Talk to me about selling a house

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t know much about real estate so any help you can give will be appreciated.
My house went on the market in Feb. There have been only 3 showings. My agent wants to reduce the asking price. Not sure if I should.
Some facts - my house is outside of town, not the most desirable location but it is a nice house. I need to make as much as possible on the sale as this is my only source of funds for the next home. I don’t need to sell by any certain time.

But I feel anxious that nobody is coming to see it.
What do real estate agents do these days to sell the house? No ads in the paper, no open house and no signs for miles on the side of the road. The agent says the internet is all we need. So OK it looks good online but what else can be done?
I know we can’t see into the future but I don’t think it is overpriced and he has given me no evidence that it is except that we have no action. What do you think?
What should I ask my agent?

2

First, what is the market like near you? Did your agent show you comps? Have you looked them up yourself?
Reducing the price is the lazy way of driving traffic. Putting up signs is not going to do much good. Your agent needs to get other agents in the area excited about the house - which might be looking a bit long in the tooth listing wise now. (We bought our house from people who put it on the market and then took it off the market to do renovations, which made it’s DOM seem very long. We got a great deal on it.)

Second, how does your house show? When we were looking we looked at houses with holes in the wallboard, houses with one room filled with junk, houses with stuff scattered all over. No offers on them. When we were selling our house we repainted and rented a storage are to get rid of all the clutter. We got an offer at the open house. If you need to spruce it up do so, and then see if your agent could stage another open house and really get behind your house.
If he won’t get behind your refreshed house, fire him as soon as you can and get a listing agent who can get behind it. But not before you do your part.

3

I would certainly expect an agent to have at least one open house.

And yes, most people these days don’t want to do any extra work - does your house look like it’s in move-in condition? Any odd paint colors or ugly carpet? Walls that need washing/painting or old appliances?

If it’s cluttered or packed with furniture, that makes the house look smaller, and also harder for someone else to imagine what the place might look like with their own stuff in it.

4

If you have a lot pictures on your walls take some down and fill in the holes and touch it up. I was told your house should not look too cluttered so if you have something in each corner of your rooms take the stuff out and put it in the attic if you have one or a storage bin. Plant some flowers in front of house and give it some eye appeal and paint the front door if the door looks old . You can use more than one realtor as long as you didn’t sign a exclusivity contract with the realtor.

5

I am a commercial real estate agent, not residential. Your agent is lazy re the open houses. They are sometimes useful but in reality they are huge business builders for the agent re making contacts. Only a very lazy agent would run not any open houses at all, if only for building contacts. Paper ads are, in reality, not big sales generators but the fact that the agent is not running any paper ads for your house period is another indicator they are not invested in selling this house.

Re signs in most areas agents cannot put “for sale” signs on roadways or they will be subject to hefty fines. You can usually put up little “open house” directional signs on the day of the open house but those need to be taken down when the open house is over.

Re sales you need to get past the mentality that “I need X dollars”. Your house is worth what the market will bear and the sooner you accommodate yourself to realistic pricing the faster it will sell. If you cannot be dead realistic you are wasting everyone’s time. That it has gotten no bites is a pretty good indicator it is priced too high. A nicer house in a less nice area is unfortunately going to take a big hit value wise and be more difficult to sell as others will be hesitant to be over invested in a house more expensive than those normal for the area.

Get your house as pretty and shiny as possible. Fix everything that’s affordable to fix. Clean it to a fare thee well. It needs to be a showplace

Pay to get a home inspection done. Having one available is a huge warm and fuzzy for anxious buyers

Lastly get an agent that is willing to do some work. But you have to be willing to be realistic about price.

6

Thanks to all.
The house looks and is great. I worked on it for months to fix it up. No clutter, no personal photos, tidy and clean. But if they never come for a showing how will all that help?
I am having trouble finding comps near me. On one hand my area has big houses on the water with private docks. On the other hand there are double wides. I am in the middle with a little lot with big trees inland and a 3 bed 2 bath house. My agent never showed me comps either. He did suggest the price however and I agreed. But now he wants to cut the price.
I have a 6 month contract with him so am I stuck?
And how do I find the right price? I can’t ask another agent can I?

7

How much are you asking and how much do similar sized houses *anywhere near *your location sell for?

What do the upscale homes in your area sell for?

What do the doublewides in your area sell for?

Note: Not what they are listed for, but what they have sold for in the past.

8

A professional residential agent would have done a full market analysis of your property with comps and gone over it with you. That this one is willing to wing it sans analysis is further evidence of them being unprofessional and lazy.

The key here is to get a solid handle on the real world market value of your house. I get the impression this has not been done.

9

I don’t have a good impression of your agent. When I sold my house, I was using a discount agent (his firm takes a lower percentage on the sale than is standard here), But in contrast to yours he was definitely concerned about how many hits the house was getting, didn’t want to reduce the sale price unless we had to, and definitely did market analysis. And while I technically had an exclusive agreement with him for some months, he made it clear that if I didn’t like working with him he would be fine with abrogating the agreement, because he felt like trying to force clients to work with him was bad business.

If he can’t show you a sheet with comps and explain how he arrived at his listing price and why he wants to reduce the price now, I don’t think he’s doing even the most basic work that he should be doing.

The agent I used to sell my old house didn’t think open houses were worthwhile for an ordinary house, he only liked them for high-end homes. Between electronic listing and him talking to other agents we got it sold relatively painlessly even though it was bad timing (market had just shifted to buyer-side, had a bunch of bad weather during the first month it was on the market so people weren’t going to see houses, two other houses in the neighborhood happened to go on the market at the same time).

10

Maybe the area matters, don’t know, but when we sold our previous house we got three offers out of the single open house we had. And it was indeed an ordinary house.

11

Open houses are a time consuming PITA for the residential agent to coordinate and conduct and they usually cost some money for a newspaper notice of same to be published. They are occasionally useful for selling a house, but they are HUGELY useful for an agent re making contacts with interested buyers in general, if not for the open house for other properties the agent may have. Some open houses may have tons of attendees and some none, it’s numbers game. Yes, the internet is the main communication medium these days, but you’ve got to do more than that to be an effective agent.

The lack of willingness to hold at least one open house means (in a real estate marketing context) the agent is not focused on building* their* business and that signals a lazy agent who is not marketing themselves or their properties effectively.

12

What research would you do if you were thinking of buying a house? Have you done that?

Are your neighbours an issue? Few people want to live next to a pub or a drug centre, for example.

13

Looks like everything in the thread so far is pointing toward the need to find a new agent.

14

I’ve bought and sold a couple of houses since the internet, and I can give you my perspective.

Open houses didn’t do any good directly, they mainly bring in your neighbors who want to rummage through your closets, but it does give the sales agent a list of prospective clients. You might not find a buyer at your open house, but your agent might find a buyer for your open house at another open house running across town. If the agent is not running open houses at your house they’re probably not running them at other houses, so you’re not getting those contacts.

The second thing is that I really looked at the days on the market. If I saw a listing more than 60 days on the market I assumed that either there was something wrong with the house, or that it was priced above market value and had an unmotivated seller. More than 90 days on the market I wouldn’t even bother to drive by to assess the curb appeal. If you’re not in a hurry to sell, and it sounds like you aren’t, it might do you some good to pull it off the market, make whatever changes you want and then re-list.

The staging advice you’ve already gotten is pretty good, avoid excessive personalization and overcrowding, people want to be able to picture their things in the home.

15

Jeez. I live in San Francisco. If you’re having a garage sale, you’ll have 50 people ask you if you are preparing to sell your house, and will make you an offer on the spot.

16

Fire him/her. If the internet is all you need, what do you need him/her for?

Anyway, the agent is wrong. The agent should be marketing the home. That is the value added of a real estate agent. You can do all the internet stuff yourself.

17

Just got a message that I have a showing today!
You have all given me a lot to think about and I plan to talk to him about all this.
Cross you fingers for me and I will let you know if any offers come in.

18

We currently have friends selling their house. First open house they got close to 10 offers right on the spot.

It’s all about location, location, location.

19

Too bad you didn’t research before signing to find that 6 mos is too long to bind yourself to an agent.

OTOH, you might just have a house that defies a ready sale. As you say, it is out of town - which likely limits the pool of potential buyers. Most homes near are bigger or trailers - which suggests that most people looking to move to the area might either have the money and desire for something bigger, or want a cheap doublewide as an entry to the area. You just need to find the one buyer who values your home similarly to how you do. Which could take time - or a lower price.

IMO 2 things a good RE agent can have going for them are networks of potential buyers, and of other agents. In most areas, there seem to be a couple of agents who seem to have a list of folk who they know are looking for a certain type of house, or “pocket listings” of folk who might be willing to sell. And - if an agent has good relationships with their colleagues, they might be able to benefit from those colleagues’ private info. And, if your home is really super, through her network your agent might be able to get a fellow agent to show your home as a potential option to buyers who might be looking for something somewhat different in a different area.

If your agent lacks either/both of those, posting signs and holding open houses is unlikely to do much to move your house.

Folk often say location, location, location. But in many instances, I think price, price, price could be just about as valid. In almost every instance I’ve seen where a home sits on the market, I believe there is a lower price at which it would sell. Unfortunately, many owners have an unrealistic opinion as to what their home is “worth”, or need to get a certain amount from the sale.

Remember, you only need one buyer. It can be frustrating if you aren’t getting showings, and trying to keep your home spotless. We had one house that was on the market for a month, without a single showing. We were going through stress of a contingent offer to purchase another home, which we finally had to pull the plug on. The very next morning, our agent called and asked if they could show it. It was a Sat. a.m., and we were eating breakfast, the kids were watching cartoons, and the place was a mess. We said, “You can show it, but we’re not going anywhere.” You know the punchline - 95% purchase price offer before lunch.

So the moral is - don’t sweat it (easier said than done.) Good luck!

20

Newspaper list houses that sold , this is public info in my state , you could try going on line and see if can find out what houses went for in your neighborhood .
Your realtor should had given you some printouts of houses that been sold in the past few months . Call him up and tell them you want to see some printouts
of houses that been sold recently and ask how many house they sold in the past year. Damn that sucks a 6 months contact . Maybe you could call a lawyer and see how you can legally get out of the contact . Read your contact and see what it said . A house should not be on the market too long , people will think there is something wrong with it and not bother to look at .