How to adapt and compete in changing real estate markets
Real estate agents have to keep business moving. The job of a real estate agent is to keep the market moving, ensuring a steady flow of income, although are they doing the best job that they can for you, the person who wants to sell the home. In an ever changing market, each individual needs to take the necessary action to decide how to adapt in a changing market, to realize the best price that they can possibly get for their home. Real estate agents during slump will give unrealistically low estimations of price in the hope that they can sell your home. However, this doesn’t mean that you cannot sell independently of real estate agents.
Check out how your house stands against competition.
Before putting your home on the market, be aware of local trends in house sales. Talking to those that have moved recently may help as they will be aware of what is happening in the real estate business, and how smoothly and quickly sales are being effected. Look at newspapers and see what people are offering the buying public and how your home compares with what is on the market. Compare house styles, age, condition, what heating homes have, whether the houses offer exactly the same as you are offering in the way of space and comfort.
Armed with this information, take a realistic look at your home in comparison with what is on the market. Be brutally honest with yourself, because although the home may have been a center for your family and may have sentimental value to you, that value is not reflected in the sales process, and distancing yourself from seeing the house as anything but a commodity will detract you from making the improvements you need to make in order to sell your home.
Current styles.
Having looked at other houses on the market, and having an idea of the kind of house you want to buy, the information you glean will help you decide what is the most current style in house presentation. As a potential seller and buyer, you will have seen presentation yourself, and will also have experience of how that presentation tempted or otherwise. Buyers need tempting. A house purchase is probably the biggest purchase that anyone will make in their lives, and the presentation of your home is important.
Decoration.
If you are able to present neutral decoration that potential buyers can imagine as a blank landscape in which they can make their own personal mark, this works a lot better than busy decoration mixed with furniture colors, textures, and a mixture of color clashes that takes the buyers eye away from the potential that your home is offering them. Painting is relatively cheap but freshens up the whole house, so that you can present it in impeccable order.
Work through each room, and neutralize the character of those rooms, taking out all unnecessary clutter, and minimizing furniture and personal effects, putting these into temporary storage facilities. What this does is create the impression of space as opposed to cluttered rooms that look like they can be outgrown easily, and cause buyers to wonder if all their furnishings will fit.
Presentation.
Before asking real estate agents around to give you a valuation of your home, ensure that each room is presentable. Here, odors really do give a bad first impression, and this is particularly relevant when you have pets, or sanitary areas within the house that are not spotless. Re-caulking the bathtub and shower with fresh caulk is a great and very inexpensive way to present those areas in a good light. Replacing carpet in bathrooms with strip wood flooring or lino gives a fresh look, as in an area such as a bathroom, carpet often looks tired and dirty.
Kitchen areas that are minimized give the impression of plenty of space, whereas cluttered worktops gives the opposite impression, putting buyers off because they cannot imagine living in such clutter.
Outside approaches to the house should be paid attention to, windows cleaned, steps dressed to look inviting, and front gardens tidied to make the house look well looked after and cared for. Now is the time also to do those little niggling repairs that you have put off for so long, because viewers will notice, and if the house is in a bad state of repairs, will have to balance the cost of potential repairs against the price offered to you for your home.
Getting the price right.
Do ask several agents, on a non committal basis, to value your home, and then take a look at the cross section of prices that they give you. These will vary and here a certain amount of professional guesswork is involved, as each real estate agent has their own experience to back up what they see as a fitting price. If the market is in a slump, chances are they will under-value, and you can begin negotiations at a price a little in excess of the average of the real estate agents prices.
Private advertising.
Before going to the expense of employing agents, do look into which newspapers are the most successful in advertising your home. Also see if there are on line websites that advertise homes for sale in your area, choosing those with the most prominence as potentials for advertising. Have plenty of photographs ready in digital form as well as in photo form, so that you are able to send them to potential buyers.
Real estate agents.
If you employ real estate agents, do check what their fees will be and be careful to look out for clauses that prohibit you from advertising with other agents. These increase the cost of selling your home. Before you actually employ real estate agents, do a bit of homework, and see which offices get the most customers, which have their offices in predominant placements, and who has the most sold signs locally. Sold signs are a good indication that they are doing their job even though there may be a slump.
Offers.
When offers are made on the property be careful not to dismiss offers that seem low. Bear in mind that there is a slump and try and work out in advance what price you need to achieve in order to move on. Here, being realistic rather than idealistic works better, as you cannot dictate what prices will be offered. If you have many visits, wait before accepting one offer, in case another follows closely behind.
If agents are presenting your house for sale and you are paying them a fee to do so, make sure that the particulars that they give to prospective purchasers are well laid out, that the photographs are a good representation of your home. Don’t be shy about offering your own photographs, or telephoning them for news. Ask them what they are doing in an effort to sell your home, and keep a tally of how active the interest is, because there are always other agents that you can try if one agent fails you, though do make sure you take your home off the books of one agent before employing another.
Slumps in housing markets don’t mean that you have to take a loss. With good presentation, research of the market and current trends, decoration and presentation of your home in the best possible light, good use of advertising and/or agents, you can sell that home.