Real Estate Opinions - What's more important, Pricing the home properly or the marketing? Yes, I understand the majority of people will say it's a combination of both, but that's not my question.
If you could only do one thing for a listing, would you price it properly and aggressively from day one or would you market the heck out of it and hope for the best?
I've recently run into two different situations with sellers who have their homes on the market. They're both using two different strategies, or at least their agents are.
The first one has had the house on the market for 11 months. He is using an agent who works exclusively in his gated community. He says they have had 67 showings on the house and never hear anything about feedback. He says the agent doesn't think it's a good idea to reduce the price because they're not getting feedback that it's overpriced, and he just wants an offer, any offer, so he can have a starting place with negotiations.
Since the agent is exclusive to this community and is a member of the country club there, he's assuming she has a lot of marketing in place that is supposed to just make people write an offer... but 67 showings and 11 months later, nothing, nada, zilch.
The second one has had the house on the market just over 2 months. How many price adjustments has she had?? FOUR!
The first thing I saw is that the original asking price was $4. This is so when a consumer is looking at properties, they can't tell what the true original asking price is or was so when the agent makes adjustments, the consumer doesn't know where the number actually started... until their buyer's agent looks at the history.
This house was listed for $475,000 on 8/12. Reduced substantially to $430,000 on 8/22. A buyer should think, "WOW! This seller is serious, I wanna buy it!" However, further history shows the seller bought it less than a year ago for only $410k.
On 9/4, the price was reduced to $420k, and further reduced to $415k on 10/7 and then $400,000 on 10/16.
As far as I can see, I can't see any marketing on this house. It seems the agent is feeding off the builders' traffic as she has done a couple of open houses and put a balloon on her sign that blows in the wind. The house is now priced lower than what the seller bought it for, but still no nibbles...
So, is it the marketing that gets people to write offers or is it the pricing strategy of lowering the price aggressively every few days that will make people write the offer? If seller number two had an agent that aggressively marketed the house as "barely lived in and better than new" and did some target marketing, would they have more bites? If she started out with the $430k price instead of the pie in the sky at $475k, would they have more bites?
If seller number one priced the home better to show buyers he was a serious seller, instead of letting it sit on the market for 11 months waiting, would he have already received the offer he was looking for in the price range he's willing to accept?
Two very different ideas of selling a house, yet both houses are yielding the same results, no offers!!
I'll ask again... if you were only allowed to use one strategy to sell a house, which would you choose, pricing or marketing?
It's a hard decision, I know. But think back to one of your hardest listings to sell and if you had to do it all over again on that particular house, which would you choose?
**Are You Packed Yet?**
Donna Harris, REALTOR®
RE/MAX Austin Skyline
www.DonnaHomes.com
Donna@DonnaHomes.com
Austin TX Real Estate and the surrounding areas of Lakeway, Bee Cave, West Lake Hills, Cedar Park, Round Rock, Spicewood, Circle-C, Steiner Ranch, and everywhere in between... Hill Country Austin TX Real Estate and beyond. Whether you're buying or selling an Austin home, I'll be with you every step of the way.
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* Real Estate Opinions - Is it the Pricing or the Marketing? * was first published on donnahomesblog.com
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