Saturday, January 18, 2014
Homes for sale in sell-ready condition:
Homes for sale in sell-ready condition:
After the holidays, we like to clean out the old and welcome the new. If that means shopping around for a new home, then you’ll want to make sure the one you have now is in sell-ready condition.
1. Evaluate your home. It may seem like a no-brainer, but it is the most important step if you are looking to get a good return on your home. Remodeling your kitchen or bathrooms, for example, is a great idea to attract potential buyers and increase the value of your home; but be careful to not go overboard. moderate kitchen remodels can recoup 69% of costs. Excessive ones got back less than 60%. If you’re itching to sell fast, a better plan would be to fix and update the smaller things in your home. This can mean cleaning your tiles, replacing door and cabinet hardware, fixing faucets and other small but impactful parts of the house. These things add up, and going overboard too close to putting your home on the market can be more hassle than help.
2. Think about when you’re selling. In Aruba, we’re lucky enough to have green grass, blue skies and appealing lawns all year-round, but it’s still a good bet to show closer to springtime than directly after the holidays. Even serious buyers may be deterred due to post-holiday frenzy. You can either wait until a few weeks after New Year’s, or hold off showing until spring. The difference is fewer shoppers but more serious ones, versus multiple shoppers and competing with more homes on the market.
3. Be realistic with your pricing, today’s buyers are cautious. Pricing your home too high can deter them from even considering your home, when there are other more realistically-priced options nearby. Save yourself the time and hassle and price right the first time.
4. Make a good impression. Whenever you decide to sell, make sure you and your home are ready. Try to clear your home of any overly-personal style choices or room decorations. They may fit for your family, but potential buyers will have a hard time seeing past these bold arrangements. Clean up and put some things in storage, and make neutral everything you have left. Clean closets with a few linens and hangers are more sellable than ones covered in band posters and full of kids’ laundry. You never get a second first impression, so make sure shoppers are hooked when they walk through the door.
Saturday, January 04, 2014
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
4 tips to help your home sell quickly
Many properties that have been on the market for a long time must have hidden problems, is often what buyers are thinking.
And that could lead to unnecessary price reductions. This specific property online looks great, except for some graffiti on the walls in the children’s room. The homeowner was not stupid, he was taking good care of the home and knew buyers could easily see past a little spray paint. Except that he was wrong. Most buyers do not want to do painting/ fixing at all. There are homes for sale that are in better shape, so compare with the competition in your area. Maybe this home is not ready, but the one down the street is. In the end, this seller not only lost time, he lost big in the math. Had he followed the advise of his real estate agent and spent the $1.000,- to repaint some rooms, it is certain he could have sold the home quickly for its asking price.
Leave it to the pros.
Welcome to the world of home sales, where a little stubborn behavior can be costly. But there is a solution that can be summed up with two basic points: • Find a seller's agent who you like and trust. Make sure you interview other agents that focus on your area, and then realize that you're hiring a professional who knows how to do this.
Listen to that agent.
The key is to separate the emotional qualities of your home from the basic functional qualities of the house. To start with; your house is unique, and so is everybody else's. Everybody thinks that their house is unique. Get over it. If the goal is to sell, and to sell fast, then you’re better off trusting the expert, even if his/ her advice, like the paint on a couple of walls or undercutting the price. To get a sense of what we mean, see the 4 tips below, all from experienced agents who say these are areas where home sellers often need some persuading.
Price it right; price it low.
You can never price a house too low, because the market will take care of it. An agent recently listed a home for $535,000 even though it had been appraised at $560,000. The house sold within weeks. The low price drew quick and competing bids. Had she listed the home for $560,000, she's certain the sale would have dragged and brought in even less than the valuation. If you start high and start lowering it, you will never get to the number that you will get to by starting low and going up, because when you start lowering the price, people will start wondering what's wrong with the house...and if it's been sitting for a while, people will try and make a lowball offer. Some sellers will say; Let's put it 20% higher, then during negotiation we'll have room. No. The rule of thumb is you should go where the last (comparable home) sold for, or right below that. Too high, and your buyers will be scared off.
2. Try a fresh sales approach.
In one case we got a condo listing that had been on the market for 2 years with another agent. We immediately placed a large advertisement in a local newspaper. The following day we received over 10 phone calls. Within a week, we had two offers on the table. Sellers think that you need to have ads in the newspapers and an open house weekly, but that has nothing to do with the value of real property. If you have priced it right and cleaned it up, you don't have to do any of those things.
3. Don’t try too hard to fight the market.
A beachfront home had been on the market for 3 years. When it finally did sell, the seller got half of his original listing price. He had all kinds of Realtors working for him. "It was hard to sell big houses on the water." Interested buyers either couldn't sell their own homes or had trouble getting financing. Eventually the seller had to accept a loss. Sometimes a seller has to accept that there's only so much an unfriendly marketplace can offer.
4. Remember, renovations aren't a magic bullet. "The Realtor walks through and says, 'If you do these 10 things I can sell your house for this amount,'" But without lowering price, renovations alone often aren't enough. The owners of a beachfront house spent $75,000 on renovations with the expectation that the improvements would put them over the hump needed to fetch a $1.7 million sale price. At the height of the boom, the home easily could have sold for more than $2.5 million. The owner has to get about $1.6 million for it (to satisfy the bank) but the reality is they aren't going to get more than $1.4 million for it. They've got nothing but lowball offers. My advice: be flexible with price. "Price is still what's moving." And if you want the house to move, find an agent willing to be brutally honest. Some Real estate agents want to give an owner a high number to get the listing, but they can't make that sales price indication too high because they're going to have absolutely no chance to deliver on that promise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
During a press conference at his offices on Tuesday, August 24, Minister of Tourism Otmar Oduber presented the latest groundbreaking event t... -
The whole island of Aruba will be cleaned in a one week effort by volunteers (schools, companies) up till December 13th 2009. The AVP also a...
