You’ve heard the terms “Buyer’s Market” and “Seller’s Market” if you are thinking about selling your home. Understanding exactly tips the local real estate market in favor of either buyers or sellers isn’t that complicated.
What is Wilmington’s Buyer’s and Seller’s Market scenario?
Selling Your Home in a Seller’s Market
If you are fortunate enough to be selling in the price range that gives you the market advantage, a Real Estate Agent with strong local expertise will help you manage a process that could move very quickly – and keep things as simple and stress-free as possible.
If you are ready to get your home on the market, your first step is to interview Real Estate Agents and find your best fit. Expertise, professional services offered, and personal chemistry are all important considerations in making one of the largest decisions in your life. Email Janine Pugh to schedule a listing consultation and FREE home valuation today!
Selling Your Home in a Buyer’s Market
In a Buyer’s Market, getting a great offer for your home is more of a challenge than at other times. If the value of your home puts you in the position of listing in a Buyer’s Market, you will need to utilize every piece of expert advice you can find to achieve the best selling price, in the shortest amount of time, with the fewest buyer concessions.
These tips are a great place to start when selling your home in a Buyers’ Market.
1. Price it right.
Put your trust in a Broker/Real Estate Agent who has deep knowledge of your neighborhood, the surrounding area, and the local real estate market. Local trends may impact the best pricing strategy for your home, so even though you may be tempted to compare your property to those you find online, other communities may not present the same market conditions.
Your Real Estate Agent will be able to clearly explain the rationale they have used to suggest YOUR best selling price. A real estate professional should be able to show you data, facts and figures that make you comfortable with the pricing strategy they are suggesting.
While you want to maximize your proceeds, listing your home at a price above its value in a Buyer’s Market will send buyers to your competitors.
What’s Your House Worth?
A KBT Realty agent will prepare a FREE comparative market analysis that determines a price that will be competitive.
2. Assess showability.
Being open to objective, expert input on how your home will show to prospective buyers will set you up for success. Before you list your home, you should determine what improvements need to be made to have it market-ready.
From re-arranging furniture, decluttering, painting, to repairing your roof or replacing your HVAC, and investing in landscaping, a Real Estate Agent will work through a checklist of items that impact showability.
Real estate that has great showability will be easier to market, and will create enthusiasm among real estate professionals who present your property to their buyers. The goal is to have your home out-class the competition in your price range.
3. Stage your home.
“Staging” is exactly what it sounds like: a professional interior designer turns your home into the best version of itself by making each room a showcase for the lifestyle it offers prospective buyers. People have trouble visualizing an empty room; staging gives them a sense of the size of the room and how to best place their own furniture.
If your home is empty, staging is easy but will require an investment in renting furniture and home decor. You might also engage the services of a home staging professional, who has interior design skills specifically attuned to the real estate market.
If you are living in your home while it is on the market, you still need to stage it, and your Real Estate Agent can walk through with you to make suggestions. Decluttering and de-personalizing are important, but moving furniture to make each room as universally appealing as possible will help you impress buyers. Even minimal decluttering can impact how your home is viewed.
4. Purchase a home inspection and a home warranty.
You might think of a home inspection as happening after your home is under contract. Purchasing a home inspection before listing your home can work to your advantage, though. Your Real Estate Agent can use a home inspection to market your home, and prospective buyers will be impressed that your home has already been inspected.
If a pre-listing inspection identifies issues, you also have the ability to address them upfront and help pave the way for a smooth contract-to-close.
This is also the time to talk with your Real Estate Agent about a Home Warranty, which adds real value to your property. Depending upon the home warranty company that you select, if your home doesn’t sell, there is no fee to you, as the seller.
5. Add incentives.
Talk with your Real Estate Agent about incentives you can add to your listing. Although an accurately priced home is the best strategy for selling your property, you should consider the upfront cost of various incentives, and discuss their long-range value. For example, an incentive like offering to pay closing costs could help sell your home more quickly, and might pay for itself by selling your home more quickly and decreasing the costs of carrying your current mortgage.
Some buyer incentives to consider are:
- Closing costs
- Cash rebates
- Agent bonuses
- Club memberships
- Prepaying HOA fees
- Paying for inspection
- Paying for title search
Make sure to highlight the features and improvements of your property that count as incentives, like high-end appliances, custom furnishings like bookshelves, a pool table, hot tub, or patio furniture. One home seller we know threw in a baby grand piano that a prospective buyer fell in love with!
6. Get professional listing photos.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and in real estate that couldn’t be truer!
Potential buyers will probably see your home online before they see it in person. Your Real Estate Agent should provide you with FREE listing photos of your entire property. Photos should be taken at various times of day to best showcase your home’s features.
Depending upon the location and special features of your home, your Real Estate Agent may suggest video and drone footage. These are specialty items, and may require an additional investment, but in certain situations, they will pay for themselves.
7. Review Marketing Efforts
Good marketing will use your property photos, and carefully crafted description to market online and in print materials. Your Real Estate Agent will provide a yard sign, flyers, postcards, and other types of print advertising, but should also market your home on their real estate firm’s website, on the hundreds of listing sites, in targeted email campaigns, and across social media. You want to see your listing on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter!
Ask your real estate agent what they do to get your property in front of people where ever they are shopping for a new home.
Online marketing is key to promoting your home, especially in a Buyer’s Market. Remember, when the supply of homes for sale is greater than the demand for homes in that price range, buyers are in the driver’s seat; buyers can weigh options and will have multiple properties to consider.
Want more advice on selling your home?
Email Janine Pugh today to schedule your COMPLIMENTARY listing consultation and FREE professional home valuation.
Janine will connect you with one of the real estate agents at KBT Realty Group, which is one of the top ranked real estate teams in the Wilmington North Carolina market, and which consistently out-performs the competition in a variety of market metrics.
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