HOME SELLING TIPS

The home next door is in foreclosure. The neighbors down the street just put their house up for sale at a ridiculous discount. And "For Sale" signs litter lawns all over town.
Welcome to the toughest selling conditions in years.
The bright side of selling a home in a down market is you get to seek your own bargain if you're going to buy after you're done. Closing a sale, however, can be teeth-grindingly slow if you don't do everything right — and maybe even if you do.
It's probably the worst time you could find to sell a house since the late '70s or early '80s.
Sales of previously occupied homes continue to sag after hitting a 13-year low last year.
Realtors sometimes are taken off guard at the perceived randomness of it all.
A house that's in a good location, fully updated and seems perfectly priced might sit on the market without a nibble.
One homeowner is leaving nothing to chance in selling her four-bedroom colonial in Norwalk, Conn. She has taken every action she could think of to get an offer for the house she and her ex-husband bought 17 years ago.
She researched and interviewed four brokers before hiring one, made a YouTube video showcasing the house, and created a hardcover book of comments and photos of the house in all four seasons to display for open house visitors. She used Facebook and word of mouth to advertise, and marketed on close to a dozen websites. And she priced her house competitively with the broker's guidance after studying the comps herself. The initial listing of $683,000 in late April was far less than the $850,000 she had sought in a failed attempt to sell near the height of the market in 2004.She even brought in a shaman to cleanse the house of any negative vibes, figuring it couldn't hurt. Lowering the price can be a home seller's most painful move. It was for this homeowner, who reluctantly dropped her asking price 5% to $649,230 after eight weeks.
If you really want to move your house in this kind of a market, you have to do everything. It's a lot of effort, but people shouldn't leave it all in the hands of their broker.
Unfortunately, all that work still doesn't guarantee a sale, particularly when many buyers feel little urgency to act and assume they will get a better deal by waiting.
Selling is really emotional for many because they have put a lot into their house.
The best tips for selling underscore how the market has changed:
1. PRICE AGGRESSIVELY.
Even if you're fully aware that prices have plummeted, it can come as a shock when a real estate agent advises you to slap a low-low price on your home.
The reality is that only 4% to 10% of homes on the market nationwide sell in a given month right now. A typical selling time for a home the last two years has been eight to 10 weeks. But that timeframe makes selling sound easier than it is, because it doesn't factor in all the homes that never sold, or were pulled off the market and later relisted. With that in mind, you need to ask for at least 1% less than competing homes.
Holding out for a higher price generally doesn't work well in this market, either. Among homes that took at least four months to sell, nearly half the owners accepted less than 90% of their asking price, many far less.
Days on the market can be a helpful statistic. Available through most multiple listing services, it shows the average time it takes to sell a home. The specific sales data can provide valuable insight. When reviewing comparable homes it will become clear which list prices led to fast sales and which were set too high and prolonged the sale.
But don't focus on the overall average for a specific location. This can be misleading because it accounts only for homes that sold. Also, homes that were pulled off the market and relisted start the clock back at zero.
Sellers often like to look at the ratio of list price to sales price. Your local ratio gives an idea of the latest price trend and indicates how much a typical seller came down from the list price.
Be wary of using that to justify refusing to lower your price, however. For example, homes sold across the country in April went for an average of 96% of their list price. But it, too, does not reflect all the homes that failed to sell that month — by far the majority.
2. STAGE LIKE A PRO.
You may not be able to compete with the price of homes in foreclosure, or with short sales — those in which a lender is allowing the seller to list for less than is owed on the mortgage. But you can outshine them when it comes to the condition and appearance of your house.
Staging is no longer optional. It's like a boot camp that the seller and listing agent go through together.It can be an intense period of planting flowers, painting and depersonalizing the house so buyers can envision themselves living there. Getting rid of clutter and rearranging rooms to highlight the best features also are essential.
What's new this year is that many sellers are willing to go beyond the basics of staging to make physical upgrades. They’ll do whatever it takes to look better than the house down the street now.
One homeowner this year hired a contractor to turn a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home into a four-bedroom, two-bath. The month-long, $15,000 renovation paid big dividends: The house sold for at least $50,000 more than it was expected to otherwise.
After learning a valuable lesson about today's persnickety buyer, one homeowner went the extra mile in renovating the kitchen of his house in N.Y. Recognizing that their '70s-era kitchen looked dated, he and his wife first spent $2,000 on stainless steel appliances before putting the three-bedroom home on the market in April for $399,000.
After 15 showings, he says, they realized that nobody could get past the fact that a project was waiting for them in the kitchen. So they pulled the house off the market for two weeks while he installed a new floor, ceiling, cabinets and granite countertops. Then they put it back on the market in late June at the same price. They hope to justify the additional $10,000 investment with a quick sale.
3. GO ALL-OUT ONLINE.
Sellers used to post photos of their homes online only sparingly to entice buyers to visit. No longer. With about 90% of buyers starting their search online, you can't just tease and hope.
That whole strategy is thrown out the window, because all listings are online and there are so many that you have to compete for people's attention.
Agents recommend putting lots of high-resolution photos and as much information as possible online, including citing upgrades and what you love about living in the home. If you don't show a photo of a key area — kitchen, bathrooms, backyard — prospective buyers may assume there's something wrong and move on.
It's important to remember that buyers are going mobile, too. The use of smartphones and apps to review listings has exploded.
Nearly 1.8 million homes are viewed daily on Zillow's apps alone, and the service says 30% of its weekend traffic and 20% overall come from mobile devices.
So, make sure your listing agent markets your home in as many places as possible — from AOL Real Estate to Zillow — with a special emphasis on sites that work well for mobile access.
4. BE FLEXIBLE WITH BUYERS.
The single biggest change in the real estate market since the recession is tighter financing. Banks once freely dispensed loans for 95% of a home's value, but a requirement of 20% down is becoming the new normal in many cases. And any perceived imperfection in a credit record can spell denial.
If you're about to accept an offer, make sure you inquire about the down payment and are informed about the buyer's financing status. Consider accepting an all-cash offer, even if it's not your highest. If your buyer is hitting a roadblock, consider talking with the lender to help structure a deal.
Don't be afraid to speak directly to the prospective buyers. If they say they're leery about committing to a home in this environment, you can help make the case. Be ready to show them any recent local statistics indicating that owning is better financially than renting, as is the case in many areas. And if you don't accept an initial offer, share information to encourage a counteroffer and be ready to bridge the gap to close the sale.
5. DON'T RUSH TO RENT.
The fallback for many homeowners who can't sell is to rent the property. But it's a strategy that carries risk. With so many foreclosed and underwater houses on the market, there's at least a 50-50 chance that any given house will be worth less in a year than it is now.
Not only that, you may be planning to move out of town, so renting would entail being a long-distance landlord. Homeowners may need to take a deep breath and treat their house as a sunk cost — money that has been spent and cannot be recovered. The house today is worth what it's worth.
Accepting that advice may bring perspective and help you sell in the worst market in years.