1100 N Blue Ridge Circle
Take a clue from Uncle Bill. Click here for a three year old article I wrote about my Uncle Bill that is just as true today. If you do what Uncle Bill does, your house will sell and you will be on your way. If you do what most of the people in our market are doing, you will still be waiting and hoping for a buyer months from now…still making the payment…still cleaning feverishly every time someone decides to view your house.
Or you can take a lesson from the asset managers that handle all the foreclosures. These people sell thousands and thousands of homes in all kinds of markets across the country. They have a system down…and guess what? It works.
Here it is:
1. Clean the house out. These people call it a trash-out. They just take all the trash out of the house. Hopefully you clean it better than that. You can beat the foreclosures by not only cleaning, but fixing everything that is broken. A very good idea is to hire an inspector to inspect your house and then fix everything that needs fixing. Here is a partial list of inspectors. Most foreclosures are still in need of repairs so you can beat them by bringing your house up to good repair.
2. Determine the market price. This is NOT the highest price that it might sell in a perfect world to a perfect buyer at the perfect time. This is a realistic price that it will sell at when you compare your home to competing homes and recent sales. After all, that is what a buyer is going to do. A buyer will not buy your home if they can find a similar one for 10% less…in fact, they won’t even look at your home if it’s 10% over the market. Wonder why you aren’t getting any showings? It’s because you are at least 10% over the market.
If you really want to sell, you need to BEAT your competition. You need to have a bigger, better, cleaner house at a lower price. Then you will sell. Your real estate professional can help you find that price. Make sure you get them to tell you the real market price…not the price that they hope will make them like you so you can get the listing.
3. Market your house well. In Alaska this means you need to be on the internet. Not only is Alaska one of the most internet savvy states in the country, anyone moving here always checks out the property on the internet first. We try to not only have the photos and details on line for customers, but videos as well. If your house is on the MLS, has a good internet presence, with good photos and videos than you are doing what needs to be done.
4. Watch the market closely. This is where the professional asset managers beat out the private homeowners. This is why foreclosures have a DOM, (Days On Market), statistic of only 33 days while the rest of the Mat-Su market is 67 days. In other words, foreclosures sell twice as fast for this reason. They make price adjustments quickly. If you are on the market for 4 weeks with no offer you are at least 5% over the market, make that price change. If you have less than 2 showings a week you are at least 10% overpriced…drop it 10% and watch the market again. Foreclosures usually make 5-7% price drops every 3-4 weeks. They will keep doing this until they sell. And guess what…they WILL sell.
And so will you if you take the advice in this article.
OH…and PS. The house in the photo at the top was listed for the market price on May 17th and guess what! It sold on May 21!
