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We've had our house on the market for three months. We've had about 15 showings. Our price is right.
Problem, I don't know if I can do any more showings.
Our house is lived in. Kids, a dog, busy schedule. We live here. Hard. I can't keep up with it in between to keep it show-ready. Also because the showings are usually on the weekends, it's not worth it keeping it perfect all week. Don't get me wrong, it is always clean and hygienic, always. But that is a huge difference from show-ready.
So I get the call the day before. This could be the one! Let the cleaning begin! And it's not even the cleaning, because I would have to do that any way. It's making it look all perfect. It's hiding our stuff and the dog bowls and putting out the fake fluffy towels and trying to make my very lived-in house look like a hotel. And she cleans up nice, the old girl. And I'm a good stager. But my muscles, I feel like I got hit by a truck.
Then the showing day. I have to somehow get the house perfect, I'm sweating, then we have to load the kids and the dog into the car and go drive around for two hours, by the time we leave ahead of time and because so many people are late.
Then the buyers....or should I call them the fake buyers. I already wrote a thread about them but most of them have a house to sell that isn't even on the market yet. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU LOOKY LOO
Oh hey move-upper, you bought a ranch in 2007 for 500K and you want to move up into my house now and of course, your house will sell days after you put it on the market, uh huh. Oh and you need the equity out of your house (psst it's gone) to buy this one. Go to open houses you, go. Or better yet, go watch House Hunters.
Oh hello downsizer. Oh yeah, your house is worth 2 million? When? Back in 06? Sure. And you want to see what's out there before you sell your big bloated house. I got an idea, why don't you stay in your big house because you're never getting 2 million for it.
Oh hey a renter! This should be promising, a renter actually needs a house right? Oh, your lease is up in fall of next year. Great, thanks for playing. I'd love to know what downpayments these people have.
We've talked to our realtor about screening more diligently, and I do believe she is trying, but the agents know all of the tricks about what to say so it's not going that well. We did put off a third showing from someone who had a house to sell first, so progress there I guess.
I need a break from this. Maybe I'll just rent after this is over so I never have to do this again. I don't even want to own a house anymore. Any house.
Three kids under ten, a dog, and two cats when our house was listed for NINE MONTHS. Feel your pain.
But while challenging, it wasn't all that hard to keep the house clean. We got the kids to school and I could make it presentable inside of an hour.
Your house is NOT priced "right" if it's still on the market after 3 months. I don't care how slow, special, unique, whatever the house or your market is. If it's still on the market after three months, it's priced too high!
My mother had to sell a house when she had four kids, and the youngest was a newborn. She priced it just slightly under market, had ONE open house, and it was sold. Worth the slightly lower price to be done with only one open house, and no other showings, when she had little kids.
I strongly suggest you pull the house off the market immediately. Get the realtor to remove any trace of its having been on the market from all the listing sites. Put it back on in early March (best time of year to list) with it really priced right (meaning just slightly under its market value). Have it hit MLS on a Sunday, so it will hit the other sites, like Zillow and Trulia, that week, all advertised with an open house for the next Saturday and Sunday. Prepare the house to shine and be staged for that open house, even go to relatives for the entire weekend. Of course put away anything valuable. Let your agent schedule multiple showings for that weekend, and hold open houses both days that weekend. If it's priced under market, you'll have multiple offers. Then have your agent run a bidding war. It will sell, and maybe even for higher than you would have gotten had you priced it as high as you thought the market would bear. House sold, you'll get the best price you reasonably could have expected, and you only have to be out one weekend.
Or you could leave it on, keep living this nightmare, and since it's priced too high, it still may not sell before the spring market is over.
OK, so this is the fantasy approach. Quick fixes and "easily" remedied problems.
Now, here is the real world: The house has been on the market for 3 months. It has been on the Internet and viewed by thousands and thousands of people. That's 90 days. That's 12 weeks. The entire universe of buyers has seen this property, and 15 potential buyers have taken time out of their lives to make an appointment and walk through and around the property. Nobody has seen enough value to make an offer that the seller will accept. When you have 15 people look, you usually have another 15 or more who drove by it and seriously considered going in, but decided against it, concluding that it could not be a value even if it lived up to its photographs.
If there were an "easily remedied problem", many buyers would have already figured that out and made offers reflective of the "easily remedied problem".
"Easily remedied problems" DO NOT keep homes on the market for 90 days, 12 weeks, 3 months, 24/7 Internet exposure. "Easily remedied problems" do not prevent the HUNDREDS of active buyer's agents in the seller's MLS system from coaxing their buyers to take a look at this product.
OVERPRICED homes do all of these. Extend marketing times, causing ever-lower offers, frustrating sellers, frustrating goals, preventing the "next page" from ever getting turned, generating angst and self-doubt, and just creating overall terribleness.
Now is the time for realism, not fantasy. No quick fixes or easy remedies. Drop the price so that the product is a value compared to the other products competing with it. If I look at this home, and 4 or 5 others in the same price range, and use basic Reason, I should come to the conclusion that this home objectively offers MORE in most or all respects when compared to the other competing homes. I simply can't buy any of the other homes because this one is the best at this price level.
As agents, when we see 5 similar homes in a neighborhood on the market, we can frequently predict which one will sell next. The one that offers the best VALUE when compared to the others.
If you price correctly, you COMPEL buyers to make the decision to buy your house. They cannot rationally do otherwise. That is the power of the right price.
You continue to miss the point. You know NOTHING of the house in question, except that it hasn't sold. You say that multiple "thousands" have viewed it online but don't know what they've viewed. Did they see three pictures of beds and two of toilets and one of a "dinning" room table?
I certainly do not discount the possibility, or even probability that the property is overpriced, the issue I had was the first agent responding immediately said the price needed to be lowered, quickly followed by two others with little or no regard to why it may have been priced too high. This "circle the wagons" approach can certainly be frustrating to sellers.
The OP spoke of dog hair, dog dishes and getting dogs out of the house. Isn't there at least the possibility that the place is something less than springtime fresh? Is this a reason to lower the price or is it better to just spend a couple of hundred dollars on a professional cleaning?
What other practical solutions are just "fantasy" in your "real world" where your only answer is "lower the price?"
We have no way of knowing what the "real problem" is -- and even if we knew what the problem was, that doesn't mean that the seller is willing to mitigate. Lacking mitigation, and lacking the ability to pick the house up and move it to a more favorable location, the ONLY thing that the seller has control over is the condition and the asking price. Years and year of experience have taught one thing: Any house will sell if the price is right AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME -- not what it's worth in a year from now, or even six months from now, or what it might be worth if they painted the puce and chartruse dining room to a neutral beige.
People get frustrated because they can't/won't/are unable to accept that their home is only worth what someone will pay for it. Not what they "need" to get out of it, not what Zillow says it should be, and not what your neighbor thinks it ought to go for. Agents do NOT control the market or the price -- the market does. An agent can't make someone pay more than they are willing to pay for a house. Agents do not set prices -- they provide market data and recommendations, but at the end of the day, it is the seller who sets the price. Sometimes they set a higher price despite what the agent recommends, with a gambler's sudden urge to "test the market". That is seldom effectve.
For example, we recently had a home for sale. Recommended home price was $475,000. Sellers insisted on $515,000, just to "test" for a couple of weeks. No showings. Got the price down just under $500,000 -- got showings, but still not in range. Turns out that the showing feedback came back with the same issue time and time again regarding an odd configuration of the house, which had been previously noted when pricing the house. Knocked the price down a bit more, more showings . . . still not enough to compensate for the configuration. Got it down to a bit more, got an offer -- and sold for $474,900. 11 weeks on the market to get to the price we had recommended three months earlier . . . it was very hard not to say "I told you so."
Thank you for proving my point. None of the three salespeople have any knowledge of this particular situation but have concurred with lowering the price before examining any other solution. This is the basis for frustration. No one could have an argument with anything you mention in regard to specific deals with which you've been involved because you DO know the details, it's the all too common "lower the price" as a panacea for all slow sales when you "have no way of knowing."
We got three verbal offers with a contingency that they needed to sell their house first to which we said don't bother killing a tree for that. I don't count them as offers in my head but there they are.
Why don't you take one of those with the contingency as a back up offer but still keep yours on the market? Their home may sell quickly.
I'm a mortgage broker in Florida and some of the guidelines on existing homes have changed if you have equity. Check on that with your area.
The problem may be the price but the bigger issue seems to be, by the OP's own acknowledgment, that she turned down the possibility of three offers. In many markets, home sale contingencies are very common and would not be seen as a sign of an unserious buyer. As Bette notes above, there are ways to protect yourself even under contract. And why would non-serious buyers submit an offer if it meant turning over thousands of dollars in earnest money and paying hundreds for an inspection?
The same goes with renters. Leases can be broken ... and sometimes renters build in extra time in their home search to account for renovations and changes they may want to make before they move in. It's just not that weird.
The OP says, "I'd love to know what down payments these people have." Many people have saved up cash outside of their home equity.
If the OP wants to be so selective about the potential buyers, then of course the process is going to take longer.
Thank you for proving my point. None of the three salespeople have any knowledge of this particular situation but have concurred with lowering the price before examining any other solution. This is the basis for frustration. No one could have an argument with anything you mention in regard to specific deals with which you've been involved because you DO know the details, it's the all too common "lower the price" as a panacea for all slow sales when you "have no way of knowing."
The funny thing about fantasies is how strongly people cling to them. It could be the Achilles Heel of our species.
1. Your house is not selling for a reason. A VERY real reason not someone's guess.
2. If you don't like "showings" then arrange for just an open house for all potential buyers on the same day once a week and leave the premises.
I was a LOOKY LOO and make NO apologies for it. I had just moved to the area and didn't know what or where I wanted to be.
Two months later, a REALTOR and BUYER were happy I was, because they called me with a new listing before putting it on the market....and I bought it the same day having NO INTENTION whatsoever of doing so. Cash no contingency except the inspection.
I had the owners correct a few inspection items because I didn't know anyone here to call to fix things and they HAD to be done. Like the AC outside wasn't secure IN FLORIDA where the building got demolished 2 years prior in a hurricane.
That was seven years ago. I LOVE my condo and community.
I HOPE you notice I said they CALLED ME WITH A NEW LISTING BEFORE PUTTING IT ON THE MARKET AND I BOUGHT IT.
Because the realtor remembered me from my LOOKY LOO days and thought I'd like it. She was CORRECT.
Your home is not selling for a REASON.
Last edited by runswithscissors; 01-04-2016 at 05:42 AM..
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