How to Sell a House

3/4/08

You want to sell.  You must try EVERYTHING.  Here are some more tactics that are worth considering.  Be prepared…you might need to spend some money to sell, and you might need to invest some time and effort.  You can’t just turn it over to a Realtor® who is going to get it sold for you, it honestly just doesn’t happen that way.  YOU and YOUR HOUSE are going to sell your house.  A Realtor® is an expert with ideas and marketing access; an invaluable asset in the process.  But unless you get intimately involved in the details, it is going to be difficult to find your buyer.  You don’t want to waste your marketing opportunities by being less than completely prepared when timing and exposure bring your buyer your way.

Re-think open houses: 

The most serious buyers are looking in the evenings and off-times like Saturday mornings.  Hold an open house THEN instead of the usual Sunday afternoons, when you will be attracted more “lookie-lu’s” than serious buyer prospects.  Make sure you get everyone’s name and number who looks at your house, and call them back within 24 hours for feedback.  Ask them what it would take to get an offer from them.  What can you lose?  Whenever you have an open house, stick out a fish bowl with a note that says “Drop your business card here for a chance to win a free lunch.”  You’ll get an email, a work number, a name…every opportunity to connect with a possible buyer.  All for the cost of one lunch…payable when you get a binding contract or actually close!  (And you really should follow through, draw a card and buy lunch…it’s great PR.)

Organize a neighborhood open house day: 

Ever notice how car dealerships are bunched together in the same area…or the bars & restaurants…or those big neighborhood yard sales?  Why?  Because that attracts bigger crowds, and everyone benefits.  You can do the same thing with an open house.  Why not go around the neighborhood and talk to the other sellers…they have the same problem you do…they haven’t sold yet, and they need a buyer.  Get all your neighbors with homes for sale together and organize a neighborhood open house day that will attract volumes of potential buyers, and split the cost of the ad.  Offer some food or drink or door prizes or drawings at each house.  (That’s how they get agents to attend those agent open houses.)  The great thing is that, as we learned in Real Estate School, ALL real estate is “non-homogeneous,” which means that no two properties are exactly alike. Real Estate is always local, and unique.  And that means that the buyer who would buy your neighbor’s house probably wouldn’t buy yours anyway, whether it’s the number of bedrooms, shape of the back yard, or any of a hundred other things.  By making it a neighborhood event you can buy a bigger ad, share the cost, and attract buyers and agents who know they can see a variety of options in one trip. 

Google “St. Joseph statue:”

You’ll find lots of places you can buy one for just a few bucks, with instructions on what to do with it.  Many sellers swear that they’ve sold their property in the past by burying the statue for good luck.  Maybe it works, probably does if you believe it, and it certainly can’t do any harm!

Participate in an agent open house:

They are usually held on Tuesdays, from 10AM – 2PM.  We don’t do them, but you can let your selling neighbors know that if their agent will set one up, you would like to participate.  Agents will “caravan” through 4 or 5 homes.  Each home provides something; first, soup and/or salad, second, lunch entrée, third, dessert & coffee, last, a drawing for a gift or gift certificate or cash.  I’m not sure this sells houses, but it does expose them to agents who might influence a buyer and, after all, you only need ONE buyer.  At any rate, if you’re going to try EVERYTHING, this is included!

Post notes:

I love this idea!  Make signs on neon-colored 3×5 cards, and post them (with removable tape) throughout your house to point out details that prospects might otherwise miss.  Is the refrigerator or washer/dryer included?  Put a note on them saying so.  New carpet?  Custom draperies?  Italian light fixtures?  Home Warranty included?  Electric pet fence?  Gas fireplace starter?  Make sure visitors are aware of everything that adds value to your home.  Are notes tacky?  Absolutely.  Do buyers mind?  They LOVE them, and will walk around looking for every one to find and read.  And here’s the BEST one:  Right inside the front door, put one that says “KINDLY REMOVE YOUR SHOES.”  Some people will, some won’t, but they will all get the impression that it’s a well maintained home that the owners have really cared about.  I’ve known sellers who have put out a basket of those blue shoe booties at the front door.  I know having those signs around will annoy you, but they work.  Remember, you don’t sell a house the way you live in it.  Buyers have no emotional attachment to your home, and you are selling a product.  They need information, so give it to them.

Get Feng Shui Savvy:

Get a book or research it online, and then arrange your furniture and accessories by the principles you’ve learned.  Your house will look better, you might sell faster, and you’ll feel more peaceful about the whole process.

Hire a home stager:

For $150-200, they will honestly and objectively tell you what you need to do.  It will probably include de-personalizing (removing an abundance of family photos, etc., religious wall hangings that could possibly eliminate someone who might otherwise have made you an offer but was offended.)  It will include “editing” or removal of a lot of stuff.  I know you don’t want to spend money on the house now that you plan to leave, but you might have to.  You might need to rent a storage unit to put stuff in for awhile.  (The garage might hold some stuff, but if you fill it up more than it already is buyers will get uncomfortable.  You probably should “edit” the garage, too.)  It could include re-arrangement of furniture, artwork and accessories.  This can make rooms feel larger, traffic flow work better, and it can help people to imagine their own stuff in your space, if it’s done right.  Another recommendation might be re-painting.  Sure, you love your chartreuse hall bath, and the jelly-bean purple master bedroom is your childhood dream.  But as easy as it is for them to re-paint, most buyers can’t see beyond what they are actually looking at to the potential of a room.  Not only that, they want the house to be move-in ready so they don’t have to launch right into renovations.  They can usually live with neutrals or earth tones, where pastels or extreme hues might rule you out.  Couldn’t you live with new bland paint for just a little while if it will help market your product…you house…to a wider audience?  So, invest in a home stager, and follow the recommendations you get.  Remember, you need to turn your house into a product. (Think of model homes you might have been in…lovely, well decorated, yet impersonal and with as broad an appeal as possible.)   You could hardly spend more than the cost of another month or two’s mortgage payments, and, in the long run, a quicker sale could save you more than you spend.

Stand out front and check the curb appeal, and hang out awhile at the front door:

Take action.  Buyers have so many choices these days that if the picture they see on the internet…or the house they see driving by…doesn’t really grab their attention, you will never get to show them the spectacular floor plan and interior drama.  WhatEVER it takes, it must look good outside.  This means new mulch or pine straw, new flowering annuals, trimmed and pruned shrubs (if they’ve overgrown the house, you MUST cut them back, unless you are trying to appeal to the curator of the botanical gardens,) lawns, sidewalks and curbs mowed and edged, mailbox painted, gutters and trim paint clean and fresh.  The single place that buyers spend most of their time is on your front porch waiting for their agent to finish fumbling around to get the key out of the lockbox.  And they are looking around.  They see everything from old rusty front door hardware (lets face it, you never even look at this…you come in through the garage), cobwebs in the corners to sickly plants in the urn to cracked mortar on the brick steps, peeling paint on the wrought iron, and faded shutters and window trim.  You know what they say about first impressions, so what will they be saying about yours?  Make sure you make this a fun, beautiful, spotlessly clean, well-maintained place.  Investing a few…or a few hundred…dollars on a new front doorknob, updated light fixture, and necessary upkeep can not only pay off…it will bite you badly, if you don’t do it.

Bake a pie.  Or a chicken.  And turn on the lights.  Oh, you’ve heard this before:

When you list, get your carpets cleaned. 

Sniff your closets…pare down the Imelda Marcus shoe wardrobe, and keep a mild deodorizer in each closet.  Put a bounce sheet in every shoe. 

When you have a showing, go all out with the good smells.  Bake something that smells great (leave out the curry, don’t bake a fish, and don’t cook cauliflower or broccoli for a day or two before the showing.)

Remove litter boxes to a faraway place outside during the showing, and clean their usual area well.  Pet odors = bad.

A mild potpourri or Aroma candles – good ones – are okay in small doses, but be sure not to leave candles burning after the showing.  You want to have something left to sell at the end of the day, and it’s easy to forget they’re lit in the daytime.

Bright idea:  Turn on Every light in the house.  Saying this goes against my inclination to be “green.”  But bright rooms appear larger and happier, so turn them ALL on, then just turn them off after the showing.  Of course, they shed light on dirt too, so be sure you have cleaned, cleaned and cleaned again.