Advice For Homeowners Trying To Sell In a Soft Market

In this economy it may be tough to sell your home and it’s no secret that it’s currently a buyers market. So what can you do to improve your chances of selling your home? Monte Mohr, an agent experienced in real estate in Franklin, joins me today to answer some questions for us. In today's market it really is both a price war as well as a beauty contest isn’t it? Yes, it really is. The reason for that is consumers have more to pick from now more than ever before and they’ve become finicky. They’ve become very choosy, very selective because we are competing with banks and banks are dropping prices dramatically. We are dealing with more volume in the Nashville housing market than ever before. So they’ve become very, very fussy. So it’s absolutely crucial that your home shows the best that it possibly can, and be priced absolutely perfectly. No longer does the time exist that we can build a price in there that we can negotiate from; we have to price it where it will sell. Makes a lot of sense. So really, first impressions are extremely key from the time someone pulls up and sees your home, isn’t it? We have one opportunity for that first impression and when people pull up to that house, they start making a judgment immediately. I’ve had the pleasure of being in this business for over 20 years and I’ve sold over 2,000 homes during that time. What I’m showing here is a quick example of the outside of a home. People start forming an opinion immediately that this is not a home that they want to go into. Yeah, so that was a bad example. We’ve got trash cans outside. We’ve got the trailer hitch there and... Here’s a better example. Again, people make an opinion immediately as soon as they pull up to the home as to whether or not they can see themselves living there or not. Even when their standing on the front porch waiting for the realtor to open the lock box to get into the house, they’re looking around the porch area and their making a judgment as to the condition of that home based on the condition of the door for instance, so if the door needs to be painted, be sure and paint it. If the steps need to be pressure washed, be sure and pressure wash them. Put some flowers outside. All of that is really important. Some really simple, inexpensive things that you can do with landscaping. Like you said, something as simple as sweeping the porch sometimes, ya know? And what about when they walk into the home? Well, that’s very crucial, it needs to have a "wow" factor. When people walk into this house, you want them imagining living in the property themselves. You can see here that there’s a cluttered kitchen. But I’ve learned over the last 20 years, probably 80 percent of the time, it’s the women picking out the house. And this kitchen picture is really, really crucial as you can see here. Now you see an excellent example of a kitchen that is light and bright - very inviting - get rid of the clutter. So many times people are selling a home they’ve outgrown; that’s what we want the consumer to NOT feel like they’ve outgrown this house before they’ve ever walked in, or as soon as they walked into it. And also besides de-cluttering, our other senses are a factor as well, right? They really are. You know, we get used to our own smells. If there’s a dog in the house or somebody’s smoking, we don’t notice it because we live in the house. It’s very important that your realtor gives some honest feedback about the condition of the house about how it smells and how it looks. It’s really important when someone walks into this house, they get all the senses working positively. You want it to be light and bright. You want it to be smelling good and some soft music in the background is a good idea. If you’ve ever been in a model home, the reason that a model home looks like it does because it conveys a message when people walk into the house that if I buy this home, I’ll live like that. We might be the biggest slobs in the world but when we walk into this perfectly staged home, it sends a message of peace and organization and comfort that makes you want to buy the home And bottom line, it’s both a price war and a beauty contest. We have to consider all of that. It truly is. We live in the most competitive market that we’ve ever seen before. If you don’t really want to sell you home - if you don’t really need to sell your home - then don’t, because we are competing with those that absolutely have to sell their homes. One way that we are helping people with their brentwood real estate properties, is to price and position their homes correctly by waiving our entire portion of the commission if they purchase a home through us. For anybody buying another home. If they will buy a home through us, we will waive our entire portion of the commission so they can price their home correctly so it will sell. Homes are selling out there, but the only ones that are selling are the hones that are priced the best. And it’s absolutely a price war and a beauty contest. Thank you so much for coming on and giving us some great information. We look forward to visiting with you.