of the home selling process. You want to make sure you are working with an experienced real estate agent that has a marketing plan that has a proven history of success. You also want to make sure that your agent knows how to price your house.
A real estate agent will do what’s called a comparative market analysis (CMA) to show you how they came up with a listing price. The more the agent knows about appraisals the better, so you may also want to ask the real estate agent how much they know about appraisals. Some real estate agents also have an appraisal license.
Pricing your house right is critical. It should be priced just slightly above market value. You want to have a little room to negotiate but you don’t want it priced too high where it pushes potential buyers from even taking a look.
The worst thing you can do is over price your property. Many sellers think that it can’t hurt to over price their house because they have the attitude “I can always come down in price”. Well that is a myth. If a house if grossly over priced it will push buyers away. All you’re doing at that point is helping other sellers sell their house. And your going to make it so your house listing becomes stagnant. Once your house becomes a stagnant listing, it further hurts your chances of selling. Then your in a situation, when you do eventually sell your house, where you end up getting less than you could have had you listed it correctly from the beginning.
You want to hire a real estate agent that’s going to be aggressive, especially with the type of buyers market we are in right now. That means the agent should be promoting your house to all the other agents in the area, so those agents will hopefully show your house to their clients. Talk to the agent about their office’s policy on advertising and doing open houses and broker opens. You may not want open houses and broker opens in your house, but you definitely want your house advertised. Ask your agent if they are going to list your house on the MLS and other places like zillow.com, trulia. com, realtor.com, and other types of websites where your house can get more exposure.
There are other tips for selling your house that we will not cover in this post. For example, painting, cleaning, staging, etc.. If you hire the right real estate agent, that person will be able to guide you in the right direction. That’s why the focus of this post is centered on how to choose the right real estate agent.