What REALLY sells a house?

What REALLY sells a house?

When you hire a real estate agent to sell your home, you are hiring a marketing professional. Yes, it is true we are trained and take classes in many different subjects dealing from the obscure to the very important, but ultimately, when you hire an agent, you are saying "I believe this agent has the tools in his/her marketing arsenal to get my house the exposure needed to sell the house to the proper buyer".

However, what REALLY sells a house? In my experience, it always, always, always (should I repeat that again), ALWAYS, boils down to four items.

1. PRICE--price is always the number one thing that people feel agents over emphasize. Truth be told, it's the ONE item that can overcome almost ANY objection. The price of the home is key to a)who sees it in a search, b)who views the house c)who will buy it.

2. LOCATION--the location of the house is an important factor in selling the home. It's a factor that you CAN NOT change though, and hence, it's an item that can only be adjusted via PRICE (see number 1 above!)

3. CONDITION--Condition of the home influences who wants to buy the home. Is it ready move in or a project home with some sweat equity there to capture? Guess what, Price will once again overcome CONDITION in most instances!

4.TERMS-- This is the one that gets overlooked by most agents and home sellers. The terms of the sale can make or break a sale and you might not even know it. Things such as including the fridge, curtains, BMW in the garage or other non realty items can be lumped into TERMS. So can some finance items such as a seller carried note, a seller carried second note, or a balloon payment are just a couple of the finance terms.

So in short, when you are considering selling your home, these are the FOUR items you look at and realize that ANYTHING you can not fix in the other three are all fixed with PRICE.

As a seller, you control PRICE, CONDITION and TERMS. Location is the only thing that is handed to you and that was decided when the home was purchased!  In coming blogs, we'll look at these items individually but this really is what it amounts to with this caveat: WITH EXPOSURE!