This is me from my column in the Arizona Republic (permanent link):
Why didn’t your house sell? Price, preparation, presentation — and availability
So your house didn’t sell. Now what?
Six months ago — or was it a year ago? — the world was young and ripe for the picking. You listed your home for sale, confident that you’d have a buyer in no time. Full price and then some. Why not? The neighbors got it. Sure, that was two years ago, but you have better carpets and new countertops.
So you talked to three Realtors and hired the one who said he could get your price. His marketing plan was long on networking and short on practical details, but — what the heck? — houses sell themselves, don’t they?
You read an article a while back about staging, but you don’t need that. You’ve got great furniture. And even though your Rotweiller is hardly ever a problem, it seemed prudent to make the listing by-appointment-only.
This is the way it is: In most neighborhoods in the Valley right now, there are at least five homes for sale that might work for each buyer in the marketplace. The only homes that will sell are the ones that are priced, prepared, and presented right and are available for buyers to see.
Why did your listing expire? You missed the market in one or more of those criteria. If you priced your home above the market, you sabotaged your sale from the outset. Prices are declining in most areas, so even if you made successive price reductions, you were probably still always above market value.
If the house wasn’t repaired and staged to perfection, buyers bought the homes that were. If it wasn’t available to be shown, there is no possibility it could have sold. And, alas, if you fell for happy babble about your Realtor’s vast network of relationships, then all you were missing was a marketing plan.
What now? If you need to sell now, relist at the market price — with a Realtor who has a real marketing plan and detailed instructions for you. If you can afford to wait, the market will turn around eventually, but it might be a long while.
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
Kris Berg says:
So much of this (on target) post goes back to bridging that gap, the gap being the void between what we as agents know we have to offer and the ways in which we excel on the behalf of our clients, and communicating this effectively to our would-be clients. I may be the best thing since the flat iron (a girl talking, here), but if I can’t effectively convey this, I have failed. And I have failed that would-be client.
A bit of irony: I spent the better part of a week at a technology conference learning more and better ways to be exceptional and to benefit my clients. Somewhere between electronic signatures and new Web 2.0 marketing opportunities and business trip expenses rivaling a mortgage payment gladly shelled out to improve my skills and value, I received a call from a “would-be” saying that, while they were extremely impressed with us and our presentation last week, they have a “friend at church”.
In increasingly huge numbers of instances, we are called on to be the “clean up crew”, stepping in to do it right the second time around. If there is one consumer reading this right now, reread Greg’s post. This is very serious business, and it is your business.
August 4, 2007 — 8:27 pm
Greg Swann says:
One of my Black Pearls from StarPower is an Expired listing campaign. I’ve never done this before, so I’m putting the package together now. Russell convinced me that the Republic column is worth a lot in credibility, so I wrote this column “to order” for that campaign.
August 4, 2007 — 11:04 pm
Lake Wallenpaupack Real Estate | Karen Rice says:
This is an excellent article – I’m going bookmark it and pass it on to my sellers, and future sellers. It really surprises me, the amount of people who put their homes on the market with nasty peeling paint, or priced as if there were gold buried in the back yard.
October 18, 2007 — 8:35 pm