The Secret Key to a Successful Sale
Copyright 2015, The Gold Homes Team LLC
Yes, there really is a secret key to successfully selling your home, whether with or without an agent, whether this is the first try, or the 3rd try after 2 expirations or withdrawals.
This key is widely known, but most sellers instinctively and powerfully shrink from it. The more familiar you are with the key the more you can sell your house for and the faster.
The key is to think like a buyer.
Successful new construction sales people and real estate agents know this. But sellers persistenly avoid it.
Penetrating the consciousness of your ideal buyer to the point that they will actually make you an offer you can live with is not an all at once undertaking. There are multiple stages and steps.
Exposure
The buyer must in some way come to know that your property is actually for sale. Yard signs are critical (as allowed). Marketing is critical. Spreading the word to your own personal circle of friends and sphere of influence by word of mouth and social networking is critical. If the buyer doesn't know it's for sale they will never get begin to get their curiousity stimulated.
Stimulating Their Curiousity
Once the buyer notices your house the information with which they are in immediate contact must stimulate their curiousity and draw them further into wanting to know more. Using the analogy of human courtship this is the flirting stage. The goal of the information presented here must be to cause the buyer to boldly take some action - dial that 800 information 24-hour recordings number, call the number on the yard sign, tune to radio to the Talking House station, take a flyer out of the flyer box.
Engaging Your Sales Professionals
Once the buyer answers some simple "Call to Action" the response to their inquiry must be swift, informative, purposeful, trained, and focused on getting them to schedule an in-person private showing with an appropriately licensed professional.
Many buyers will present without agents. Experienced sellers know that it is most prudent to get an agent involved with the buyer as quickly as possible. This is why most For Sale By Owners and most builders will co-operate with a buyer side real estate agent. And every seller needs to have at ready an agent who can appropriately engage with each prospective buyer.
You benefit from smoother transactions when the buyer side showing agent is known to, and in frequent communication with the listing agent or seller. This is where experienced sellers gain by listing with proven, multiple-person teams who can provide showing agents for any of their seller's listings.
One of the most important benefits provided by the buyer-side sales professional is determining whether or not the presenting buyer candidate is in fact ready, willing, and able to responsibly make an offer to purchase if they do like the house. Scheduling showings for the people who are not ready, willing and able wastes the owner's and seller's time and runs the risk of putting off a really well qualified buyer for a wannabe tire kicker.
Arranging Access
The sales professional faced with scheduling, confirming and completing that showing must find it reasonably straightforward to accomplish. When access is only permitted with 2-day advance notice and certain days and hours with the homeowner present a huge percentage of potential showings will simply not happen. This is why we use lockboxes.
Private Access
Buyers are visiting a stranger's home. They need to know functional size of laundry room, pantry, and closets. They are NOT interested in how the owner manages their laundry, stores their food or what kind of clothes they have. But, since the owner is a stranger, and the buyers are polite, buyers will usually hold back their looking everywhere they need to look if the owner is right there. Owners should be absent during showings.
Teasing Forth an Offer with Flexible Terms
At some point one or both buyers may start thinking of a hypothetical offer. There are many what-ifs in their mind and they are identifying obstacles to a deal before they extend themselves with an offer.
At this point the savvy seller, thinking like a potential buyer, has found ways to communicate some encouraging flexibility in their terms via their agent or marketing information. The flexibility could be mentioning that a rent back or preoccupancy might be available, that a one-year home warranty was included, that the rest of the year's HOA dues would be prepaid, that the seller would be happy to reinstall a refrigerator where it used to be, or that they owner might pay some of the buyer's closing cost.
Having important planning information readily at hand in the property simplifies moving to an offer also. Listing agents may provide a required jurisdictional disclosure form already signed by the seller, a properly populated contract page identifying the conveying fixtures and appliances, and a quote sheet from a loan officer identifying multiple hypothetical down payment and financing options.
The key here is to make the information conveniently available to simplify the decision to extend an offer. Another option would be a handout for the showing agent stating that offers would be presented in X hours or days and responded to in Y hours or days. This kind of promised performance can be attractive to buyers on tightly scheduled house-hunting trips form out of the area.
Conclusion
The key is to think like a buyer. And you if you do you will plan for exposure, curiousity development, professional agent engagement, convenient private access and accomodating pre-offer information.
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