If you have your house on the market at the moment and it isn’t selling, it’s probably no consolation to know that you have plenty of company. There are a zillion homes for sale around San Diego County and not enough buyers to purchase them. Sellers are getting frustrated, agents are running and hiding from their angry clients and guys like me are writing about the whole thing. I know what you’re thinking “So, smart guy… tell me something I don’t know!”
The other day I received a piece of marketing stuff from a lender friend of mine who asked me what I thought of it. It was a list of the top 20 things a seller should do in order to sell the house quicker. It was kind of like reading David Letterman’s top ten and just about as useful. Everything was listed from cleaning up the house to buttering up the buyers. Even the old “bake some cookies” trick was on the list. Now, don’t get me wrong, making the house presentable is always positive. But making a $500,000 house presentable will not get it to sell for $575,000 no matter how many cookies you bake.
Realtors have known what to do to get your house to sell for as long as people have been selling houses and they’ve been afraid to tell you for just as long. So, as your real estate dude, I’m going to step out on a limb and tell you the hard truth. The best and most effective thing a seller can do to sell the house is price it right. If you price it too high, it will sit. If you price it right at market value in this kind of market, it will sit. Without a competitive edge, your house will look like every other house in the price range. If you want to sell it, you have to get everyone’s attention focused on your house. You have to price it aggressively to get it ahead of the downward price curve. Do this and all of a sudden your house becomes “The Deal” in the minds of buyers and their attention focuses in your direction.
I know this is a hard pill to swallow and you may think its bologna. You may even be thinking I’ve gone bonkers, wacko, round the bend, cuckoo, bats in my belfry, nuts even to suggest that you drop your asking price. But, I sold three homes in August by using this strategy while other homes continue to sit. All three clients are thrilled. I should add that all three homes received multiple offers, we were able to start a bidding war and all three sold for more than the asking price. I can’t guarantee this will happen in your case, but you have a much better chance making it happen pricing your home aggressively than you do by having another open house and preheating the oven for yet another batch of cookies!
If your home isn’t selling, take heart. This market isn’t bad, it’s just different. The good thing is that while every market comes with its own problems, there is a strategy to deal with all of them.
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