All I can say is the sellers are astounded and so is their realtor!    Beautiful, quality built home, lovely landscaping, great location, a bargain price  and still not selling.    Sound a little familiar?  

I wrote about this property back in APRIL, after about sixty days on the  Killeen Fort Hood Real Estate market.. little did we know that we'd burn through the summer (literally with over 67 days above 100 degrees) without a single offer.  

We tried open houses, realtor open houses, computed price adjustments.  We looked at listings for similar homes in that subdivision that were priced $20,000 above ours, and of course, they were sitting on the market, too.  

It wasn't looking very promising and the sellers were preparing to come up with at least $10,000 to close if we did get an offer (That's a lot of $$$ in this market).   They had moved on to their new PCS location in June,  and the need to sell the house was even more urgent.  Only new homes for sale in this subdivision were selling, and we had to do something to make this sale happen. 

Working any market when it's slow is very hard on sellers and agents, because we all want the property to sell.   I usually don't have any problem marketing and selling my listings, but this one.. well let's just say it was a "challenge". 

I spent some time just sitting in that empty property, trying to get inspired, to get to the bottom of why it wasn't selling. We were getting plenty of showings, which means the price was right.  So what is the problem????

So after walking around the house and looking at it from many angles, inside and out, and pondering the current market, I finally decided the problem was:  

This  home is just   "too perfect, too vanilla,  too forgettable".  It's getting lost in all the hundreds of homes for sale at Ft Hood.

After that epiphany, I advised the sellers to let the listing expire.  Then we let it sit off the market for a few days, while I did some minor staging.  Staging is not the norm here, but this house needed punching up a bit to give it something buyers could remember.  

We then put it back on the Killeen Ft Hood Real Estate market and, in TWO DAYS, we had THREE offers and a bidding war! 

Was it the really staging that set off the bidding war?  Or was it the freshness of the property back on the market?  Or was it just time for that particular piece of Killeen real estate to sell?   

In truth, it was probably a combination of the three.    But I give a big nod to the staging for giving this home an extra bit of WOW that buyers could remember.

In any case, the sellers are ecstatic, as they are now under contract to close at a sales price $10,000 higher than the asking price.   After preparing for the worst all summer, they will be in great shape after closing!