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Professional Photos of a staged house will bring you the best bang for your buck on selling your home. If your agent didn't hire a professional, ask to get one now. If they did hire someone and then you decluttered, you should spring for the cost. Depending on location it's usually $150-200. Well worth the investment.
I found out from our realtor that the triple split floor plan is what most people seem to want these days and now I am even more depressed than before....
What is a triple split floor plan? I have never heard of that. Is that like 3 floors? Maybe people dont really understand the concept and that would fall on your agent to sell it. Having never heard of it and if i walked in, i might be confused.
Professional Photos of a staged house will bring you the best bang for your buck on selling your home. If your agent didn't hire a professional, ask to get one now. If they did hire someone and then you decluttered, you should spring for the cost. Depending on location it's usually $150-200. Well worth the investment.
Pictures are what drives traffic to your house.
The smartest move is DO NOT GET PHOTOS DONE UNTIL THE HOME IS AS SPOTLESS AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE! Clearning / decluttering is not costly, it takes a little bit of time but ULTIMATELY PUTS MONEY IN YOUR POCKET!
The other crucial fact is that if it does dawn on you to get the place more presentable it is then A MUST to get photos redone and posted ASAP! Buyers will not waste time in person at a home that online looks like a dog unless they are the bottomfeeding lowball type buyer looking to make an easy flip. If you want to reach the largest number of buyers you need to have the best looking photos on the web!
Concur that online photos are HUGE! As buyers, it's been very obvious to us at open houses and talking to sellers' agents that photo quality has a very direct correlation with people wanting to see a place.
Personally, we made a point of looking at some houses that had bad photos. Not photos where the house looked bad per se, but the photos were so few and so blurry that you couldn't tell much about the house one way or the other. Most of those houses turned out to be fine, not right for us but perfectly decent properties. And yet they'd had very low traffic (per days-on-market and per listing agents) and it was clear they'd go at a discount simply because the sellers and their agent had botched the photos.
We try hard to ignore 'clutter' or 'staging' and anything else with furnishings and decor since after all, that stuff won't be there after we buy the house. But apparently that does matter to a lot of ppl when they look at your photos.
Of course, great photos won't sell a bad home. One flipper did an awesome job with photos, ideally chosen angles, lights, and super-wide lenses. Just about the busiest open house we've seen.... and the place failed to live up in reality. Apparently every one else thought too since sat 2 months and counting.
All realtors know how to do is lower the price. We had the same situation. First, THEY set the price. Then we sold the first weekend and sat in escrow for two months and the deal fell through. When we went back on the market we were showing in MLS as 60 days so were asked to lower our price because we were now an old listing. We had only been on the market for four days because all the rest of the time was in escrow.
We lowered the price a little to see if that generated interest and immediately started getting told by the realtors that we needed to offer a $4,000 flooring allowance. Meanwhile one person would love the ceramic but not the vinyl and the next one would love the vinyl and say the ceramic needed to be replaced.
Our neighbor was told he needed to put new carpet in his house and he did. As soon as his sold the new owners removed the carpet immediately and put in wood floor.
So there most likely is nothing wrong with your house. It's only a bully mentality the realtors seem to enjoy. I see no sense in their telling you how bad your house is when they are doing nothing to market it.
If you want to lower the price, fire the realtor and lower it the commission amount. Otherwise stick to your guns. The right person is out there for your home.
All realtors know how to do is lower the price. We had the same situation. First, THEY set the price. Then we sold the first weekend and sat in escrow for two months and the deal fell through. When we went back on the market we were showing in MLS as 60 days so were asked to lower our price because we were now an old listing. We had only been on the market for four days because all the rest of the time was in escrow.
We lowered the price a little to see if that generated interest and immediately started getting told by the realtors that we needed to offer a $4,000 flooring allowance. Meanwhile one person would love the ceramic but not the vinyl and the next one would love the vinyl and say the ceramic needed to be replaced.
Our neighbor was told he needed to put new carpet in his house and he did. As soon as his sold the new owners removed the carpet immediately and put in wood floor.
So there most likely is nothing wrong with your house. It's only a bully mentality the realtors seem to enjoy. I see no sense in their telling you how bad your house is when they are doing nothing to market it.
If you want to lower the price, fire the realtor and lower it the commission amount. Otherwise stick to your guns. The right person is out there for your home.
So, you know a realtor doesn't set the price, right? They can suggest, but at the end of the day, it's the seller's decision as to what they want to price their property at; if realtors had that responsibility, you'd see a lot more efficiency in the market.
Secondly, your initial price seems to have been spot-on if you were under contract in your first weekend! How can you be displeased with that? Sounds like you had major issues with your home, either from inspections or financing or both, especially if you had an escrow period drag on that long.
The right person is always out there for the right home, but it's at the right price. Most people are too emotionally invested with their home in order to get to that price objectively; just because a realtor tells you something you don't want to hear doesn't mean they're trashing your home.
The first month you had a lot of lookers. People who have no intention of buying your home (or any home for that matter). Now they are gone.
During the next six months you will get showings--a couple each week. Sometimes more; sometimes fewer or none.
At the end of that period you assess where you are. What has sold? What does the competition look like? What is your real time frame? What does the economy look like in your area?
Then you deal with price/paining/landscaping and any other cosmetic things which you think might help.
After a year you will start to see real buyers. The first one or two will fail for a variety of reasons, and just when you are ready to jump off a bridge, the real buyer will show up, say they have always liked your home, and you will get a deal done.
It just takes time in this market. And patience. One month into the process is nothing.
Ted Bear, not to be insulting, but you need to understand where the OP is located is not a depressed market. Even in the worst days of real estate a few years ago, it wouldn't have taken 6-12 months to get a well priced, well marketed house sold in that area.
There's something wrong with this situation and I think other posters are thinking the same thing. Maybe it's the too high price they started with (and don't blame the realtor - you hired the realtor and accepted their opinion). Maybe it's that the house smells (it's empty, they've moved out). Maybe it's the online photos (I'm betting they aren't very good). Maybe there are 15 other similar houses for sale within half a mile.
I don't know. If the OP wants to share the MLS listing, I'm sure many posters here (both professionals and consumers like me) will have ideas and suggestions that may (or may not) help.
Last edited by Jkgourmet; 05-30-2014 at 01:58 PM..
Here (RI) it is a pretty depressed market, and nothing (*) is taking 12 months plus to sell unless the price was way too high or something is otherwise pretty defective with the home, which I guess is another way of saying it was priced too high. Homes listed near comps are selling in a couple of weeks to couple of months, mostly, and listings higher than their comps do not simply take a long time to sell, they simply don't sell, ever, until the price is dropped.
(*) aside from bank-owned stuff with all of the complications there
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Absolutley correct!
