Tricks for selling home effectively

[cashforhomesarizona12]

Can anyone share your easy tips and tricks that work for you in selling your home quick?

[soccerluvof4]

IDK if there are really tricks but price it right from the get go. To many people get personal about their homes and overprice them so lose alot of buyers. Also make sure its clean and not cluttered as well as anything that you might think would fail an inspection get fixed. Nobody wants to buy somebodys problems unless there looking to flip. Sometimes its worth getting a pre-inspection. Everything sells eventually at the right price so if you have it priced right it should sell quick.

[davisgang90]

Make sure your home isn't full of stuff.  When we sold our first home, I rented a storage unit for a bunch of stuff on the advice of our agent.  It made a difference in making our small home seem larger.

Another suggestion: Don't hang around when folks are looking at your home.  Nothing made us hit the road faster than owners who wanted to follow us around pointing out every little thing.

[nancyjnelson]

Make sure your home isn't full of stuff.  When we sold our first home, I rented a storage unit for a bunch of stuff on the advice of our agent.  It made a difference in making our small home seem larger.

This.

When decluttering their homes, people often forget to declutter their walls.  Replace that sweet montage of your four kids' wedding pictures with, depending on your style, one neutral seascape or a bright, artsy print you found at Goodwill. 

[jlcnuke]

1. Price - if it's overpriced it won't sell. If it's priced right it will sell in about the average time for the area. If it's priced a bit low, it's likely to sell quickly.

2. Condition - If the house shows like a "showroom" house (clean everywhere, smells like a new home or warm/inviting, rooms either empty or staged neatly, everything appearing in good repair, etc) then it will sell faster than if it looks like a neglected hoarder's home (cluttered, odd smells, dirty, holes in walls/broken fixtures/lightbulbs out, etc).

3. Listed on the MLS - I'm all for FSBO to avoid over-priced realtors, but not getting on the MLS means most buyers in the area won't be aware of your home, and thus will never consider it.

4. Price - yep, that's the major one....

[MsPeacock]

As others have said - make sure it is clean - not just clean, but as close to spotless as possible. Closets should be deculttered, clothing in them neatly folded. If your closets and storage are stuffed, box that stuff up and put it in a storage facility while you list the house. Make sure there is no odor (pets, cooking, etc) in your house - this is so important  - and often we are not aware of odors in our own houses. Ask a friend or neighbor if you aren't sure. Touch up baseboard and paint. Put on new switch plates, etc. Counter tops, vanities, dresser tops, etc. should be completely clear of everything. Make sure the area on the outside shows well too - sweep the sidewalk, clean up plants, etc. Lawn should be mowed regularly and super tidy.

Having bought/sold houses a few times - If your house shows well realtors will bring people to it - They are motivated to find a good match for their customers. I think cleanliness helps A LOT.

[JoJo]

Staging if you don't already have showroom type furniture and wall hangings.  It's ridiculous to think a person needs to spend $2K in rental furniture to increase the offer price by more than $2K.  What a waste of money but it seems to work.  If using a listing agent, see if they will pay for this out of their fee. 

[MNBen]

IDK if there are really tricks but price it right from the get go.

This!!   

I put a house (#1) on the market and realtor suggested it's a hot market, let's try a higher price, and we can always lower it later.   It was horrible advice - and not just in hindsight.   

I saw this because the next house (#2) I sold was a townhome I had been renting out.  Someone sold (closed) on an exact similar home a few weeks before my renter moved out, so I knew the exact price I should get.  I didn't call realtor and sold it myself, listing at a fair price, and had 4 offers within 3 days and sold over list price (and over the price of the person who recently sold).  Best thing I've ever done!

The experience with house #1 listed too high was it showed well and had lots of people looking, but no offers.  Then we had to lower the price, less people looked, no offers.  Then lower price, even less people looked, no offers.  Then lowered to what we thought was a fair price, even less people looking at it because of all the price drops.  And once you've sat that long, people who were originally interested have moved on. 

The market was starting to slow (late Fall in our area) and we finally received an offer, lower than list price.   The buyer held a lot of leverage at that point and knew it.

Don't get greedy and think you can price it high and trick someone into buying your house.  Better to price it correctly from the start and get that offer right away.   Much less hassle and emotion than sitting on it for months!

[Just Joe]

I'll second the clutter and price. Nearby home, been on the market for a year. Priced about $30K too high. On the realtor's webpage the interior of the house ranges from empty rooms, to rooms where there is just clutter stuffed everywhere. The garage looks like a Goodwill transport truck flipped over.

[Chrissy]

Put the furniture in the "correct" rooms.  If you're using the dining room as an office, and the master bedroom as the living room while your kids are living in bunk beds in the living room, change it all back.  People have NO imagination!  They cannot imagine new paint, new flooring, or furniture arrangements.  They'll simply think, "That house is screwy!  The front door opens right into the kids' room, there's no place to eat, and the living room is upstairs!"

[ysette9]

In our hot, HCOL real estate market the only way houses are shown are a)staged or b)empty (implying a fixer-upper or tear-down). After seeing so many homes like that I get a little weirder out when I see any personal signs in a house indicating that someone lives there. In my opinion the house needs to show scrupulously, meaning remove half or more of your stuff if you aren’t staging, spotlessly cleanse, fix all minor cosmetic stuff like touch up dinged paint, throw a new layer of bark in the yard to make it look fresh, etc.

Like others have said, know your market and make sure to price correctly. Pay attention to natural price cutoffs in online search engines. For example, price your house at $499k, not $515k so that people who have default search parameters for <$500k will see your listing.

[CNM]

I have a home staging side hustle, and I can say that every single home I've done has been under contract within a month. Worth the expense IMO.

[zolotiyeruki]

Agreed to all the previous comments about price, cleanliness, and staging.

A family member of mine sold their house about a year ago, and we were heavily involved in the process. I'll add a couple of thoughts from our experience:
--A good photographer can make a huge difference.  The right angles, the right lenses, and the right bit of retouching made their modest rooms look spectacular.
--The RE market has changed from what it was 20 years ago.  Buyers have already seen photos and know the price, so if they come for a showing, you're already on the short list.  The showing needs to give them the nudge they need in order to make an offer.  The house needs to show them 1) why it's perfect for the buyers, 2) why it's worth your asking price, and 3) why it's better than the competition.
--Crissy is right--it's hard for most people to see rooms for anything other than what you stage them as, and you want to avoid rooms being used for non-traditional purposes.  In my relative's house, one of their bedrooms was used as a big closet/dressing room for all their kids, and they packed up the clothes and set it up as a nursery.  In our house, the formal dining room is used as an office, and when the time comes to sell, we'll stage it as a formal dining room.
--Humans are emotional.  Buying a home is driven in huge part by emotion, whether it be the feeling of space (high ceilings), nostalgia ("my parents had a room like this!"), claustrophobia (declutter!), or fashion (seriously, do the paint colors actually matter?). So you need to play to those emotions.

[ChpBstrd]

3. Listed on the MLS - I'm all for FSBO to avoid over-priced realtors, but not getting on the MLS means most buyers in the area won't be aware of your home, and thus will never consider it.

What's the cheapest way to get on the MLS without hiring an agent? ForSaleByOwner.com cold called me and offered to do it for $300-400.

[calimom]

I have a home staging side hustle, and I can say that every single home I've done has been under contract within a month. Worth the expense IMO.

Hey, same here, @CNM. Our market's pretty decent and most realtors recommend some level of staging, or at minimum, a deep clean and paint.

Curb appeal is super important. Prospectives (unless looking for a cheap flip) will drive right on by a house that looks poorly maintained from the street. Yard clean up for sure, including pruning untidy trees. A freshly painted door helps, and if possible a couple of pots of blooming color. For whatever reason, yellow flowers seem to help a lot. One realtor I work with always buries a statue of St. Joseph in the yard of any listing and claims it works. It seems unlikely but she swears by it. YMMV.

[iris lily]

Put the furniture in the "correct" rooms.  If you're using the dining room as an office, and the master bedroom as the living room while your kids are living in bunk beds in the living room, change it all back.  People have NO imagination!  They cannot imagine new paint, new flooring, or furniture arrangements.  They'll simply think, "That house is screwy!  The front door opens right into the kids' room, there's no place to eat, and the living room is upstairs!"

sad. And true.

[iris lily]

I spend a LOT of time on Realtor.com and am astonished at how, in this year of 2019, so many  sellers do not pay attention to the quality of photos that show off their house online.

Photos need to show an entire room for context,  not a close up of a wall and closet. And, No artsy “vignettes!” These shots (like a sofa table piled with artisically arranged objects) do not show your house and it is a waste of time for anyone looking at this display.

Photos need to have an orderly progression: front of house, entry, public rooms, bedrooms,basement, back yard. I am annoyed and disoriented when I see —for  example—a shot of a bathroom, then a bsement stairway, then the dining room, then two bedrooms, then the kitchen....etc. Wacky!

The shots need to be technically competent: decent lighting, not fuzzy, etc.

 We have two close friends who sell real estate. One is a master professional and has sold more houses in my neighborhood than anyone else last year and the
photographic essays of his listings are beautiful. He knows how to present online.

Our other friend is over 80 years old, he sells real estate part-time, and the photos in his listings are just shit. I think he takes them with hismphone. For a while I thought I should mention this to him, but then it occurred to me that he works at a real estate office and his broker should be pointing this out or his sellers should be complaining. Since none of this is happening, this is not my business.

[zolotiyeruki]

I spend a LOT of time on Realtor.com and am astonished at how, in this year of 2019, so many  sellers do not pay attention to the quality of photos that show off their house online.

Photos need to show an entire room for context,  not a close up of a wall and closet. And, No artsy “vignettes!” These shots (like a sofa table piled with artisically arranged objects) do not show your house and it is a waste of time for anyone looking at this display.

Photos need to have an orderly progression: front of house, entry, public rooms, bedrooms,basement, back yard. I am annoyed and disoriented when I see —for  example—a shot of a bathroom, then a bsement stairway, then the dining room, then two bedrooms, then the kitchen....etc. Wacky!

Oh, so much this!  We were -->||<-- this close to moving this past fall, and so we spent a lot of time looking at listings.  One thing I really grew to appreciate is when photos showed not only the entire room, but glimpses of the adjoining rooms as well, so you could get a good idea of the home's layout.  It also helps if each photo is of the room glimpsed in the previous photo, so it feels more like you're actually walking through the house.

Wide-angle photos, folks.

[partgypsy]

...
Photos need to show an entire room for context,  not a close up of a wall and closet. And, No artsy “vignettes!” These shots (like a sofa table piled with artisically arranged objects) do not show your house and it is a waste of time for anyone looking at this display.

Photos need to have an orderly progression: front of house, entry, public rooms, bedrooms,basement, back yard. I am annoyed and disoriented when I see —for  example—a shot of a bathroom, then a bsement stairway, then the dining room, then two bedrooms, then the kitchen....etc. Wacky!

The shots need to be technically competent: decent lighting, not fuzzy, etc.

 ...

This! When I was looking at houses either for myself or friends, this kind of thing where things were in a weird order, things skipped, no pic of outdoors, makes you feel like they are hiding something. And those artistic photos of some close up vignette, simply uninformative and also seems to be either trying too hard or hiding something. Too much furniture and decor is really distracting. If the decor seems decades old you may wonder if the upkeep of the house is decades old as well.   

There is some website with humorous house listings
https://www.familyhandyman.com/smart-homeowner/the-30-most-ridiculous-real-estate-listing-photos/view-all/

[iris lily]

I looked on Realtor.com for years on certain towns and areas, and when I saw the house in Hermann we evetually bought, I thought “that looks familiar, I know this house.” And when we walked in,
I saw the —shall we say, idiosyncratic, mural—that was not showing the second time around in Realtor.com.

The savvy listing agent kept it our of the photos and that was a good decision, yet for us, it wouldnt have mattered. The mural has a fascinating history and we have donated it to the local historical society, they are going to peel it off our walls and preserve it.

[Just Joe]

Be careful with those wide angle pictures. We toured a house that we saw online. It was tiny compared to how it looked in the pictures... ;)

[Linea_Norway]

If you get a realtor, make sure it's a good one. Go anonymously to other houses that this broker has on sale and see how he/she behaves. Read the house brochures that the realtor produces for similar houses and check whether those are attractive. See if there are online reviews of the realtor. Ask other people about their experiences with realtors.

[LaineyAZ]

Because most buyers check online before they even get to your front door, make sure the info on sites like Zillow is correct.  As the owner you can edit the info for your house and also note features in the comment section.  That section is a good place to brag about extras like, "close to a greenbelt" or "walk to a bus stop and grocery store" or "pet park nearby."

Also, second the idea of a super clean place.  I'd read years ago that one of the buzzwords that attracts buyers is "immaculate." 

[GuitarStv]

+1 to what everyone has said.

- Move almost all of your stuff out of the home.  You want it to look spartan and bland.  The prospective buyer doesn't want to see your interests and hobbies, they want to see a blank canvas for their own crap.  Nearly empty rooms also feel bigger than they really are.

- Clean everything down spotlessly.

- Maybe do the unimportant little niggling things that don't matter but make a place look nice.  Paint your baseboards and trim if it's looking grungy after you clean it down.  If there are finger marks on the walls in the kids room, paint it over.  That sort of stuff.

[robartsd]

I'll echo the photos line. Photos that show the house well and are easy to follow as a walk through are great. Photos that exaggerate the room too much might get you more traffic (it's not that hard to spot overly wide shots), but ultimately waste your time with viewings for buyers who quickly drop your house from consideration because it is obviously not the house they envisioned from the photos. A great photographer will use the right camera angle and lens to show the room well without exaggerating it. Each space (front exterior, each room, yard spaces) should have 2 or 3 photos that convey what the space is like and where it is in relation to other spaces. If a space has a particularly impressive detail, add a photo of the detail immediately after the photo introducing it in context.

[RunningWithScissors]

Once you’ve checked off the ‘declutter’ and ‘clean’ and ‘price’ items on the list, consider a few easy DIY projects that might bump up the interest in your house.  If you have rooms with strong, dark wall colours, repaint to a light neutral.  If that’s fine, then repaint areas that gets a lot of use, such as door frames and baseboards.   Change window coverings to something simple and classic too.  People can just not overcome their aversion to a bad first impression, even if it’s just cosmetic. 

If you’re up to minor electrical work, update light fixtures and plugs/outlets, especially if the latter is the decades old, yellowed, old-fashioned kind.  Of course, you’ve removed all your personal photographs from view, but also consider lowering the pictures in your living room by about 6”.  Why?  Most people hang pictures too high and lowering them creates more empty space at the top part of the wall, creating the illusion of higher ceilings. 

During the showing, open up all window coverings to maximize natural light (you did clean the windows, right?).  If weather permits and there’s no unpleasant noise outside, open windows to keep the air fresh.  Hide all evidence of pets, too - due to my husband’s allergies, that was a dealbreaker for us when we were shopping for our retirement home.

If you have a friend or neighbour who can give you a frank assessment of how your home shows, use them as a resource.  Fresh eyes can pick up on things that the home owner has become accustomed to.

Good luck!

[jlcnuke]

3. Listed on the MLS - I'm all for FSBO to avoid over-priced realtors, but not getting on the MLS means most buyers in the area won't be aware of your home, and thus will never consider it.

What's the cheapest way to get on the MLS without hiring an agent? ForSaleByOwner.com cold called me and offered to do it for $300-400.

I thought they were cheaper than that... but you can often find realtors that will do "flat fee" listings for you as well. Gotta check your area though to find them. Flat fee realtors are becoming much more common these days as consumers realize they aren't getting anything more for their extra dollars if they sell a house for twice what their friend did, they're just paying twice the money to traditional realtors than that friend did.

[Trimatty471]

When I put my house of for sale, I did not do anything extra,  I left everything the way it always is.  What helped me was that I kept a clean, un-cluttered house.  And I was selling in a HOT!!! market.

[The Fake Cheap]

Yes the photos, make sure they are clear, in some sort of order and give perspective. 

I also recommend touching up paint and or painting whole rooms if needed.  We just slapped the same color of paint in our bathroom, one coat only, and it looks brand new!!!

[Lmoot]

As soon as you know you will be selling the house within a couple of years, repair everything that would fail a 4-point inspection...this is the main reason why buyers come back with lower offers after inspection. This could be wiring, plumbing, roof. This gives you time to be picky and get good deals (plus you get to brag about how so-n-so was recently replaced which puts you ahead of other listings that haven't been updated).

Clean everything...tops of fridge and fans. Everything that you never clean, clean it twice. Hire a maid service if needed, for a deep detail that you will maintain until sale. No matter how clean something looks, people not used to your "smells", may be put off. It should feel and smell as generic as a hotel room. No personal photos or piles of papers. If you have nice materials (stone/wood floors, nice counters, good furniture, nice paint on the wall, etc), minimize the staging and decorating. If not so nice, styling up may be your best bet, just don't overdue it.

Clean and modern seems to be more appealing to buyers (even if that's not their style), simply because it feels like a blank space.

Curb appeal.

[CNM]

one last note about home staging- You can still make an impact and save money by staging only the main areas of your home, such as the living room, dining room, kitchen, and master bedroom. Or, depending on your home's layout, the "den" or family room too. The other bedrooms or smaller side rooms can be empty.

[exterous]

I'm surprised no one mentioned cleaning and decluttering yet ;) But it is really important. We have a side hustle that includes real estate photography and it was eye opening what people considered "cleaning" and "decluttering". Not even all the realtors knew at first, but we've got most of them trained now. But everything should be put away out of sight. If you're wondering if you put enough away that means you haven't. Try for kitchen counters that just have a knife block and bowl of fruit. Bed side tables that just have a lamp and a clock. Items that are out should be precisely oriented and placed. That sort of thing. Much more than those levels and it starts looking messy and that there isn't enough storage

And its not just what you think is clean but you have to think like someone who has never seen the house before. When we live in a space long enough our eyes tend to move past that stain over there or the stuff on the dresser. But a buyer won't miss those things. And buyers are picky with many being turned off by paint color despite how easy that is to fix so imagine what some stains and scuffs come off as. It can be hard to take a harsh and critical eye to your home but that is what the potential buyer is doing.

Photos are also important, but we're a little biased on that front. People say the yard/exterior is the first impression but for most people it's actually the pictures. It's not that expensive to get a RE photographer and agents typically pay for that for you (at least we've never been paid by a homeowner directly). There is a large difference between an iPhone picture and our pictures.

And for the love of God if you aren't good at DIY don't fix up the house yourself. I've been in a lot of houses where the owner did some work to help sell but it looked like utter shit and/or wasn't done correctly. If I had been looking at the house that work would be a negative as I would have to repaint/rip it out/ redo it.

[MayDay]

It's been said but considering the prevalence of hoarding and decluttering shows, probably needs said again.

The average American home probably needs half the crap emptied out of it to be properly staged and decluttered. Sometimes you can pack stuff into a garage or unfinished basement, but for a lot of people, those spaces are already full of stuff!

As exterous mentioned, every  horizontal surface should be basically empty. Kitchens,baths, furniture.

I found repainting to help the house look considerably better. You get used to your own house and don't notice how dingy hallways get, etc. But buyers notice.

I bought a fresh set of towels for the bathroom, and they quite spruced things up. Stuff like that.