Is it worth incentives to the buyers? (3%, agent, mortgage)

[jimj]

I currently have a house that has been on the market for about 30 days now and there have been 0 showings or even questions. Let me start by saying I am not new to the real estate game and I know time on market varies from year to year but this is the first time I have ever gone without anything in the first 30 days. We have a strange market here now where houses in the 400k to 600k are slow but below and above are moving at a nice clip. My next door neighbor just closed for 630k on a nicer house so we priced well below him. Before we priced we did comps and have at least 5 recent closings that we comped to.

That being said I was wondering if offering some incentives to the buyers was worth doing. I have not seen them done here before so I think it would make my listing at least stand out a little more.
We are on 2 acres with about half in lawn and a mowing season of about 3 months so I was thinking maybe a lawn service for a year and maybe maid service for a while? We live near a ski resort so a friend suggested ski passes for 4 for the year (they work during the summer for mtn biking as well) and a family pass to Glacier Park for the year and maybe a couple of one person pontoon boats for fishing or a raft for the rivers? Kind of doing a outdoors package with the house?
I think it is too early to lower the price, and we are close to replacement costs if someone were to try and build it. It is almost 2 years old and we built it and since costs just for the lot have gone up 60k. Any ideas?

[mbmouse]

Great ideas! I have never heard of those kind of incentives. I would personally suggest a 1 year home warranty, cost is under $400 and is paid out of your proceeds at closing and/or paying 3% or 6% of the buyers closing costs. This, to me, would be more enticing as a buyer as I would have more confidence in the house and will save on my out of pocket costs on buying the house.
Throw in the maid service for a year and I would be over the moon!

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by mbmouse

Great ideas! I have never heard of those kind of incentives. I would personally suggest a 1 year home warranty, cost is under $400 and is paid out of your proceeds at closing and/or paying 3% or 6% of the buyers closing costs. This, to me, would be more enticing as a buyer as I would have more confidence in the house and will save on my out of pocket costs on buying the house.
Throw in the maid service for a year and I would be over the moon!

We have one here that offers to throw in a 2002 Bentley. I like the clever ones...get marketing attention...stick up from the crowd.

The home owner policy is good but is standard here. Have not seen a deal without a seller paid policy in years.

[kturbe]

I like your creativity, but pricing and exposure is really what I would focus on. Especially if you are not getting any showings in the first 30 days, here in SoCal that is a reflection of price.
It is not clear here if you are a FSBO or an agent so I don't want to step on any toes, but having the following details to ensure you are getting the most exposure is impartative. Broker Preview, Weekly Open Houses, Neighborhood Invites sent out, Just Listed sent out to move up buyers, web advertising, I think you get the idea. I just threw a neighborhood ice cream social and one of the neighbors brought friends who are considering an offer.

[jimj]

Originally Posted by kturbe

I like your creativity, but pricing and exposure is really what I would focus on. Especially if you are not getting any showings in the first 30 days, here in SoCal that is a reflection of price.
It is not clear here if you are a FSBO or an agent so I don't want to step on any toes, but having the following details to ensure you are getting the most exposure is impartative. Broker Preview, Weekly Open Houses, Neighborhood Invites sent out, Just Listed sent out to move up buyers, web advertising, I think you get the idea. I just threw a neighborhood ice cream social and one of the neighbors brought friends who are considering an offer.

I'm not a FSBO nor an agent, I am listed with a top performer who actually sold my neighbors house a few months ago. Like I said above the market for houses in the 400-600k range just kind of died out. Houses for below 400k (which would be less than it would cost to build the same thing and very little above what it cost me) are moving and houses for 650k to over a million are moving ok. I have never been a big fan of open houses(for the public) since generally all they do is get the realtor more customers and let your neighbors tour, not to mention the bored unqualified people looky loo.
We just had a neighborhood block party and most think I am selling too cheap, they said it should go for at least 50k more but I trust the comps the realtor came up with. As for home warranty, those are starting to show up here more and I have no problem with that. I just figured selling a house with recreation included along with not having to maintain it for a while so you are free to recreate might be a draw..... Or maybe instead of the ski passes (which need to be bought before sept 1st) a good sized gift certificate to the local ski and sports store so they can outfit for the winter or summer with clothes they may need....

[carolac]

I was trying to see where you were from, so I googled "Montucky" and came up with a variety of responses with everything from white trash to rural Montana I saw two houses recently here in Florida offer up 6 months of mortgage payments as an incentive. One house didn't sell, the other one went within 3 weeks--both in the 269,000 area. One builder here in Orlando is giving away Harley Davidson motorcycles (nice soft tail Fat Boy's too) with a new home purchase. On the commercial it doesn't hurt that a hot model drives it away either.

I was teasing my hubby and telling him if we decide to sell our house we could throw in "Lucy," our restored 1974 Honda 550CB (she's orange in color and thus the name Lucy). He wasn't impressed.

I like the idea of a maid. One of the incentives we had when we bought our present house some years ago is a home warranty. Also, since my hubby is a painter, he suggested we throw in a custom interior paint job in the colors to be picked by the new owners.

Originally Posted by jimj

I'm not a FSBO nor an agent, I am listed with a top performer who actually sold my neighbors house a few months ago. Like I said above the market for houses in the 400-600k range just kind of died out. Houses for below 400k (which would be less than it would cost to build the same thing and very little above what it cost me) are moving and houses for 650k to over a million are moving ok. I have never been a big fan of open houses(for the public) since generally all they do is get the realtor more customers and let your neighbors tour, not to mention the bored unqualified people looky loo.
We just had a neighborhood block party and most think I am selling too cheap, they said it should go for at least 50k more but I trust the comps the realtor came up with. As for home warranty, those are starting to show up here more and I have no problem with that. I just figured selling a house with recreation included along with not having to maintain it for a while so you are free to recreate might be a draw..... Or maybe instead of the ski passes (which need to be bought before sept 1st) a good sized gift certificate to the local ski and sports store so they can outfit for the winter or summer with clothes they may need....

[jimj]

Carolac, Montucky is sometimes used for anywhere in MT because things can be a little oh, I don't know....redneck and slooow and real behind the times like up in the hills of Kentucky. We are about 15 minutes from Whitefish and the last real city before Glacier Park (we even have a waterslide in town). I talked with my agent this afternoon and he was shocked and pleased at the suggestions since it has never been done here before. I mean incentives (except for the "bribes" to the buying agent) have never been done. The decision that we came to was ski passes for 2 and a $500 gift certificate to the local sports store for equipment. I may add maid service later if we get some bites but I want to have something in my pocket as it were to sweeten the deal later if I have to. Maybe a riding mower for the 1/2 acre of grass.
I mentioned the incentive to the buying agent and he said they had just talked about this type of thing the other day and feel it is not right to do.
If he is offered one the feeling is it needs to be disclosed to the buyer and given to them as a price reduction. P.S., I loved those CB550's, I had a CB400 when they first came out.

[palmcoasting]

I wonder what would happen if you bumped it up the $50K your neighbors think you should. That would put you in the range people are purchasing at....might get you a couple of showings and an offer at where you are priced at now.

[jimj]

We had thought of that, the downside is that you risk having the realtors just ignoring your house because they think it is overpriced and it is hard to get them to take a second look if you drop it later. I could be wrong but that is my thinking. I know of a few cases in the past year where the house wasn't selling and they raised it considerably and it sold very quickly after that.