I would like to thank everyone that commented on my last post. I sure did not expect so many views and comments. My closing on Friday was a little tense, the sellers were not out by the time of our walk-through. In fact they had just started moving out and even though their agent told them to please leave the home for 10 minutes when we did our walk-through, they refused. The sellers were rude to me when I showed up, so at first my buyers did not want to go in, they finally did and once they started talking with the sellers things went okay. The sellers finally got all of their stuff out of the home by midnight.
Now for my topic of the day - Homes That Don't Sell. I get most of my business from listing and selling expired listings. I try my best to tell them why I think it did not sell and work to fix this problem. Usually it is a combination of Price, Lack of advertising, Location, and Condition of the Home. I can fix the lack of advertising, I try to get them to fix the price, we can do nothing about the location, and I tell them things they can do to fix the condition of the home. The main things I ask them to fix for me are the three C's: Clean the Home, Pick up all of the Clutter, and work on the Curb Appeal of the home.
Sometimes I take the listing at a price that I feel is a little too high, with a promise that they will drop the price if we do not get the amount of showings that we should. I know this is not a great idea, but remember these are expired listings that have been on the market sometime for up to 4 years. We already do not get the benefit of zero days on market (unless they are in a position that I can get them to keep the home off the market for 60 days, so we can reset our days on market to zero.) Other-times, if they want too much for their home, I walk away from the listing. I have already had to do this five times this year.
Sometimes I take the listing at the price they want on the condition that they fix certain things. I did this on a listing last year, and they told me they would have if all fixed within a week. Four months later when the listing expired they still had not fixed any of it. They emailed me a week ago saying they are just about ready to put it back on the market and they will be getting the problems fixed soon. I did not even respond to their email. (I know that is not professional, but after all I had been through, such as cutting the grass myself on days we were having an open house after they had promised me it would be cut.)
So far this year I have sold four listings that had expired with other agents, but I have two that will soon be expiring, These are priced not too bad, just a tad on the high side of the comparable. I have done all of my usual advertising - Color ads in the St. Louis Post and Journal, Black and white ads in the Homes magazine and another local paper; Direct Mail Postcards to targeted buyers; TV advertising; Zip Code Featured Homes Ads on Realtor.com, etc. The homes show very well, they are clean and they are not cluttered; they could use some more curb appeal. One of the homes offers owner financing. The reason they are not selling is that they do not have what buyers of those particular style homes are wanting. One has over 1900sq ft. of living area and is priced low for having that, but it does not have a basement and basements are in high demand here. The other is a beautiful Atrium Ranch, it is priced lower than the other Atrium Ranch homes in the Area, but it does not have a finished room in the lower level. It is priced to reflect that - but the people looking want that finished room.
So in closing, I guess a variable that is not always considered, is if the home has what the buyers are looking for in that style of home. If not, it is going to take longer to sell.
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