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Thread summary:

How to sell home in metro Atlanta, home selling techniques, lowering price, increasing commission, Atlanta real estate market, how to sell home quickly

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Old 02-07-2009, 01:44 PM
 
Location: Atlanta/Decatur/Emory area
1,320 posts, read 4,262,527 times
Reputation: 501

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I don't get it either. Why does anyone choose an agent without an effective marketing plan to advertise their house? Marketing is absolutely vital right now and most agents are cutting waaayyy back on marketing because they simply can't afford it. But you can't expect a house to sell without it so sellers really have to make sure they know exactly what kind of marketing their agent will provide and when. It's kind of hard to feel too sorry for people who say their house isn't selling if they didn't even go to the trouble of making sure their agent would at least put pictures in FMLS! Of course a lot of those same listings are overpriced and not in good condition, so go figure.
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Old 02-08-2009, 05:42 AM
 
56 posts, read 175,792 times
Reputation: 23
Quote:
Originally Posted by IntownHomes247 View Post
I'm working on a deal right now, where my buyer saw a new listing pop up its first day on the market. We went and looked at it and put in an offer the next day. A second offer came in the same day so we were in a multiple offer situation. I'm hopeful we'll get the house -- looks like the seller will get more than 98% of list price and be off the market in under a week.

...

You CAN still sell quickly in this market, unless your house has a major objection (busy street, railroad or creek on the property, bad floorplan, etc.). You have to make the house look better than any other comparable house, price it better than any other comparable house, make it as convenient to show as possible, and hire an agent who will market it like crazy from the first day.
Once again, Intownhomes gives sage advice. We just lost out on a nice house that has been on the market for only a few days. The seller just informed us that she already has received a full-price offer. Our budget prohibits us from going any higher--or we would try to beat that offer.

Almost every other house in our price range has a "major objection" and has been on the market for a while. For example, we saw one City of Decatur home with a terrible floorplan AND on a creek AND the next door neighbor had two goats in the backyard!

We would expect none of those problems at the seller's asking price--a little under $500K. Maybe that's the price of teardowns in CoD and I'm just unrealistic as a buyer. But what about the creek and the goats???!!!

Anyway, the original poster should follow the advice given in this thread.
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Old 02-08-2009, 11:47 PM
 
369 posts, read 1,141,765 times
Reputation: 106
We sold our house last spring in 6 days, for 98% of asking price. There were houses in our neighborhood that had been on the market for months, and they are still on the market or the sellers gave up.

Here's what we did:

1) Got rid of all the junk we didn't need. Garage sale, charity pickups, give to the neighbors, trash, etc.

2) Put a bunch of other junk in storage. The $40/month for a storage building was probably the best investment we have ever made. We put anything into storage that looked dingy or old, or added clutter.

3) Painted. We did a lot of touch up painting and repainted a couple of rooms that needed it. The exterior had been recently painted, but we got some extra caulking done and some touching up done just to make the exterior sparkle. We had the garage painted, walls, floors, garage door interior, and ceiling, and we put 90% of the garage junk in storage. The garage sparkled and our cars looked like they were sitting in a showroom.

4) Replaced every bulb in the house with the brightest bulb we thought would not cause a fire hazard. Even if a bulb is not burned out if it is old it will not look great because of aging and dirt.

5) Scrubbed every inch of every light fixture in the house. Light fixtures need to sparkle, and the globes need to be absolutely clean so maximum light gets through. We also replaced some light fixtures that looked out of date or just dull.

6) Spruced up the yard. We trimmed every bush to a nice shape, made sure no bush was blocking any window light, had trees and branches that needed it trimmed. I spent over $200 on pine straw alone, making every island in the yard look freshly mulched. I got a completely free load of wood chips from a tree cutter and put a nice new layer of the wood chips under the swing set. I even touched up the stain on the swing set to make it look brand new. We put out planters with bright flowers by the entryways and had the front walk (which was fairly new to begin with) pressure-washed.

7) Hired a home inspector for a pre-inspection to found out about any repairs that might come up in an inspection and fixed any that might look bad on a report and didn't cost a lot. Replaced the furnace filters with brand new top-of-the-line filters, which we would never use on a regular basis, but look great if somebody checks.

8) Restaged very room in the house to make them look roomier and more appealing. I already described getting all junk out of the house, but next we rearranged furniture in every room and switched furniture around between rooms to get the best possible appearance.

9) The house was mostly hardwood floors and they were in good shape, but we put down a fresh layer of urethane on them to make them really shine. The carpeted rooms had fairly new carpet, otherwise we would have cleaned or replaced it as well. Nothing makes a house look dingier than old carpet.

10) We took down all family photos and other non-neutral items. No sports posters, memoribilia, or anything personal or possibly off-putting were left up. You never know what might turn off a buyer, so the safe thing is to use only neutral wall decor like landscapes, mirrors, abstracts, still lifes, etc.

11) We removed everything non-decorative from every countertop, desk, table, dresser, etc. Not even the alarm clocks, toasters, and toothbrush holders were left out for showings. These can easily be stashed in cabinets for showings. If you don't have enough space to stash these things, then you haven't cleared out enough junk.

12) We searched through internet listings and found the agents who had done the best job of presenting their listings. We looked at the photos, the descriptions, and the virtual tours. We ruled out any agent who had not been 100% meticulous at making these look great. Then we looked for other signs the agents were actively marketing. Did they have ads in the paper? Did we see directional signs for their listings? Did they have other houses on the market in our area? Did they hold open houses? We drove by their current listings and checked them out - did they have an attractive sign? Did they have a brochure box? If so, was the brochure box stocked? If so, were the brochures attractive and informative? We called some of the top prospects - did they respond quickly and courteously to inquires? Did the actual agent call back, or an 2nd-string flunky? Did they give appealing answers to questions about the property? Were they knowledgeable and trustworthy?

13) Then we scheduled our top 3 choices for listing agent for an interview. This gave the agents the opportunity to win the listing for our house, and gave us another opportunity to assess their marketing skills. If they couldn't sell themselves, we knew they wouldn't be much good at selling our house. The real estate interviews were also an opportunity to see reactions to the house from outsiders. In our case, they all asked if the house had been staged professionally. Even so, each one had one or two suggestions or observations that could improve our house's marketability. For each real estate agent interview, we put the house into showing condition: every light in the house on, every window letting in maximum light, dog out of sight at a neighbors house, kids out of sight at a relatives house, fresh flowers in vases, fresh baked cookies in the kitchen, complete house cleaning, and a complete walk-through of interior and exterior to make sure things were ready for showing. One agent took us to see comparably priced properties in our area - this was a very valuable addition to our understanding of the market (we had already been to open houses as well).

14) We did a LOT of research to try to determine the correct price for our house. This has to be done from a cold, hard numbers perspective. What you paid, what you want to get out, your amount of equity, what your neighbor got a year ago, NONE of that matters. What matters is what things are selling for now, and how the competition is priced now. We looked at the comparable sales in the neighborhood for the previous 3 months only. We looked at current pricing in our neighborhood and competing neighborhoods. We looked at last 3 months solds in nearby neighborhoods. Then we picked a reasonable price close to true market value. We didn't pick a bargain basement price - that is dangerous because it attracts lowballing vultures and makes the house appear suspect. We also didn't pick a lofty, unrealistic price, hoping for a sucker to come along and overpay - we knew that the first few weeks on the market are critical, and overpricing could turn off the pool of buyers who would be interested in our new listing. We also considered the suggested pricing and rationale of the real estate agents we interviewed. These actually solidified our pricing estimate, because one realtor recommended a price below ours, saying a low price was needed to sell in the tough market, another realtor recommended a high price, probably hoping to get our listing by making us think such a high price was realistic, and the third agent came up with a pricing similar to ours through similar market research.

15) Our final step was For Sale By Owner. We planned to have our house For Sale By Owner for 2 weeks prior to listing with our top agent choice. We really didn't expect to sell the house during this period. We viewed it as a "soft opening" we could use to get any kinks out and assess buyer reactions. When the house is listed, it can be shown at any time and you can't be there to see what happens, but by using FSBO, we showed the house ourselves and got to see what the customers looked at, what they noticed, the kinds of questions they asked. We held an open house, to bring in "guinea pigs" for observation, knowing full well that it was highly unlikely that a buyer would wander in to an open house.

16) As part of our FSBO, we put a flyer in the mailbox of every house in our neighborhood, letting them know that our house would soon be listed for sale by a real estate agent, but that we wanted to give them first shot in case they had any friends or family who might be interested in the neighborhood. Our flyer looked very similar to the best, most appealing real estate agent flyer we found during our research. It gave the basic facts of the house, a detailed description, and had multiple color photographs of the most important views of the house. We used the same pricing for the house we would use if we had listed it, our best estimate of the fair market value, with a little extra to give some negotiating room.

17) As I said, we fully expected to list with an agent, and intended the FSBO stage only for additional research. However, our flyers to the neighbors paid off, as one of the neighbors had a colleague who was interested in the neighborhood. We had a contract from the buyer (who had an agent, who got normal selling agent commission) within 6 days of putting the house up FSBO. We saved on listing commission and it made the price negotiations go smoothly, since we had much more cushion than we otherwise would have.
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Old 02-09-2009, 07:04 AM
 
17 posts, read 79,514 times
Reputation: 10
my house sold in ~3 months....i didn't lower the price very much from the original listing price (however my listing price was $10K less than the exact floorplan in my neighborhood w/ less upgrades than my house). what i did have to do that ended up sucking more from the profits than I expected was pay for a "rate buy down" for the buyer. i also paid all closing costs. luckily, i still came out with enough downpayment for the house I already had an offer on (which is why i accommodated the rate buy down) and i had some extra cash after that. i had been in my house for almost 6 years, so long enough for some appreciation, despite the down market.

i did negotiate with the agent to cut some of the commission, so that worked out in my favor.

honestly though, i ended up selling my own house because after i found my "dream house" i took it upon myself to hang up flyers everywhere (coffee shops,etc) in the near area & I sent out an email to everyone i knew asking if they knew anyone interested in house buying to send them my way. a friend had a work colleage who came by that night & put in an offer the next day. the first & only offer I got despite LOTS of showings & reported interest. thank goodness it all worked out!!
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Old 02-10-2009, 06:33 PM
 
9,471 posts, read 9,327,593 times
Reputation: 8177
Default Excellent Advice

Quote:
Originally Posted by mm42 View Post
We sold our house last spring in 6 days, for 98% of asking price. There were houses in our neighborhood that had been on the market for months, and they are still on the market or the sellers gave up.

Here's what we did:

1) Got rid of all the junk we didn't need. Garage sale, charity pickups, give to the neighbors, trash, etc.

2) Put a bunch of other junk in storage. The $40/month for a storage building was probably the best investment we have ever made. We put anything into storage that looked dingy or old, or added clutter.

3) Painted. We did a lot of touch up painting and repainted a couple of rooms that needed it. The exterior had been recently painted, but we got some extra caulking done and some touching up done just to make the exterior sparkle. We had the garage painted, walls, floors, garage door interior, and ceiling, and we put 90% of the garage junk in storage. The garage sparkled and our cars looked like they were sitting in a showroom.

4) Replaced every bulb in the house with the brightest bulb we thought would not cause a fire hazard. Even if a bulb is not burned out if it is old it will not look great because of aging and dirt.

5) Scrubbed every inch of every light fixture in the house. Light fixtures need to sparkle, and the globes need to be absolutely clean so maximum light gets through. We also replaced some light fixtures that looked out of date or just dull.

6) Spruced up the yard. We trimmed every bush to a nice shape, made sure no bush was blocking any window light, had trees and branches that needed it trimmed. I spent over $200 on pine straw alone, making every island in the yard look freshly mulched. I got a completely free load of wood chips from a tree cutter and put a nice new layer of the wood chips under the swing set. I even touched up the stain on the swing set to make it look brand new. We put out planters with bright flowers by the entryways and had the front walk (which was fairly new to begin with) pressure-washed.

7) Hired a home inspector for a pre-inspection to found out about any repairs that might come up in an inspection and fixed any that might look bad on a report and didn't cost a lot. Replaced the furnace filters with brand new top-of-the-line filters, which we would never use on a regular basis, but look great if somebody checks.

8) Restaged very room in the house to make them look roomier and more appealing. I already described getting all junk out of the house, but next we rearranged furniture in every room and switched furniture around between rooms to get the best possible appearance.

9) The house was mostly hardwood floors and they were in good shape, but we put down a fresh layer of urethane on them to make them really shine. The carpeted rooms had fairly new carpet, otherwise we would have cleaned or replaced it as well. Nothing makes a house look dingier than old carpet.

10) We took down all family photos and other non-neutral items. No sports posters, memoribilia, or anything personal or possibly off-putting were left up. You never know what might turn off a buyer, so the safe thing is to use only neutral wall decor like landscapes, mirrors, abstracts, still lifes, etc.

11) We removed everything non-decorative from every countertop, desk, table, dresser, etc. Not even the alarm clocks, toasters, and toothbrush holders were left out for showings. These can easily be stashed in cabinets for showings. If you don't have enough space to stash these things, then you haven't cleared out enough junk.

12) We searched through internet listings and found the agents who had done the best job of presenting their listings. We looked at the photos, the descriptions, and the virtual tours. We ruled out any agent who had not been 100% meticulous at making these look great. Then we looked for other signs the agents were actively marketing. Did they have ads in the paper? Did we see directional signs for their listings? Did they have other houses on the market in our area? Did they hold open houses? We drove by their current listings and checked them out - did they have an attractive sign? Did they have a brochure box? If so, was the brochure box stocked? If so, were the brochures attractive and informative? We called some of the top prospects - did they respond quickly and courteously to inquires? Did the actual agent call back, or an 2nd-string flunky? Did they give appealing answers to questions about the property? Were they knowledgeable and trustworthy?

13) Then we scheduled our top 3 choices for listing agent for an interview. This gave the agents the opportunity to win the listing for our house, and gave us another opportunity to assess their marketing skills. If they couldn't sell themselves, we knew they wouldn't be much good at selling our house. The real estate interviews were also an opportunity to see reactions to the house from outsiders. In our case, they all asked if the house had been staged professionally. Even so, each one had one or two suggestions or observations that could improve our house's marketability. For each real estate agent interview, we put the house into showing condition: every light in the house on, every window letting in maximum light, dog out of sight at a neighbors house, kids out of sight at a relatives house, fresh flowers in vases, fresh baked cookies in the kitchen, complete house cleaning, and a complete walk-through of interior and exterior to make sure things were ready for showing. One agent took us to see comparably priced properties in our area - this was a very valuable addition to our understanding of the market (we had already been to open houses as well).

14) We did a LOT of research to try to determine the correct price for our house. This has to be done from a cold, hard numbers perspective. What you paid, what you want to get out, your amount of equity, what your neighbor got a year ago, NONE of that matters. What matters is what things are selling for now, and how the competition is priced now. We looked at the comparable sales in the neighborhood for the previous 3 months only. We looked at current pricing in our neighborhood and competing neighborhoods. We looked at last 3 months solds in nearby neighborhoods. Then we picked a reasonable price close to true market value. We didn't pick a bargain basement price - that is dangerous because it attracts lowballing vultures and makes the house appear suspect. We also didn't pick a lofty, unrealistic price, hoping for a sucker to come along and overpay - we knew that the first few weeks on the market are critical, and overpricing could turn off the pool of buyers who would be interested in our new listing. We also considered the suggested pricing and rationale of the real estate agents we interviewed. These actually solidified our pricing estimate, because one realtor recommended a price below ours, saying a low price was needed to sell in the tough market, another realtor recommended a high price, probably hoping to get our listing by making us think such a high price was realistic, and the third agent came up with a pricing similar to ours through similar market research.

15) Our final step was For Sale By Owner. We planned to have our house For Sale By Owner for 2 weeks prior to listing with our top agent choice. We really didn't expect to sell the house during this period. We viewed it as a "soft opening" we could use to get any kinks out and assess buyer reactions. When the house is listed, it can be shown at any time and you can't be there to see what happens, but by using FSBO, we showed the house ourselves and got to see what the customers looked at, what they noticed, the kinds of questions they asked. We held an open house, to bring in "guinea pigs" for observation, knowing full well that it was highly unlikely that a buyer would wander in to an open house.

16) As part of our FSBO, we put a flyer in the mailbox of every house in our neighborhood, letting them know that our house would soon be listed for sale by a real estate agent, but that we wanted to give them first shot in case they had any friends or family who might be interested in the neighborhood. Our flyer looked very similar to the best, most appealing real estate agent flyer we found during our research. It gave the basic facts of the house, a detailed description, and had multiple color photographs of the most important views of the house. We used the same pricing for the house we would use if we had listed it, our best estimate of the fair market value, with a little extra to give some negotiating room.

17) As I said, we fully expected to list with an agent, and intended the FSBO stage only for additional research. However, our flyers to the neighbors paid off, as one of the neighbors had a colleague who was interested in the neighborhood. We had a contract from the buyer (who had an agent, who got normal selling agent commission) within 6 days of putting the house up FSBO. We saved on listing commission and it made the price negotiations go smoothly, since we had much more cushion than we otherwise would have.
You are so right on target about what needs to be done to a home to make it sell. The only thing I'd add is to wash the windows and window sills, inside and out, to make them sparkle.
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