Does anyone have any GOOD recent real estate sales stories? (Germantown: for sale, condo)

[FrankLaw]

I'm looking for something to grasp onto, here. We're putting our house on the market very soon, and I stay up nights in mortal fear that we're not going to be able to sell the place for months.

I'm prepared to accept less than what we want and wait for a couple of months, but I'm seeing properties that have been on the market for 100+ days (in some cases, 200+ days), and that's just frightening.

Does anyone have any good experiences to report from the past 6 months or so?

[mcfiddish]

We bought a house in November. We looked at about 30 houses, some of which were on the market for over a year. There's only one reason - they were priced way too high.

The house we bought had been on the market for 6 days. We thought was priced "fairly" ... There are buyers out there. If you price your house right, it will sell. Maybe go to some open houses or get your agent to take you to other houses that are on sale so you get a sense of how to price your house.

Good luck!

[TeamBenya]

I just put a house under contract that had been listed for 4 days. It came down to a simple fact that the house was well priced from the get-go and was perfect for what my buyers wanted.

The first 2 weeks a home is on the market is the single most active time frame for a home for multiple reasons. As long as you're priced correctly and marketed well, you shouldn't have any trouble.

Make sure that your agent is able to get all of the photos/virtual tours for your home up at the same time the listing goes active! It's very important to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward from the start!

[titaniummd]

Originally Posted by FrankLaw

I'm looking for something to grasp onto, here. We're putting our house on the market very soon, and I stay up nights in mortal fear that we're not going to be able to sell the place for months.

I'm prepared to accept less than what we want and wait for a couple of months, but I'm seeing properties that have been on the market for 100+ days (in some cases, 200+ days), and that's just frightening.

Does anyone have any good experiences to report from the past 6 months or so?

Are there a lot of houses that are similar to your house? What is the price range? What type of home (Townhouse, condo, single family)? Are there certain features that set your place apart from everything else? Are there any negatives about the house to consider (and fix)?

The key thing is to stage your house (reduce clutter), make sure the yard/deck are clean, fix things that you foresee as potential distractions for the buyer, etc.

Don't 'under price' your home, either. Buyers want a good value, not necessarily a 'steal'.

We had a townhouse (there was a lot of traffic and interest) and sold it in 8 days in July 2007.

[mcfiddish]

Originally Posted by titaniummd

The key thing is to stage your house (reduce clutter), make sure the yard/deck are clean, fix things that you foresee as potential distractions for the buyer, etc.

Yes - this is key. Of the houses we looked at, some were literally dumps, as in holes in the wall, trash lying around, etc. Get the advice of a good agent.

Don't 'under price' your home, either. Buyers want a good value, not necessarily a 'steal'.

I wouldn't say that buyers don't want a "steal" ... of course they do. But it may be a cause for suspicion, and of course YOU don't want to price your house too low.

[Gabrielle]

I agree with the above posters; I think one of the most important things is that your house be priced right for THIS market. Don't look at what houses similar to yours were selling for a year ago or even 6 months ago. And don't count on reducing the price later if it doesn't sell at your too high price. Price it correctly now and it will go much faster. When we sold our house, it was really hard to accept that the "right" price for this market was at least $30,000 less than a year before. But thankfully we listened to our agent and we managed to sell it in 2 1/2 weeks (granted that was over a year ago, and I know that the market has worsened since then). Wishing you the best.

[MD2NC]

I agree with what others have said. Ours was a townhouse in Germantown and sold in 45 days (but it was during the holidays). We seriously decluttered the house, staged it and gave made sure it was spotless. Then we priced it the same as the other one in our neighborhood that was for sale even though ours was in much better shape and an end unit. Just be careful, we did get low ball offers that our agent told us to take, but we held out 1 more week and got 2 offers the same day for only 3% under list. Which I can accept in this market. Good Luck!

[jaindow]

I am just someone who watches the market and tracks different property listings that interest me around Maryland to see what is selling and what is not and for how much. I've done this out of curiosity for the last year and because we are potential buyers. Based on my individual watching of listings I agree with the other posters that pricing right is key. But in addition, I've also noticed that older homes sell better if they have made up-to-date upgrades to their home.

[mdtoaz]

We sold our house in late July, so it's not incredibly recent but the market had already started to stall. We didn't use an agent, just an attorney. We had two open houses on two consecutive weekends, and had 3 offers within 9 days.

I think we had a lot going for us... we were selling a starter home in a very desirable neighborhood, and we had just finished giving it a cosmetic makevoer (everything else was fine), and we asked a reasonable price.

Good luck to you!

[amelluz]

a friend of mine put their house on the market and had two contracts in two days. good luck!