Earlier today I was reading a blog post on Trulia written by their resident blogger Tara titled 4 Buyer Incentives that Sell Homes. I like her blog and can generally pickup useful ideas to help my business, just as I do here on AR.
The 4 buyer Incentives that she mentions are:
1. Offering an interest rate buy down
2. Kicking in a closing cost credit
3. Paying HOA dues for up to a year or more
4. Providing a Broker Incentive
All of these are good ideas and certainly may entice some buyers to choose a particular home over another and obviously the last incentive will probably encourage some/many agents to put a particular home on a showing list. But are any of them individually or collectively enough to make one home seem to provide more value than another in the eyes of a buyer.
In my experience, buyers today are looking at value. Which home provides the most bang for the buck. They get an approval from a lender for a certain maximum price and start looking in that range for whatever they have determined to be their "wants and needs". They first determine which particular area or neighborhood they want to live in, then search for criteria such as number of bedrooms, baths, garage(s), pool...etc. Obviously many other criteria enter into the picture, but rarely if ever do any of these 4 incentives, at least in the searching/viewing stage of the home purchase.
My thoughts on selling a home are simple; if it needs fixing, fix it! If it needs painting, paint it! If it needs replacing, replace it. If it needs decluttering or staging, do it. Then price the home at or slightly below "true" market price and let the home sell itself. "If" in the contract stage you are asked to provide any of these incentives, negotiate them, but offering them up front would make me believe that the home is over priced from the beginning.
Just my 2 cents!
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