Selling Your House During a Slow Market: What YOU Need to Know

Let’s face it. Selling your house can be challenging in regular times. But when the real estate market is slower, and its downright hard AND stressful. BUT it doesn’t have to be.

Selling during these times means you need to prepare your house to stand out from your competition in order to earn top dollar for your home & to sell as quickly as possible.

Stand out from your competition!

It’s always important in any market to have your house stand out from your competition. Your competition would be any other house that is for sale in your general area that are similar in price range and what they offer in terms of square footage, number of bedrooms, amenities etc.

When you’re  selling your house when the economy is unpredictable like during a pandemic, you want to come out the gate running.    Its like the horse at a race track when the starter gun goes. You want to come out with your best foot forward.

Some parts of the country may have more buyers than houses are available .  In another words, supply exceeds demand.  That is great news if you’re a buyer, but not so great news if you’re a seller.

In some areas of the country, there may be more demand for houses available than supply as people postpone putting their house up for sale and they don’t want the risk of people coming through their house during covid.

But the economy is not predicable right now as governments grabble with the billions of dollars that they have thrown at this virus through healthcare, bumping up the economy, funding testing and finding a vaccine.  Companies have closed their doors and many more are struggling to keep open during this uncertain time.

But through all of this, there will be buyers ready to buy YOUR house.  To stand out, you need to prepare your house to earn top dollar AND to sell your house quickly!

Do what it takes to earn top dollar for your home!

When you’ve made that decision to sell your house, your house no longer becomes the home where you’ve raised your kids, or started out as a new young couple or was that first home which you were so proud of being able to buy.  Your house becomes a business!  You need to do everything that you can to make the house sell for as much as possible and as fast as possible.  Is it inconvenient to live in a house while you’re getting it ready to sell and have the property listed?  Heck YES!

But the question is, are you willing and able to live with some inconvenience for a couple of months to get top dollar for your home?

On one staging consult, I was going through the home taking the lead from the clients. The first room we started with was the living room of course. Their concern was the layout of and if the couches were too big for the size of the room which they were.  We discussed several options and came up with a solution that they were happy with.  The next was a spare bedroom that had a mattress on the floor.  We discussed several options of making the room look great which they agreed to.  We went into their bathroom and they said they would declutter but there wasn’t much to be done there. I opened up the shower curtain and found MOLD all around the bathtub.

We went into the kitchen and  I looked up and noticed the ceiling had had water damage.

It’s important to have your house looking pretty and nicely staged, but if there are some outstanding necessary repairs to get the house in good condition, you need to do them so that buyers won’t pass on your house, or worse, come with a low ball offer. Some repairs may be so extensive that you may need to have a conversation with your realtor about selling the house in “as is” condition.  Fortunately most repairs do not fall into that category and are relatively easy to fix before the house is put on the market.

Also there are many inexpensive renovations that you can to do your home to make your house stand out from the rest.  Painting is a relatively inexpensive renovation that you can do to your home that adds so much value.  Other updates like replacing builder lights, updating light switches, wall plates and builder brass door knobs all add value to your home.

For more expensive renovations, like renovating a kitchen, a bathroom makeover, or a basement renovation, all home renovation projects are not created equal. When renovating your home, it pays to consider which projects will bring you the best return when it’s time to sell your house. What we think may appeal to a potential buyer, may in fact have been a “wasted” renovation.  Keep an eye on the renovation projects and $$$ that consistently provide home owners with a positive return on their investment.  After all, for most of us, our house is our biggest investment that we have.

Stage your house to sell it quickly!

 It’s a well known fact that staging a house makes a house sell faster and for more money than houses that are not staged. In fact, the cost of staging a house is LESS than the cost of the first price reduction on a house that is NOT selling.

90% of people looking for a house, search ONLINE first BEFORE they step into a house!!!

Your pictures need to stand out from your competition!  They need to look magazine worthy! You want to be on a buyer’s “must see list.”

Professionally staged houses receive more foot traffic than those that aren’t staged and spend less time on the market because buyers are looking more for “move-in” ready homes. When houses are not showing their best, buyers make concessions in their mind and offer less money for their starting offer than if the house showed well.

Too often, I’ve been called into stage a house for a client when a previous agent didn’t have the house staged, or tried to do it themselves to save money.  The result?  Disaster!!!  Clients were over stressed because the house sat on the market with too many showings and no offers.  Clients had to juggle with kids and all the showings, but the biggest stressor with most of my clients was the financial strain and the delay in their plans that the unsold house was causing them. Unfortunately it was an unnecessary stress that might clients had to go through but its a good warning for sellers.  If a house is properly prepared the first time when getting it on the market, sellers will have the competitive advantage over their competition regardless of the state of the economy.

Related posts:

Why You Need to Go to Open Houses in Your Neighborhood

Treat Your House Like a Business When Selling Your Home

I help busy homeowners, just like you, to style their house to make it a stunning retreat, where they can live and enjoy their home. I help homeowners, make money beyond their wildest expectations from the sale of their house by guiding them when they’re getting their house ready to sell.

Hi! I’m Debi Collinson. Home Stylist. Stager. Real Estate Investor. It all started back in 2006, at the request of a realtor, where I nervously staged my very first home. But the sellers liked their newly styled home so much that they turned down an offer for full asking price. I went back to design school and the rest is history.

In my spare time, LOL, I buy “fixer uppers” to fix up & either sell for a healthy profit or to rent. I’m currently living in my 8th “fixer upper.” Sign up to receive my e-mails of how to make your home stunning, how to sell your house for top dollar AND how to become financially independent one fixer upper at a time!