What is the Key to Selling a House?

It's not so much a key as it is a shape. A diamond is a home seller's best friend

I have talked about the Home Selling Trifecta in the past. Product, Price, Exposure are key when you are selling your house. The magic happens when you use them correctly.

First let's understand what you have to do in preperation to get your home listed for sale (the top half of the diamond).

• Product - You can use your extensive knowledge borrowed from HGTV about de-cluttering and de-personalizing to get the home ready. Clean it top to bottom and fix anything that you know is broken. If you are not an avid HGTV fan you should get the advice of a professional stager and get things just right.
• Price - Get yourself some comparable sold listings and use them to know what the market has been doing over the last 6 months. You should also look to see what is on the market now in the range you are thinking of listing at and compare how your home stacks up. With PropertyGuys.com the option is also there to bring in a professional appraiser to give you a range in which your home should sell.
• Exposure - Look at your budget, weigh out the options and make sure you have what you need to get your home in front of prospective buyers. A listing with plenty of photos and virtual tours on PropertyGuys.com so buyers know what your home looks like, a nice big round sign for your lawn so the neighbours are all aware, and a listing on Realtor.ca to maximize your online presence. Other things include ads in the local paper, Facebook and Google ads, and open house signs if you are planning on doing any open houses.

Once you are listed you need to work your way in reverse through these steps to evaluate their effectiveness (bottom half of the diamond). Each one feeds into the other working like a funnel bringing you down to the one person who will write the cheque for your house. You must go in this order because if you change your price or tweak your product with limited exposure you will be costing yourself some of your hard earned equity. So how do you evaluate it? Depending on your schedule for selling we usually recommend allowing 4-6 weeks prior to making decisions. Of course if you have a short time frame to sell we do recommend being more aggressive in your evaluation.

• Exposure - Using the PropertyGuys.com visitor report you will see if your exposure is being effective. A single detached home in the Waterloo Wellington area will typically see a spike of around 75-125 viewings per day for the first few days. After that it should settle in to somewhere between 25-45 average viewings per day. If this is the case then you can skip to the next level of the diamond. If you lacking in exposure it means you need to look at putting it in front of more potential buyers. Did you do a mere posting on Realtor.ca? Did you add print ads in the local paper? What about the Facebook and Google ads (this is a fairly new offering so we can always add it in to your existing listing).
• Price - Since we are at the next level we are confident people are viewing the property. The issues is there is no follow through. Your online traffic is NOT turning into foot traffic. When people are looking at your listing and making a conscious decision not to call you, it speaks to one thing. Your price doesn't match your product. Exposure gets the buyers looking, the price gets them in the house! Did you get the appraisal? If so how are you priced in comparison? What are those other properties in your range doing? Have they adjusted their price? You will covert online traffic into foot traffic with more aggressive pricing.
• Product - We have all heard that a house sells it's self. This is true. It also prevents a sale if the house is not ready. The little things add up and tell the potential buyer the story of your home. Once you have the buyer in the home, if you have staged it properly the buyer will be rushing to get the offer in. If you are doing lots of showings and no one is talking about offers or asking when you are looking at for a closing date then your house is not wowing them. Did you paint the baseboards and trim? This always freshens things up. What about a back splash in the kitchen? Easy to do, adds value and fairly low cost. Did you give your home the "white glove test"? It is never too late to have our stager come in and give you the advice needed to push your home over the top!

Diamonds, not just for girls anymore.


M

How clean should your house be when you are selling it?

There is only one way to tell.

For the past 5 years we have been working with an amazing home stager based out of New Dundee. Lynda Schmidt is the real deal when it comes to getting a home ready to sell. One of the keys she always points to is the little details. No matter how ready you think your home is I guarantee you Lynda can put your home over the top with a few hours at your home.

One of the big keys she always points out is "clean, clean, clean". By clean I don't mean give the carpet a once over with the Dirt Devil while the wife is out and tell her how hard you have been working. In order to have buyers falling in love with your home they have to know how much you cared for it while you lived there. If they see dusty base boards, cobwebs in the corners of the vaulted ceilings, or that off colour spot in the "stainless" kitchen sink you may just show them you were more worried about your Dirt Devil than anything else. So you had best get the rubber gloves and the cleaning supplies out.

If you are like me and you would rather do anything than grab the paper towel. If that's the case I suggest hiring a local cleaning company to give it a once over after you have finished up working through Lynda's suggestion list so we can ensure the best possible photos. You want your home to show perfect both online and during your open houses.

Now get going on those baseboards so you can be confident it is ready for buyers.


M

How would a Jedi sell their house in today's real estate market?

Never more wisdom a pie chart has shown.

I would say one of the more common statements we hear in regards to selling a home privately is "it is worth a try". Fortunately we have learned from a reputable source, as so handily laid out in the pie chart above, there is no try. When selling a home, privately or with a real estate agent, the word try should never enter your vocabulary.

When one decides to sell their home there are key areas that need to be addressed in order to "do". If these things are not addressed you can not blame "try" you can only blame "do not".

What are the key areas? Great question! We know that the sale of a home is dependent on product, price and exposure, or the Home Selling Trifecta. Let's quickly look at each of these items as they relate to your home and then with each other.

• Product - This is the home it's self and all aspects of it's physical space including location, style, decorating, layout, quality, condition and over all cleanliness. The things you can't change or alter easily or at all you just have to deal with. Are you located in a busy neighbourhood? Does the flight path of the airport keep you awake? Are you in the neighbourhood that EVERYONE wants to be in? Do you have a 2 story or a bungalow?Areas where you do have control are areas that will impact the emotional buyer like staging the home for sale, having it "white glove clean", free of all defects inside and out (walls, roof, foundation) and ensuring all mechanical items are in good working order.
• Price - This is arguably the most important aspect. This is what will take an internet stalker and turn them into a motivated buyer. People are always lurking on real estate websites looking at this home and that home. Your goal is not to have a million views of your online listing but to have one person motivated to purchase it. Do your homework, find out what homes have sold for in your area. Look and see what your competition will be at the price you are thinking. How does your's stack up? Even if you miss the first 4 week window when properties are getting their first once over by the lurkers, you are still in the game if you are adjusting your price to where the market is moving. What doesn't work? Change your method of marketing and increase your price. If the widget you are selling for $5 isn't selling at Home Depot moving it over to Wal-Mart and charging $7 isn't going to help.
• Exposure - Get your home in front of buyers! Assuming you have priced your product correctly for the market this is the easy part. In today's market, as a private seller, you have more exposure potential than ever. There are plenty of questions someone considering selling their home should be asking. Do you need to be on the MLS? Will placing an ad in the paper help find home buyers? How do we advertise an Open House? Can I advertise my home on Google and Facebook or other social media platforms? What kind of advertising does an agent do for 5%?

The Trifecta works only when all three are working harmoniously together. If one side of the triangle is missing or being neglected you will not fall into "do" category.

Using services like PropertyGuys.com not only presents your home in professional way online but we also ensure you evaluate all areas of finding buyers for your home. We focus our efforts on ensuring all aspects of the home selling trifecta are met. If there is an area that is being neglected it will show up in your numbers. We will work with you throughout the home selling process to determin which part of the trifecta is being neglected so you can "do", because no one likes a "do noter"!



M