Selling Your Home in a Slow Market


by Raynor James - Date: 2007-04-11 - Word Count: 444 Share This!

For much of this decade, sellers of real estate were in the catbird seat. Alas, the game has changed. This is now a buyers' market. If you want to sell your home now, you need a new approach.

The first step is to understand your home. No, I am not talking about meditation or talking to the walls about how it feels. Instead, it is time to take an objective look at the property.

Is your home a cookie cutter property that is the same or similar to properties around it? There are many questions you can ask along these lines. The key is to make a list of the characteristics of your home and how they differ from homes around you. This list will form the basis of your selling strategy.

Most homeowners do not think of their property as a product. Developers, on the other hand, do. To a developer, your home was something to be sold. In a more global view, the developer viewed your community as a bunch of dirt lots to be developed as quickly as possible so they could be sold as soon as possible. The end result of this is the developer typically created three or four basic designs and built out the community.

If you live in such a community, you have a unique hurdle to overcome when it is time to sell. Simply put, your home is the same as every third or fourth home on the block, to wit, it is not unique. You need to evaluate it to determine if there is something that makes it standout, such as an improvement you did. You must then highlight this improvement in your marketing materials to make your home stand out from the others. If there is no unique aspect to the home, your only real strategy for moving it quickly is to price it near the bottom of the price range that similar homes are being sold for.

Although communities of similar homes are prevalent these days, some people still have singularly unique homes. If you fall in this category, you are going to have an easier time attracting the attention of buyers. As mentioned above, the key is to emphasize the unique aspects of your home. Simply put, what makes it a great home to live in? Is there a killer deck with a view? A huge yard? Whatever it is, make sure it is mentioned prominently in your marketing material. You might even want to make it the headline on your ads.

While we are definitely in a buyers' market, sellers should not fret excessively. You can still sell your home. After all, buyers have to buy something.


Related Tags: market, real estate, home, selling, community, house, sell, unique, slow

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