Please help me sell my house!

We’ve had our house on the market (with the help of a realtor) for about two months. So far, we’ve had 3 sets of prospective buyers, but each set chose another property, for whatever reasons.

Additionally, we have an offer on another house with a contingency that our house sells before we close on the new house; this is the main reason we’d like our house to sell quickly. We are not in danger of foreclosure, etc., but we don’t want someone to buy the other house out from under us since it is common for the other property to remain on the market due to our contingency.

If the other house receives another offer, we have a kickout clause so that we have time to make a decision and close, or, withdraw our contract.

With that said, these are some of the ways our house is being marketed:

[ul]ILS listing[/ul]
[ul]listed in some local real estate books[/ul]
[ul]Ad posted on Craig’s List[/ul]

So, what other things can I do to create publicity for my property?

What sort of methods are against real estate etiquette?

Have you watched that show ‘Designed to Sell’? Check that out. They always point out little things that turn people off a property.

I have no idea what your place looks like or any circumstances you have, but here are some basics:

Remove all clutter from the place.

Fresh coat of neutral paint, no ‘weird’ colors that will put someone off. That pink bedroom may have seemed fun to you, but buyers will hate it. Patch holes, fix broken molding, replace or clean outlet/switch covers.

Rent some basic furniture so people can see what it might look like. Nothing weird, no weird paintings or other art. See clutter comment.

Clean up your yard, remove dead plants, get rid of kid toys, dog poop, fill holes.

Replace outdated carpet or install hardwood floors.

Update kitchen/bathrooms.

Finish any unfinished areas (basement, garage, etc.).

It’s probably too late for some of these, but generally this is what is recommended to increase your chances.

Chefguy, we’ve done all those things. We just need to “get the word out,” so to speak. The market in our area is very slow, so any extra publicity would be great.

And then when you are done you won’t want to move. :stuck_out_tongue:

I can tell you in all seriousness though that curb appeal is important. When we were house shopping, if we didn’t like the looks of the house and yard from the outside, we didn’t bother going inside. So “clean, neat, and in good repair” is a good phrase to think about when looking at your current home’s appeal.

It also wouldn’t hurt to put out word at work, church, or any social groups you belong to that your house is up for sale. If you can email, a nice photo goes a long way and it is easy for people to either delete if they aren’t interested or forward to someone else who might be.

Write your own ad- concise and to the point but stressing what YOU think the selling point of your house is and what makes it different from others in its price range (price, location, etc.). Put the above into as few words as possible in big noticeable letters as the front line (BEST LOCATION IN TOWN FOR UNDER $X00,000! or GOURMET KITCHEN AND LANDSCAPED LAWN! or whatever), and give it to the realtor to replace the one running.

We were in your shoes when the sellers of our new house executed the kick out clause and we had to bridge loan and carry two mortgages. Boy howdy did it suck mightily.

Our house was on the market seven months. Our realtor was mostly useless. I pounded Craigslist and eventually fired the realtor. We found a buyer via Craigslist, but not after a significant reduction in price. (realtor had us start it way too high - I even thought so at the time but mistakenly trusted him) Open houses did nothing. No one goes to them anymore. We had a yard sale to increase drive-by traffic. Made $85 but did not sell the house.

My advice? Make your Craigslist ad stand out. I wasn’t getting much response from the traditional ad, so I started getting creative. (silly?) I wrote once upon a time stories about the house and our time in it. I listed it as “The cutest house in {area}” Normally I would hesitate to use words like cute, since that’s realestatese for “tiny,” but using all the words the other ads did wasn’t working. Also it was true - it was a small house. I admitted to being anxious and flexible, because I really was. One may question whether this is a wise admission from a negotiating standpoint, but quite frankly I was desperate and it was worth the loss in sale price to simply get the property off my hands.
Once I started posting unusual ads I got a lot more inquiries. Some were even from realtors who had overlooked it on the MLS but took notice of my unusual ad(s).

My next step, had I not found a buyer when I did, was to make up a professional looking multi-picture flyer so that I could post more than the standard four pics on Craislist. More pictures are always better in my opinion.

Good luck - you’ll need it!

Oh - here is my crazy ad that got all the attention:

(this was in response to one viewer who looked at the place and said, “Looks like someone was trying to play flip this house.” Flip? Flip! We lived there seven years! If that was a flip, we’re terrible at it! So I got mad and wrote a story.)

I recently bought a home, and I didn’t pay much attention to where a home was advertised (our realtor did all the “finding houses for us to look at” stuff anyway). Advertising gimmicks to make a house look more attractive would have either not affected us or turned us off. If you look too desperate to sell, the buyers might start wondering what’s wrong with the house that they can’t see (and a lot of buyers who wonder this walk away a long time before an inspector could tell them they don’t have anything to worry about), or might make you a lower offer if they do make one.

One thing that the seller of one house we visited did that I thought was good- they left copies of the required disclosure form in the house when we went to see it. The form had stuff about how recently various maintenance had been done, which is very useful to know. The fact that they used the official form made me feel more confident that they weren’t trying to hide something than a brochure of their own with similar information would have (and was probably easier for them).

An ad on a web site that gives you the chance to post lots of pics of your house would be good. Even better would be a print-out of some of those pictures, possibly stapled to the disclosure info. Prospective buyers visit lots of houses in very little time, and they all seem to run together after a while. Some room on those pages of pictures to take notes would be nice, too.

People are going to walk on your floors and carpeting when they’re looking at your house- deal with it. Even if you ask people to take off their shoes when they come into your house, don’t ask prospective buyers to do that (we looked at one house where the sellers literally provided little plastic shoe covers- it was really weird).

Get someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time in your house and who has a good sense of smell to go through and check for any lingering odors, and try to deal with any they find. You’re used to the smells in your house, but prospective buyers aren’t. Odors are a huge turn-off for a prospective buyer. I don’t recommend leaving room fresheners around or spraying a spray to mask odors, either- some people might be allergic to something in those, or might not like the scent you pick.

And don’t forget the obvious- a nice handout for visitors to your house, cleanliness, and a lack of weirdness isn’t going to make up for stuff like:

Is your asking price in line with current asking prices for comparable homes in comparable locations that have actually sold? I know, you love your house, you paid $X for it and put $Y worth of improvements into it- prospective buyers don’t care, especially not in a buyer’s market like most real estate markets in the US are now.

Do you have any rooms that scream 1970s or 1980s or whenever because of outdated carpeting, wallpaper, or something like that? It’s hard for a prospective buyer to look past something like that, even a buyer who knows that a situation like that can be remedied fairly easily. You don’t need to tear out all your carpet and put in hardwood floors, or re-do your whole kitchen in the latest fashion, but some paint or new carpet might help a lot if you’ve got a room that is a real time capsule. If you have any rooms that are very obviously children’s rooms (cartoon theme wallpaper or bedspreads or the like), you might want to do something about those as well.

Don’t have any art or books visible that anyone might find offensive or take issue with. I would avoid anything having anything to do with sex, race, religion, or politics, except for maybe one small, tasteful Christmas tree or menorah at this time of year. If you do have a Christmas tree, do a conventional, traditional theme this year- nothing exotic or cutesy. Lose the lawn ornaments or decorative outdoor flags, if you have any. I would go so far as to remove any political, religious, or otherwise potentially controversial bumper stickers on your cars, if there’s any chance prospective buyers will see them (and there probably is).

Asking price, asking price, asking price.

You can deisgn to sell all you want, but it really comes down to asking price. If it’s not selling, you’re asking too much. Period.

It’s price, price, price. If you’re serious about selling your house, you don’t want to chase the market down, lowering your price in bits and drabs. The housing market is tanking nationally and what you thought your house was worth last year may no loner apply. You need to get your realtor to give you recent comps (with in the last four months) and price below that.

The lending market has changed drastically and it’s become much, much difficult for buyers to get loans without stellar credit and a down payment. So there are lot fewer buyers out there with more homes than ever to choose from, including recent foreclosures and short sales. Price is critical and needs to be a realistic market value, not just what you “need” to get.

Bury a Saint

OK, I got nuttin.

You might want to consider making your own website for the house and listing its address on the flier. It doesn’t have to be fancy- in fact if you just want to put pics you can do that free of charge and in a matter of seconds on Picasa Web (Google’s free photo sharing page) or PhotoBucket or whatever (or hell, make it a myspace page :slight_smile: .)

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. Sampiro, I’ll look into the Picasa web album. That sounds like an easy enough thing to do, and I can post the link on a flyer and on the Craig’s List ad.

Wish us luck!

Have you looked over the web listing your agent made? I’ve been looking at house listings, and I’m amazed at how bad some of the listings are.

Really, your foundation size is 1sq foot?
10 pictures allowed. 2 of bathrooms, one of the laundry room. one of the front of the house and the photographer’s thumb. one of the corner of the kitchen and one of a recliner chair in the corner of some room.
Read the description as if you were househunting. If it makes you go “Meh” it makes me go “Meh”
Make sure the lead photo is appealing. It’s the one that will show up on the lists of houses. I’ve currently got hundreds of houses to choose from. If your picture isn’t interesting, I probably won’t bother looking.
Also, talk to your agent and see if you can see the information on who has been visiting your online listing, and comments made by the people who did stop by.

Lower the price.

Having recently sold my house, I can tell you that this is the only way to go nowadays. Improvements mean nothing; the bottom line is price. 2 months on the market is nothing; it took 3 to sell mine and I was aggressive with lowering the price to sell it for a relocation. Hopefully, you can make up what you lose in the sale of your old house on your new house.

Presumably, the OP is in this game to make money, not lose it, so telling him to lower the price isn’t very constructive.

We will lower the price if it comes to that, but right now, our listing price is average for the market for comparable homes. Our agent is comfortable with our price, and she’d be the first person to tell us otherwise. She’s very direct.

What we really need is marketing and advertisement on top of what we’ve already done. I’m looking for out of the ordinary ways to promote my property.

Presumably, the OP is trying to move to a new house and needs to sell his.

Furthermore, if the OP pays a mortgage for the next three months, and then realizes he has to lower the price, the advice “lower the price” is constructive, and financially sound.

Being in this “game” to “make money” is part of what created this whole mess in the first place.

You don’t always make money when selling a house. I’m a prime example of that. I needed to get out a house relatively quickly and priced the house accordingly. You always have the option of waiting for the right buyer to come around, but that day may be a long time coming. Had I stuck with my initial price, I probably would not have been able to sell the house and might still have it now.