He was a senior executive moving from one company to another in a distant city. Inevitably, the job transfer brought with it an urgent need to sell his high-end colonial house.
How did the executive manage to sell both quickly and for a decent price?
One of his secrets was to hire a “staging” firm to make his home look like a model. For $2,000, the company’s designers rearranged the interior of the 5,000-square-foot house–replacing half the executive’s furniture with rented items and sending less-appealing pieces into storage.
“The result was a house with a wonderfully warm and different feel to it,” recalls Margret Schmidt, the Coldwell Banker broker-associate who listed the home.
With its model-home look, the colonial sold briskly, just in time to spare the executive the need to accept the low offer on the place made by his new employer. All told, he saved $15,000 by staging the home well, Schmidt reckons.
Do you have a need to sell quickly, due to a job change, divorce, financial problem or the happy discovery of another home where you’d rather live?
Then, assuming you’re in the top half of your local housing price range, it could be worth the expense to hire “stagers” to give your place a model-home look, Schmidt says. Ask your agent to scout out the name of a good staging firm, or hire an interior designer.
Engaging a designer trained in the art of making a home more appealing is just one tip real estate specialists offer to “hurried” sellers, who typically seek to liquidate a home in fewer than four weeks. Here are five other suggestions:
– Hire an appraiser to be sure you price right from the outset.
Yes, it can cost $200 to $400 to bring in an appraiser. And, yes, good agents can perform a similar service at no extra charge to the home seller.
But for many sellers, there’s a problem to relying solely on the value estimates set by real estate agents, says Daryl Jesperson, executive vice president of RE/MAX International, the real estate chain. The problem is that a few agents will propose an unrealistically high estimate of a home’s value, to make the seller happy, Jesperson says. And all too often, homeowners are prone to pick the agent who suggests the highest price.
“An appraiser is more neutral than an agent. He doesn’t have as deep a vested interest in doing a deal,” Jesperson contends.
While the typical seller doesn’t need an appraiser to value his home correctly, a hurried seller can’t risk committing a pricing error at the outset, Jesperson says. That’s because price is the single most important factor in deciding how rapidly a home sells, he notes.
– Price your property just a notch below the market.
“You want your house to be perceived as `a deal,’ ” says Schmidt.
You don’t have to use a fire-sale price tag to attract shoppers. Just dipping slightly below the prevailing market price, perhaps only by 1/2 of 1 percent, should be enough to set your home apart and hasten its sale, according to Jesperson.
Ironically, the seller who prices a tad low often makes more money in the end, because he averts heavy “holding costs” for the home, Jesperson says. “It’s sobering to realize how much it costs to keep a house on the market month after month. You have to cover everything from mortgage payments to taxes to lawn care.”
– Engage an agent who knows how to “schmooze” with other agents.
OK, the World Wide Web is now carrying an abundance of property listings, and the potential for buyers to learn about for-sale homes through their computers is tremendous. But for the time being, at least, a majority of home buyers are guided to the property they ultimately purchase by their agents.
How can your listing agent help you sell in haste? By quickly spreading the word about your home to colleagues in the field who are actively working with buyers, through conversation, postcards or E-mail messages.
“You’ve got to make sure the agent tells everyone about the house,” says Schmidt.
How can you detect whether an agent is a good “schmoozer?”
“Her plans to spread the word about your house to other agents should be part of her listing presentation,” Schmidt says.
– Offer tangible incentives to draw in buyer’s agents.
Nowadays, it’s a common practice for buyer’s agents to preview properties for their busy clients. Obviously, a seller in a hurry wants his home to make it on the list of properties that are prescreened and could be seen by serious purchasers.
Savvy listing agents who seek to encourage showings offer small rewards to agents who take the trouble to see a place, Schmidt says. For instance, an agent who drops his business card into a fishbowl at a home could be eligible to win a drawing for a gift certificate worth $50 to $100, she says. Some sellers are offering agents the chance to win a weekend at a vacation retreat they own, or a fancy restaurant meal.
Such incentives are an especially good idea if your house is located on a busy street or up a steep set of stairs, Schmidt says. Without an incentive, an agent could be tempted to skip seeing the interior of such a home.
– Make it easy for buyers to visit your property or they may never see it.
Some fussy sellers put time obstacles in the way of their prospects. For instance, they’ll deny access until 11 a.m. on weekend mornings, just so they can “sleep in.” Or they’ll ban showings during their baby’s afternoon naptime.
But allowing access to your home is a serious matter–and all the more so for sellers under pressure to liquidate fast. You have to be flexible, even if that means showing a house while your baby is napping and you’re waiting in the back yard, Schmidt says.
“How can you sell a house unless it’s shown?” she asks.
