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

It's simple...it's all there in Black & White

Sometimes seeing things in black & white can change your perspective.

I have said it many times before. Your price (as it relates to your product) will be your biggest stumbling block in selling your house. So many people are lost in their home and don't realize that they are taking THAT with them. You are not selling your home. You are selling a house!!!

I have often joked the the difference between a house and a home is about $15,000. If you have even the slightest idea that you are house proud (do you think yours is worth more than your neighbours?) than I suggest you invest in some professional advice and get an appraiser in to give you the information you need to price your house correctly!

The last thing you want is the big $ sign and the little house...

Can You Learn From the Dragons?

When I saw Kevin O'Leary's tweet about valuations it rang in my ears.

By now I assume everyone has at least heard of the hit CBC show Dragons' Den. Kevin is the "Simon Cowell" of the venture capital world. He is jagged and unrelenting on business owners to show him the money. His words above are the common denominator in deals turned down on the den. Most people go in looking for too much and have too high of a valuation. This is no different then those selling their house.

We recommend all sellers make sure they have the right information when pricing their home. As I have said many times before this is best made available from an independent appraiser. What happens when a home seller takes that advice? As you can expect, if they start with a fair market value appraisal to base their pricing decision on, they get people wanting to make a deal. If they choose to over value their home then buyers are going to say one thing..."I'm Out"

Check out what this Vancouver realtor has to say regarding price...


That's right, he said it. Price is 90% of the selling and marketing is only 10%. So tell me why an appraisal costs $250 and an agent costs $15,000. Seems to me your better investment is the appraiser not the realtor. Seems to me your better to drop your realtor AND your price so you can sell your house!

M

Win Fantabulous Prizes

All you have to do is know the right answer.

When selling your home you need to ask "What is the right question?"

The answer: Knowing the value of your home. Without this info you are guessing and one of 3 things will happen.

1.Price it too low and leave money on the table
2.Price it too high and sit on the market forever
3.Get lucky and price it right and sell your home

The likelihood of #3 goes up dramatically as you start to gather knowledge. First step in the knowledge quest happens by watching the local market and see what other people are listing for. How long are they sitting on the market? How does their home compare to yours? This step should be done 2-3 months before you put your house up ideally. Second step is to see what houses are selling for. This can be done easily enough through the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation website. The third step, and the most crucial, get yourself an appraisal by a licensed appraiser. Not a "CMA" from an agent, the motivation of their pricing can not always be considered in your best interest.
I am including this slide show and want you to look specifically at slide #8

CMA Steps

View more documents from mratcliffe1.

Why is it a Keller Williams agent does not want you to not listen to another agent? Are they not all trained the same? Do they not all look at the same data to come up with your price? Why would there be a difference between agents?

This is why an independent appraisal is so important versus a real estate agent offered CMA.

Hey don't get me wrong, you could always get lucky...


M

Do You "Get It"?

Some people "get it" from the start, others, not so much...

I saw this quote on Facebook from the PropertyGuys.com Edmonton franchise.

"Just had a client who was listed on MLS for 2 weeks and was already getting the "Drop your price, drop your price, drop your price". The Realtor of course was going to get them "Top dollar" when she set the price two weeks prior. ...... So they dropped her and went with us. Listed Friday and already had 8 families through by Sunday. Somebody gets it, they really get it!!! Product......Price....Exposure."

More and more people are getting it.

Here in the Waterloo Wellington area we have been helping people pay themselves the commission for about 3 and a half years. Things are starting to come full circle in the local real estate market. Those leading private home sellers will be second time clients in the near future (we are already starting to see them).

As the Private Sale Circle grows so does the empowerment of you the home seller. The three card monte game of pricing your home with a realtor will end. No longer will you be lead astray in order to sign a contract. Pricing your home should not be a contingency on your listing. There is a better way. A licensed appraiser has to be objective. Here is a quote from their code of ethics

"public interest will be served by members acting responsibly, impartially, objectively, and with independent judgment."

Pricing shouldn't be tricky!

M