This Month, Two sellers have listed with some one else - frustrated that their homes have not sold. They seem to have a hard time understanding that it is the market and terrific lack of buyers that is the real culprit. I put both properties on 3 MLS services, 8 websites, personal visual tour linked to all webs, one seller in the $340+ price range even earned his own property website. There the maximum amount of pictures, there were even some showings. One house had a number of showings. No offers. I was frustrated too.
I spent time and money trying to sell these homes. Lost directional signs more than once and even property "For Sale" sign on one ome was taken. Ran adds in homes mag regularly, ran add in weekly community paper for weeks for lower priced listing and 8 weeks for higher priced listing (they only wanted to give me 90 days - That was OK, I thought I could get the job done.)
Average time on the market could be a year or more today. The higher the price the longer the wait, generally. The only problem I see is that I should have been tougher and listed the homes lower in price.
How can I do that? This is the hard earned equity these folks have earned and are waiting to get back. Putting myself in thier shoes, I would have wanted to try and get the most for MY Home, too.
What did I learn? I learned that sellers really wanting to sell can not afford to wait and do the price reduction thing every month as in years past. The longer they wait to get the home priced right, the more they are going to lose. Why didn't I think of this last year or even three months ago? Prices always seems to be higher in the spring ang summer. This year was different. Different than any year I have ever seen in the 28 years I have been listing and selling real estate.
This week I also received/took 5 listings from folks that WANTED to do business with me cause they heard I was tuff and that I do go the extra mile. All five reduced their prices greatly from orignal anticipated sale price. They Listened to the stories about the homes above and even though they may not have completley understood how this can happen, they want their homes sold and are willing to do what it takes. I explained what has already happened to me in the above 2 listing delimas. Today we have to take a different pricing strategy - they have to be the lowest priced home for what they are offering - not mid or higer end.
Sellers have to stage the home to sell to get the buyer in the door. Then trend is good for buyers because there are so many choices. Many sellers will reduce, will pay closing cost, will give immediate possession just to beat the market. Those are the sellers that will sell.
Between Jan and June 2005 35766 listings were taken with 12,415 selling in the same time period. In 2006 46,477 listings were taken with 10,405 listings selling in the same time frame. These stastics were taken from the MLS .
Sometimes it is not possible to lower your price anymore - there won't be enough money to pay off the mortgage, this is another issue I write about soon so stay tuned.
To List your Home for sale or to Buy a home call Wynne Achatz for professional consultation. Feng Shui, staging your home, pricing for today's market. Learn from someone who is out there day after day, year after year making buyers and sellers happy. My latest sale http://makeashorterlink.com/?X1712289D
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