Article by Peter O’Malley, author and Real Estate Agent.
How to get a rapid market response to your home.
To put a property on the market takes effort. There is the effort in selecting the agent and marketing strategy, effort to prepare and present the property and then the effort to keep the presentation A1 throughout the campaign. It is demoralising when you go to this effort and don’t even get an offer.
It is not that you would simply accept any offer just to be done with it. An offer provides you with some market feedback, it provides you with the option of potentially selling. At least someone likes the home enough to try and buy it. At least you can say no to a buyer instead of 10 parties walking through each week or dozens inspecting it online (which these days is almost the equivalent of a physical inspection) saying, “thanks but no thanks” to your home.
Pricing to sell is putting a number or pricing strategy in place that will attract buyers.
Selling in the current environment can be stressful, it is unpredictable and in some cases, it is still even highly rewarding for the seller.
In all circumstances though, what the seller really wants is an instant reaction from the market place.
“Good, bad or indifferent, let us know where our home rests in the market, but we don’t want a protracted campaign.”
“Once the offers roll in, we can then decide whether we are going to stay or sell.”
Internet Marketing
The good news is the internet has made selling real estate as close to instant as it is ever likely to be in. Yes, even in a flat market.
Once your property is listed on the main media websites, the agent’s respective site, emailed to the databases and a signboard is erected, you will have covered 95% of the potential market in around a week.
Based on the advertisement and the value offering, buyers decide to inspect or not inspect.
What comes next is an instant reaction. A reaction to how the market views the value proposition of your property within the current market. What happened with the house down the road a few months ago is of no consequence to the buyers looking to buy today. They are assessing your home against the other homes that are currently listed on the market. When stock levels swell, buyers are faced with choice.
No reaction is still a reaction. Buyers vote with their feet.
Given the internet is so powerful and dominant in its reach, embrace early interest don’t resist it. The opposite is more confronting than early interest.
No reaction is still an instant reaction.
No interest is feedback. It is feedback that you may not wish to confront, but it is feedback. Buyers vote with their feet. If they are not turning up to enquire, turning up to inspect and turning up to offer, they are providing you with feedback through silence. This is the hardest feedback to accept because nothing gets said. The buyers whisper to themselves that they prefer one down the road and move on – whilst you wait.
Read the Play
If you are on the market and buyers are either inspecting online or in person, but not expressing any further interest, you need to “read the play”.
Once your marketing is set right and genuine buyers have seen your home, if you don’t have an offer or two to consider, either the agent cannot sell or the buyers are finding better value elsewhere.
Throwing rocks at the agent is easy, and sometimes it makes you feel better. But in most cases it won’t sell your home. Changing agents as many people do in a slow market pushes your conundrum from one firm to another. The listing moves and so does the dilemma.
In reading the play, you don’t have to simply drop the price. If having assessed the market winds you feel that your desired price is unachievable, don’t allow your property to languish on the market unsold. Move to plan B.
Plan A for most people is “sell for a price that works” for us. That is an easy plan to formulate, sometimes it is harder to execute. Also, begin thinking about plan B prior to going on the market. Plan B might be waiting for a better market, it may involve renovations to unlock hidden value, it could involve leasing the property for 12 months or you may decide to adjust your price to where the current batch of buyers are interested.
Plan B should never be a strategy of simply leaving the property sitting on the market month after month. After a certain point in time, you are not advertising the property you are advertising the fact it has still not sold.
Very rarely does a seller that spends month after month resisting the market feedback suddenly find a buyer at the desired price.
Price to sell
Pricing to sell will usually bring the campaign to a rapid conclusion if done correctly. Pricing to sell does not involve the seller naming their number though. Pricing to sell is putting a number or pricing strategy in place that will attract buyers. Price attracts or repels. In pricing to sell, you need your agent to guide you. This takes enormous trust on behalf of the seller. Trust on two fronts.
Firstly, you trust the agent’s integrity. The agent will do the right thing by you as the seller. Secondly you trust their competence. Being a nice person does not qualify someone as a competent real estate salesperson. The industry has been flooded with agents during the boom years. Many are nice and mean well, but are they competent enough to handle the fluctuations of the current environment?
As a seller, you need to set your pricing strategy with an agent that you trust on two levels, in order to attract buyers and negotiate the best possible price for you home in the current market.
Article by Peter O’Malley.