What It Takes To Sell Your Home Quickly…it may surprise you!

A short time ago I came across a discussion on a real estate blog about the proper use of flyers and brochure boxes to sell homes. I thought it would be interesting, as a potential home seller, to hear the REAL story about what it takes to sell a home in the Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads market. Just so you know, right up front - you don't sell a home with a flyer, or with an open house. These are agent tools, and as such are largely ineffective at finding a buyer for your property.

Here's how to get an offer on a home:

1: The house should present better than the competition (staging, mainenance, etc).
2: The house’s price should lead the market.
3: The listing must be in the MLS.

Numbers 1 and 2 above will make your home a no-brainer for potential buyers, Number 3 will expose it to the most people. An agent that can advise their client (you) effectively with these three points is as good as gold. Unfortunately, they're few and far between. Flyers, open houses, broker tours, are all ancillary tools that are marginally effective at best, and often are tools for an agent to generate a buyer lead - not necessarily a buyer for your property.

The above 3 points outline how to get an offer, not necessarily how to get a home under contract or closed.

Once the home is under contract, the usefulness of an experienced agent is critical in order to:

• Negotiate terms and conditions of the sale, some of which can be very tricky.
• Handle home inspection and termite/moisture inspection issues and resolutions.
• Understand and relate ALL of the buyers options and possible outcomes of their decisions every step of the way to closing.
• Knowing where to turn for appropriate expertise and answers outside of the agent's capacity.

I can't stress enough the importance of getting a tight grip on items 1 through 3 in the "How to get an offer" part, above. If you price your home appropriately in the beginning, you'll avoid wasting precious days and weeks when your house first gets listed, and you'll be able to take advantage of the largest number of potential buyers. If you price it out of the market (too high), you'll sell your competition's listings, unknowingly. Simple as that.

For a complete breakdown of what your Virginia Beach or Hampton Roads home is worth in today's market, and a snapshot of your competition, contact us here.

 Print This Post

Free Home and Neighborhood Evaluation

Free Over The Net Home and Neighborhood Evaluation

Selling your home shouldn't be a stressful ordeal. Making the smart move of choosing the right Agent is your first step to ensuring that your investment in your home pays off. Our services and experience allow you to focus on your move while our team manages your home sale from our initial consultation to the closing, and beyond. We pride ourselves on repeat business and hope you'll come to understand why.

As Your Agent, We Will:

• Complete a comparative market analysis that will compare your home's value to that of recent sales in your area.
• Compile a comprehensive marketing plan detailing all the efforts we will employ to sell your home, including comprehensive internet exposure, print and emerging media.
• Present your home to as many qualified buyers as possible getting your home maximum exposure. We hear from 10+ new buyers every day.
• Help you stage your home and generate curb appeal to ensure you get the highest price.
• Assist with obtaining offers and help you in negotiating the best deal as smoothly as possible.
• Help you find your next home and answer all of your questions about the local market area, including schools, neighborhoods, the local economy, and more.

Fill out the form below for a quick over-the-net analysis of your homes sale potential in the Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads Market. We look forward to hearing from you!

cforms contact form by delicious:days

 Print This Post

How To NOT Sell Your Home…or How To Help Sell Your Neighbor’s Place

So you've got a home you want to sell here in Virginia Beach / Hampton Roads. You've heard the horror stories of people who've been in your position, but have had to come down tens of thousands of dollars, STILL couldn't find a buyer, and eventually had to arrange a short sale with their mortgage company or even worse: deal with foreclosure.

Let's be clear: Your competition would love to see you sell incorrectly - they would love for you to help sell their home. They would love to see you price your home out of the market, making their property look like a bargain.

Below we'll take a close look at how to sell a home. At the outset, here are a few things to think about:

1: Regardless of what you think your house is worth, it WILL NOT SELL if it's not priced right. Incorrect pricing will cost you thousands of dollars.

2: Interview agents, but be careful of an agent that plays on your emotions by making you believe you have a chance to sell at a higher price. These agents will COST you money...and there are a lot of them out there. Inexperienced, inefficient agents may mean thousands of dollars in lost profits from your sale.

3: Once you've settled on an agent to list your home, allow them to do the job for which they were hired. Listen carefully to the advice they give, and if you don't understand, ask  questions until you do understand. Experienced agents work with reasonable clients - clients who will listen to and take to heart the advice they have to give.

PRICING

Pricing your home is not strictly an art or a science. Speaking personally, our team's success in pricing a home appropriately is based on our experience in the Hampton Roads market, and a few universal truths that will always apply.

In most situations, it's extremely important to lead the market. If you're constantly in a position to only react to other market influences (new listings that come onto the market, new price reductions, etc), you'll be the last house that sells, not the first or second. It's a fact that buyers only look at a limited number of properties in their price range. They HAVE to narrow it down. Pricing your home above the other comparable properties on the market will only serve to sell your competition, as buyers will look at the least expensive properties first.

In short, you have to have the best price of all the other similar homes a  potential buyer is considering. If your agent prices your property too high, it'll sit on the market and cost you months of extra mortgage payments and valuable time. It'll become a stale listing, and will prompt questions like "Why has this home been on the market for so long?" and statements like "there's gotta be something wrong with it."

Price it right in the beginning and you'll sell faster, and avoid additional unnecessary price reductions that are simply a response to a pricing mistake when the property was first listed.

CONDITION AND STAGING

In addition having the most attractive price, your home needs to look better than the rest. This means listening to your agent when they give you advice about what repairs and improvements to make. An experienced agent is in the market day in and day out, and is showing homes to buyers all the time....buyers looking at homes just like yours and deciding what to buy. We see what they want, and what appeals to them. This is why we'll tell you to paint the kitchen and replace the cabinets, or spend a few bucks replacing some switches and wall plates, trim the bushes in the front yard, clean the gutters, and replace that worn carpet.

With most properties, our team will also bring in a staging consultant to take care of the presentation of the property, and help with some final recommendations to get the property ready to market.

To add to my statement awhile back: Your home must have the best price among all comparable homes AND MUST LOOK BETTER THAN SIMILAR PROPERTIES IN ORDER TO SQUEEZE THE MOST PROFIT OUT OF YOUR SALE.

The above being said, there are situations where a seller will not be able to improve the property or make the necessary repairs that we would usually suggest. In these situations, the sale price must be adjusted accordingly. Here's the above-all, most important universal truth of selling a home: IT'S ALL ABOUT PRICE.

"My home's great, but it hasn't sold in 4 months. I can't figure out why." - It's never been priced correctly.

"We haven't had any showings in weeks. I don't think our agent is that good." - Well, you're half right, kinda. Your agent didn't price your property correctly in the first place, and perhaps hasn't told you that you should reduce your price. If your agent HAS told you that you need to reduce your price and you've not given them the permission to do so, you're both at fault: you for not listening to your agent (the person YOU hired to sell your house), and the agent for not explaining the facts in a understandable and reasonable way.

"We have a ton of people coming through, but nobody's making an offer." - There's no incentive for the buyer to make an offer because there are similar properties that are leading the market and priced lower. Price, price, price, price. Make it a no-brainer for the buyer, and you'll sell. Agents love to see other comparable listings that are unreasonably priced, as it opens up a host of marketing possibilities - all of which will sell THEIR LISTINGS, not yours. Don't be the owner of the property that helps sell all the others in the neighborhood.

One final note - our real estate team is in the business of selling homes. Specifically homes, condos, and townhomes in the Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake and Hampton Roads market. This is a business. We succeed because we're able to help sellers and buyers by telling them what they NEED to hear, not necessarily what they WANT to hear, and we're passionate about what we do. Essentially this means we don't accept every listing that comes our way - if we cannot convince a potential seller, with all of our data and experience, that it makes sense to list their property at a certain price and take a few additional steps to make the property marketable, we may not be a good fit for that seller. To list the home anyway, when we have very little confidence that the home will sell, would waste valuable time....time that some sellers don't have and could hurt them. As in any business, we can't help everyone, but we do our best in each situation.

Do you have a home in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, or any area of Hampton Roads that you're thinking of selling? Contact us here and we'll see what we can do together. Zero cost, and no obligation to chat with us.

 Print This Post