How to sell your home in a buyer’s market
Authored by: consumerreports.org - Published in: consumerreports.org
Created on: 2008-03-01
Direct Link: ConsumerReports.org
If you’re trying to sell a home in the current overstocked real-estate market, you already know that the days of white-hot bidding wars and quick-flipped condos are long gone. The National Association of Realtors says that 2008 home sales will be the lowest since 2002. And early numbers are bearing that out. Nationwide, home sales are down 24 percent from last year, while home prices have dropped 8.2 percent. If that weren’t worrisome enough, the U.S. housing inventory remains bloated and the subprime mortgage crisis has made it tougher for buyers to secure loans.
To make a deal in this market, experts say, sellers need to set the right price and hone their negotiating skills. "Pricing is the single most important thing to get right," says Laura B. Kopple, a real-estate broker in Venice, Fla. "There are too many similar properties out there, so you need aggressive pricing, including incentives. If a home is priced where it should be and it’s appealing, it’s only a matter of time before it sells."
How can you make your home stand out from all the others on the market? Real-estate specialists offer the following tips:
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Getting the most out of home staging
Authored by: SELLING TIPS BY ELLEN JAMES MARTIN - Published in: Chicago Tribune
Created on: 2008-07-25
A Julea Joseph staged dining room is bright and airy so buyers can better imagine how
their furniture will appear in the room.
They were a retired couple in their early 60s who fled an expensive city in favor of a tranquil town in a lower-cost state. They were living in a rental apartment but were desperate to sell their stucco cottage in the city to free up funds to buy a modest place in the new area.
Unfortunately, the cottage sat unsold for two months without so much as a nibble from a potential buyer. Instead of slashing their price — already set at market value for the neighborhood — they took their listing agent's advice and hired a "home stager" to present their place in the best possible light.
"The cottage looked dark and dingy. So it had no appeal — especially in a neighborhood with a sea of For Sale signs and better houses to choose from. My goal was to make it the most attractive place in the whole area," says Michelle Minch.
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Curb Appeal Helps A Home Sell Faster, Making It Easier To Start Walking, Prius Price Jumps
Authored by: Kristen Miranda - Published in: wbtv.com
Created on: 2008-07-28
Curb Appeal Helps A Home Sell Faster, Making It Easier To Start Walking, Prius Price Jumps
Posted: July 28, 2008 12:54 PM
Updated: July 28, 2008 03:04 PM
There's the 3-second rule, and the 30-second rule and both impact how quickly you sell your house.
Potential buyers will give your house 3 seconds in a photo and 30 seconds in person to decide if they like it. Which means you have to impress, fast.
Home staging, whether you hire someone, or do it yourself is key. Statistics show a staged home sells, on average, in 33 days and a non-staged home sells in 166 days.
We hear most about getting the inside ready. No clutter, neutral colors, as little personal effects as possible.
However, staging starts on the outside. That's the first impression, and its easy to make it a good one.
Marcyne Touchton, an accredited home staging expert tells us, "Adding color, annuals, remulching, putting in new pine straw it all adds curb appeal."
Nobody wants to live in the ugliest house on the block, she says.
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Home Staging: Stage it to sell it
Authored by: Jenifer D. Braun - Published in: The Star-Ledger
Created on: 2008-05-23
Once upon a time, getting a house ready for sale meant dusting the furniture, starting to pack and maybe putting cookies in the oven when a buyer dropped in.
These days, that's not nearly enough.
In a cooling real estate market, a practice called "home staging" is gaining adherents among realtors and sellers, and creating a whole new class of design professionals.
Originally embraced on the West Coast more than a decade ago, home staging essentially means redecorating your home so that it will appeal not to you, but to the largest number of potential buyers. And while you can do it yourself, you can also call in a stager who does this for a living -- and who can see your home with fresh eyes.
"We take the space you live in everyday and we reorganize it so it looks like you're having the biggest party you ever had," says Linda Russell, who runs a seven-year-old staging company called House Dressing in Montclair (housedressing.info) "Decorating is very personal," says Brit Brown, owner of Stage Appeal NJ in Chester (stageappealnj.com), and the president of the two-year-old Central Jersey Chapter of the International Association of Home Staging Professionals (IAHSP), which currently has about 22 members.
"When you decorate a home, it's according to your personal taste. When you stage it, you make it neutral so it appeals to everybody who walks through."
Having your home staged can cost surprisingly little -- most stagers offer a consultation service that includes their advice on all the steps you need to take to make your house more marketable, for $200-$300. Or, you can ask them to do the work for you -- for about $350 per room, they'll clean out the closets, rearrange furniture and artfully display vases, artwork and area rugs from their own inventory around the house. It adds up to about $1200 to $2000 stage an entire four bedroom house.
That's much less, stagers point out, than reducing the home's sale price by $10,000 if it fails to sell in the first month or so on the market -- which these days, with a huge "inventory" of houses on the market, is increasingly likely. (Stagedhomes.com, the website of Barb Schwarz, the West Coast realtor who trademarked the term "home staging," did a study in 2007 that indicated that staged homes sold in 31 days, compared to 160 days for non-staged homes.)
Follow the link to read more..
http://www.nj.com/homegarden/design/index.ssf/2008/05/home_staging_stage_it_to_sell.html
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Selling Your House in a Buyers Market
It certainly isn't easy, but there are definitely steps you can take to make it easier, and Early Show money maven Ray Martin spells them out in this column.
As the supply of homes for sale continues to grow throughout the U.S., hopes that the spring and summer selling season will see a rebound are dwindling. Many experts have declared that any meaningful rebound might begin next year. Home prices continue to decline in many areas, fueled by tight lending standards and a rising supply of houses on the market. It' been a long time since home sellers have faced these conditions -- in fact, many homeowners looking to sell are in uncharted waters.
Face the New Reality -- It's a Buyers' Market
Homeowners who want to sell have a choice: sell in the current market, or wait until later, when market conditions improve. Of course, the latter assumes they can wait. But if you are determined to sell, you need to forget about the real estate market of just a few years ago and face the new reality in many real regions -- it's a buyers' market, and you will be competing with a growing supply of motivated sellers to get buyers interested in your house.
Real estate professionals say that, when trying to sell your home in a buyers' market, the two most important factors, after location, are price and condition. I'll add flexibility. Buyers know real estate prices ran up far too much during the last several years of the real estate boom, and just because you may have paid too much for your home doesn't mean buyers think they should have to pay to bail you out. With this in mind, here are some of the strategies experienced realtors typically advise to help sell a house in a buyers' market:
Price It Right: Real estate pros say the key to selling a house is to “price it right.” Set the price at what you can get, not what you think it's worth. The fact of a sellers market is that it doesn't matter what you or your realtor think your house is worth -- the only thing that matters is what a buyer is willing to pay. You don't want to over-price your house, because buyers ignore it and your listing will lose its freshness and appeal, not to mention the uncompensated effort of keeping the home spotless during the showings. Also, the “original listing price” and “current asking price” are on your home's Multiple Listing Service (MLS) listing; if you do not show some decline from the original offering price, some buyers will see it as a sign you have unreasonable expectations of what you can fetch for your home. Sellers fear pricing too low and leaving money on the table, but there is little danger of this. If a home is priced too low, far below the competition, you should receive multiple offers that will drive up the price to fair market value.
Research Local Market: The best way to know if your home is priced fairly relative to comparable houses for sale is to compare your asking price to a comprehensive market analysis. This is the first step before you list your house. Get the listings of the houses in your area, and the price range. Look at the listing for every comparable home that is or was listed in your neighborhood over the past six months. Compare similar properties, make adjustments for locations, age, upgrades and lot sizes. and come up with a range of values. Also, get a list of the recent sales prices and the original listing prices of comparable houses in the area. You can track this down on web sites such as www.zillow.com , www.realtor.com, and/or ask a local realtor to do it for you.
Contact Information:
Brighton, MA
Phone: 617 407-3961
E-Mail Mary@stagetosell.org
www.Stagetosell.org
Stage To Sell By Mary
