5 Tips to Help Sell Your House Faster Than Your Neighbors
The two most important questions that home
sellers want to know the answer to are “How much is my house worth?” and “How
long will it take to sell my house?”. Many people will base the answer to these
questions off of their neighbor’s recent experience selling their home.
If
your neighbor’s house recently took 6 months to sell, then it seems likely that
your house may take 6 months to sell as well, right? Not necessarily. There are
numerous factors that determine how quickly a home will sell.
Sometimes
it can take a long time to sell a home because the neighborhood is far from
town and there are fewer buyers in the area. Under these circumstances, you may
be correct in assuming that your house will take a while to sell. For people
who live within city limits where homes sell every day, the days on the market
for your neighborhood will usually vary slightly, based on each individual
property.
As I
will cover in this blog post, there are 4 major factors that determine the
resale performance of a home: Price, Location, Condition, and Marketing. You
can't change the location of a home, but you can change the other 3 factors.
My
first 3 tips cover the best ways to present a home for sale in order to amplify
it’s condition and sell it
at it’s highest possible value.
The 4th point covers marketing tricks to help you receive added visibility when
listing your house for sale online. The last point will focus mainly on the
importance of pricing a home right.
1 Update Your Landscaping
Statistically,
buyers will emotionally attach to a home within the first few minutes of a
property showing. Since landscaping is the first point of contact for potential
home buyers, it is an extremely important part
of the buyer’s experience. It's the first impression! You may have beautiful
landscaping already, but it is still important to make it look new again.
Adding some new mulch, removing any dead or damaged vegetation, and planting a
few bright and colorful flowers can dramatically change the curb appeal of your
home.
All of
this can be done in a day or two with very minimal cost, depending on the size
of your yard. If you have no landscaping at all and you are adding it for the
first time, it can be more expensive and take days or weeks to complete, but
the end result should be well worth it though.
In
order to understand the impact of landscaping, you first have to think like a home
shopper. Go online and look for a few homes for sale within your price range
and organize them in order of your most favorite. (if you’re looking in
Colorado Springs, you can use our website at GreatColoradoHomes.com). Now
take the homes at the top of your list and look at the 1st picture of the front
of the house.
Do any
of the homes in your list need landscaping in the front yard? Probably not.
Chances are very high that the homes you chose are well landscaped.
There
may be other homes similar to the ones you have chosen that you probably looked
right past because the initial picture of the front of the house was
unappealing in comparison to the others. This is why you want to have nice
landscaping. It immediately amplifies the
desirability of your home.
2 Move
Out and Stage Your Home
This is a tough tip to accept, but it’s the brutal
reality of the real estate market. Vacant homes that are staged typically show
much better than occupied homes. Vacant staged homes are presented in such a
way that buyers can easily see themselves moving into them. A staged home triggers emotions that make people want to stay longer.
They somehow feel as though life would be less-stressful by living there.
On the
flip side, it’s hard for potential home buyers to visualize their furniture and
accessories in a property that is loaded with other people’s stuff. If you have
a lot of stuff and your house is constantly being used, the best thing to do is
to completely move out. It's a lot of work to move out first, but it will definitely help you sell your home faster than your neighbor's home that
is loaded with a ton of personal stuff.
You
stand the highest chance of getting a strong offer this way because your
property is always accessible for showing and it always looks great. Your house
will look larger with minimal furniture in it as well. Vacant/staged homes
appear much larger than occupied homes because they utilize space better.
If
moving out is not an option, then you might want to rent a storage unit and
move as much stuff out of your home as possible. Remove as many personal
pictures, decorations, bookshelves, and personal items as you can possibly
stand to live without for the time that your house is listed for sale. Since
you plan on moving anyway, this is work that will have to be done at some point,
regardless. You might as well do it at the start of the home selling process
and reap the benefits of having a beautifully shown home.
With
your home in staged
condition, buyers can picture
themselves living in your home and are more likely to consider purchasing it.
When I show homes, I notice that buyers consistently feel more attached to
properties that are vacant with minimal staging.
3 Add New Paint and Flooring
If you
have to ask the question, “Should we add new paint and/or change those
floors?”, then the answer is most likely “Yes”. When you live in a home and
walk on the same floors every day, it’s easy to feel as though those floors are
good enough, but you really need to compare them to the other homes on the
market.
If
other properties in your price range are offering new flooring and paint, then
your house is going to highlight the fact that those homes are better than
yours and you will be helping to sell those properties. I always say there are
two types of homes on the market: homes that sell, and homes that sell the
other homes. Your home will sit on the market until there are no other
properties available with new paint and floors. It’s just the nature of the
business.
If
your carpet is more than 3 years old and you can afford to change the carpet, I
highly suggest doing it. If your wood floors are more than 5 years old and they
have never been refinished, I would suggest refinishing or replacing them. It’s
important to look at upgrades in terms of percentage to the overall price of
the home.
In Colorado Springs, the average home price is around $350,000. New
flooring usually cost around $10,000 to $15,000, depending on the size of the
home and type of floor installed. (New flooring can easily cost $40,000+ if you
go with the most expensive materials, but we’re talking about basic flooring
here.) That means the cost of new flooring is a small percentage of the overall
price of the home. However, the impact of new flooring is HUGE.
Home
buyers will say that they are willing to put new floors into a house, but when
it comes right down to it, most of them will choose a home with floors that
they like already installed. It's harder to emotionally attach to a home that
needs work. Market your home with new floors and fresh neutral paint and watch
it sell fast!
Hire A Realtor with Marketing
A good
Realtor with great marketing will know how to get the most out of your home's
online listing. Every year, there are more digital tools to choose from. Hire a Realtor who knows how to use these new digital tools to sell your home faster
than your neighbors.
A
professional video walk-through is one of the most powerful selling tools. I have had buyers sit at the closing table and tell me
that the video walk-through was the #1 thing that sold them on the property
that I listed. They watch it over and over again. After looking at many homes
and then going back and revisiting their potential properties online, good
video walk-throughs will resell the home to the buyers every time they watch
it.
You
can add descriptive text and highlight important features and basically sell
the home to the buyers before they ever even see it in person. Since most
listings do not have good video walk-throughs, your listing will stand out over
and above the other listings online.
Posted by Andrew Fortune on Monday, September 23rd,
2019
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