I am often asked by people trying to sell a home in Tallahassee about various methods for getting a home sold. As most people who read this blog are aware, the Tallahassee real estate market is currently in a "Buyers' Market" cycle phase and inventory is high. This means that buyers have many choices and that home owners must do whatever they can to differentiate their home from the rest of the market.
Some of the methods that we are seeing in the market include:
- Professional Staging
- Seller willingness to hold partial financing
- Cash incentives to Buyers
- Cash incentives to real estate agents
- Seller/Lender rate buy-downs for Buyer
- Competitive pricing
- Drawings/events to increase traffic
The simplest way to answer the question of how to sell a home in Tallahassee is to look at the market from a buyers viewpoint. Buyers are going to buy the best perceived value on the day that they make a buying decision. Period. So if you want to sell a home in Tallahassee, anything you do that enhances value will help to move you closer to a sale of your Tallahassee home.
Additionally, you have to expose the home to as many prospective buyers, through all means possible, in order to find the buyer who sees the most value in your home. The best way to understand "exposure" is to think of selling a Tallahassee home like selling at an auction. The higher the attendance at the auction, the better the results will be for the seller. More bidders for a property = more excitement = more value = better sales price for the seller. So, just putting a sign on the property and running a few local ads is not optimizing exposure.
Now, to put the two points together, we must enhance the value and expose the property to the fullest market possible. With this in mind, we can now return to the methods that we are seeing in the market and determine which are most effective at getting homes sold.
- Staging (hiring a professional to help you prepare your home for marketing) can be beneficial in many cases because it allows the homeowner to really show the value of the home. Often times, our homes look too "lived in" and buyers are looking at many options. The one that looks the best often times will win the buyers offer.
- Special financing, incentives, and rate buy-downs allow the buyer to purchase the home with less cash or make smaller monthly payments. This can be very beneficial in opening up the market for the home as it allows more people to afford the home.
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Competitive pricing is by far the most important thing that can be done to get a home sold. Nearly every buyer looking to buy a home in Tallahassee will do some of their shopping on a computer, whether through the use of a Realtor in the MLS, or through one of many Tallahassee Home Search Engines on the Internet. As all of these search processes have fields that allow the buyer to narrow the search, and price being the one that most buyers use, having a home priced as low as possible will result in more views than one priced higher and packed with incentives. If you want to sell a home in Tallahassee, DO NOT price yourself out of the market with incentives added in!
- Drawings and events to increase traffic to the home can be part of the "exposure" element of getting the home sold. Unfortunately, this does not add value and rarely exposes the home to significantly more buyers.
I hope this helps answer the question of how using various methods for getting a home sold can be of use to a potential home seller in Tallahassee. If you are not able to price your home competitively, I would suggest you refrain from putting your home on the market. This would reduce inventory and would help maintain home values in the Tallahassee Real Estate Market.
Joe Manausa is the Broker and Co-Owner of Century 21 First Realty. He can be reached by clicking on the comments button below, via e-mail through his company website at http://www.manausa.com/, or by calling (850) 386-2001.
Labels: Buy a Home in Tallahassee, Sell a home in Tallahassee, Sell Real Estate in Tallahassee, Selling a home in tallahassee, Tallahassee Real Estate, Tallahassee Real Estate Market
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