Selling a home these days isn’t as effortless as it was a year ago, when a seller can choose between competing buyers.
“Overall, I’d say the current buying/selling experience is comparable to the summer of 2019,” Boston-area Realtor Dana Bull said in an email. Today, he says, “There’s still low inventory and it’s a very active market, but not as determined and pessimistic.
Last year’s Home Selling Advice included tips for picking the best deal. But those tips are outdated: Homes are getting fewer offers when sales are slowing.
Sellers need new guidance. Buyers are taking more time, and choosing. Here are some home selling tips from real estate agents.
Higher rates = fewer buyers and fewer offers
It’s still a seller’s market, where buyers outnumber sellers, but it’s not as unbalanced as it used to be, because Mortgage rates This year, the skyscrapers and pushed the houses Proportionality For some. The result is fewer home sales.
Homes are also taking longer to sell: According to real estate brokerage Redfin, 61.2 percent of homes for sale in July were on the market for at least 30 days, compared to 54.4 percent in July 2021.
Sellers felt confident they would receive more offers in 2021, but now they receive fewer offers. Homes for sale in June received an average of 3.4 offers, down from 4.4 offers in June 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors’ monthly confidence index.
Not long ago, it was common to list a property on Tuesday and sell it on the weekend, says Terry Robinson, a Realtor in Ashburn, Virginia. “Or when people used to put in deadlines saying, ‘Please submit all offers by 4 p.m. Sunday.’ Now that language is gone.”
Buyers expect price cuts.
Here’s the time-honored way to sell a home:
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List it higher than your target price.
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Negotiate with a buyer who offers less than you expect.
That strategy isn’t ideal when selling to today’s first-time buyers.
“Homebuyers tend to ignore homes that are perceived to be overpriced,” Valparaiso, Indiana Realtor Chuck VanderStelt said in an email. “This is especially true of millennial and Generation Z buyers, who are more comfortable looking at and making offers on homes that sellers have “fairly priced.”
Michelle Doherty, who lives in northern Virginia, noticed the same thing. Buyers just stand there thinking, “You know what? We wait for them to come down.” [the price].'” She encourages her customers to ask below rather than waiting for salespeople to lower their prices.
Pricing strategy is still basic.
Considering the above, agents and their customers still Set the asking price Using traditional techniques: Searching for prices of recent comparable sales, then adjusting for the home’s condition and the seller’s patience.
“If they need the money to secure another home, they can buy at the lowest end of the range to ensure enough interest,” and sell quickly, Bull said.
Bull added, “I tell my sellers that it’s okay to go for ‘reach price,’ but that they should be prepared to respond to market feedback if the house doesn’t sell.” You are already evaluating the home to make a move.
Many sellers are lowering their asking prices. According to data from Realtor.com, the decrease has doubled in one year, from 134,036 in June 2021 to 266,812 in June 2021.
Buyers do not want to inherit expensive repairs
All these agents underlined the importance of cleaning the house well, repainting or at least touching it up and beautifying the exterior. “I think it’s something we’ve had for a long time,” Doherty says. If the seller does not have time or money Keep the place clean“Then you have to value the product as it is,” she added.
But beauty is more than sheetrock-deep for today’s buyers. They want assurance that they won’t be burned by expensive repairs in the first two to three years after they’ve paid off, paid off the closing costs of the loan and paid the Pizza Spring for friends who helped them move, Vander Stelt said.
“Home sellers can get a lot for their home if they can demonstrate a low risk that the new owner will incur high costs in the near future,” he said. He suggests hiring an inspector before listing the home, addressing any identified issues, hiring the inspector to prepare the report after repairs are made, and then sharing the report with buyers.
Vander Stelt acknowledges that a seller these days is less likely to recoup the cost of replacing a roof, furnace or water heater. However, “when sellers remove all uncertainty, buyers respond by making offers more quickly and typically pay higher prices.”
Bidding wars are not necessary
Sales success is not measured by the number of competitive offers a property attracts. One acceptable offer is sufficient.
“Yes, the market has changed,” says Robinson. But more importantly, homes are still going under contract, and your consent. It might take a little while, and we might get one or two deals versus the 10 or 15 that people were getting before. But the key is finding the deals.
