In all of our home sales, what ultimately worked was having a well maintained, up to date, well priced home. This worked regardless of what market we lived in. (Chicago, Cleveland, Saginaw, Denver, San Francisco, and we're hoping that holds true in our current market of Memphis.)

Well maintained,up-to-date,well priced home in immaculate condition..Also "know your market"..We had kept abreast of the market for years,really just for fun, as we never expected or planned to move..An opportunity came about, and we were prepared for the sale of our home..We interviewed the top "sales" realtors from different firms.We knew the price we thought we could sell for based on our "knowledge" of the market..3 realtors were 25k below what we thought, and one was 10k below..We listed with the understanding we'd price at OUR $$$..Lo and behold we sold in 1 day for 25k more then we expected and 55k more then the "experts"

We sold our house in a fast-dropping market in SoCal in Nov 2006. Had to sell as my husband had asked for a job transfer and he left in September for Oregon. Nothing around us was selling, although there were a lot of "For Sale" signs in the neighborhood. Some houses had been on the market for over 6 months.

We took a non-emotional look at our small ranch tract 1958 house and saw the good points and bad. Sold a lot of furniture to make it look bigger. Decluttered as much as possible as soon as possible, and kept going throughout the entire time. Packed boxes were kept in the garage so they didn't clutter the house.

Listed it in early August, priced to sell, and it did within a week, but then the buyer disappeared (really, no one could find him) a couple of weeks later. Had to reduce the price now because the market was just in free fall. Ultimately the house which had first "sold" for $602k went for $575k net. Ouch.

We listened to our Realtor and reduced the price as needed. We knew the market was getting worse and we wanted to be ahead of the price curve, not behind it, as we really needed to sell.

When my Realtor said that someone had mentioned a "doggy" odor I took care of that immediately. It didn't hurt my feelings - I know that pet owners may not notice it as visitors do. I pulled up the rugs (over wood laminate), had the house professionally cleaned and kept all their bedding washed.

Every day before I left for my job I made sure the house was show ready (on a lockbox). Dogs outside in their temporary pen, ceiling fans on, living room arranged, kitchen clean and dishes put away, nice bowl of fruit on the table, etc. I hired a neighbor boy to keep up the front yard with cutting, raking, etc. Whenever I left the house for groceries or errands I made sure it was ready for showing. What a pain!

I was seriously ill this whole time and still working, so had little energy to deal with the house *but it had to be done* so I managed or hired others to do things for me.

This deal almost fell through too, due to their continual delaying of getting the papers to the escrow company. Their agent kept calling the escrow company and saying the papers would be there the next day, and then it was the next day, etc. Our Realtor said their agent got very angry when our Realtor called to see what the problem was, and then refused to take more calls. I didn't understand that at all - the guy was going to get a commission of $19k!

When the delays kept happening we put the house back on the market, and I think that motivated the other agent to get it done. There were some last minute buyer financing problems, and something else ... we finally had to just move out and hope for the best.

I finally got the call that the deal had really closed. It was 2 days before Thanksgiving, so we truly had a great Thanksgiving Day.

Some of the houses in my neighborhood that were for sale then are still for sale now. I look at real estate sites every once in awhile just to see if they've sold yet. Some have been taken off the market. Many people just weren't willing to face that their house had dropped in value about $100k in one year. If they didn't have to sell, and didn't want to reduce the price, I guess they just kept the house.

The things Cordovamom wrote - having an immaculate, well-priced townhouse in move-in (but not necessarily pristine) condition.

Top condition, move in ready with emotional appeal. I spent several months getting it ready, the money spent was also returned in the top selling price.
Yes, it is a down market, but I really beleive more sellers should make their home appealing rather than just reduce the price. I know not everyone is finacially capable of that, but it is a better option than saying I'm not spending any more money on my home, think of money spent as a investment.

"Yes, it is a down market, but I really beleive more sellers should make their home appealing rather than just reduce the price. I know not everyone is finacially capable of that, but it is a better option than saying I'm not spending any more money on my home, think of money spent as a investment." (quote from above posting)

My neighbor who is a realtor concurs. Last year when she did a walk through of our house, she told us we would have no trouble selling as is even though a few things were outdated. Now she says we must update because nothing in our neighborhood is selling and buyers have indicated that they don't want to have to do anything. Sigh.... We were prepared to radically drop our price when our time comes to sell in about a year, but now it looks like we will have to improve the house AND drop the price. Oh, well...hope we get the same cooperation from a seller when it is our turn to buy.

1. Clear your clutter! Rent a storage facility if you have to, better yet, use this as an opportunity to get rid of stuff. A clean, clutter free house looks better to a potential buyer and you'll have less stuff to move.

2. Cosmetic changes: We sold two homes in the past two years and it really helped to update a few simple things - new carpet in one house, new paint in the other.

3. Maintenance Issues: We also repaired anything we thought would pop up in an inspection.

Pariss - I'm in a little town just southeast of Omaha. Typically Omaha was never a real high appreciation market to begin with, then in the past few years builders overbuilt like crazy, I talking insane numbers of new houses on the market.
So things aren't good, Omaha has primarily expanded west and northwest - they are hollowing out the downtown. Really - I don't understand how they can have watched so many other cities make the same mistake over the years and then go ahead and do it too. Anyway...that's where I am.

Realize, this was 5 years ago. Finally Realtor # 3, was very professional, not a friend, or a person with a mom who used to be a realtor, and she knew the area (Rural), knew who was looking for this specaial property, and dealt and was acquainted with the "city" realtors and had a good relationship with others, was not afraid to drive mountain roads and always answered my questions and returned my calls immediatly, or had her office staff do so. Sold a week after listing to someone who had been looking in the area for 6 months and had been told there was nothing avaiable except what another person had listed. My Realtor sold mine, after being for sale 18 mo, sold a friends after being for sale for 24 mo. and a third friends. all within a very short period.

I'm not sure I"m going to settle, but for me in the DC suburbs, it was to make sure the house was clean (not immaculate) and that I offered closing. Apparently, people have no $$$ to actually buy a house and they are relying on closing help and great mortgage plans.

Recently sold after six months on the market. Six very lonnnnngggg months. Tons of traffic and a few offers; they came in spurts.

I sold strictly as is. I'm in a very desireable community of old homes. I cleared as much as possible and made sure that my tiny house didn't have the "ewwww" factor.

There are many beautiful houses out there. Here are my tips:
- Price reasonably. If you want a fair return, great. If you want to get rich, play the lottery.

- Get a good realtor. Mine was the best. Innovative and practiced integrity from start to finish. She earned her commission.

- Be patient. If you don't have to sell, wait it out and don't panic by dropping the price every few weeks.

- Pray a lot.

When I sold my house (in February), what worked was dropping the price and changing realtors. I started at $104k, dropped to $99k two months later, and then dropped to $94.5k (with the new realtor), finally selling at $95k (within three weeks of getting the new realtor!). My husband and I are currently trying to sell his house. We started at $89k, just dropped this week to $87.5k, and will likely drop to $85k if no offers soon. Our current realtor has gotten us lots of showings, one offer (buyer backed out), and held open houses. She is well known in town for selling houses in our price ranges...she has "sold" signs everywhere. We spent $2500 having our downstairs rooms professionally painted and %1000 on new kitchen vinyl, plus two TONS (literally) of decluttering...we rented a Dumpster and hauled away two tons of junk.

I agree...pray a lot!

Posted by terrig_2007 (My Page) on Fri, May 4, 07 at 16:00

When I sold my house (in February), what worked was dropping the price and changing realtors. I started at $104k, dropped to $99k two months later, and then dropped to $94.5k (with the new realtor), finally selling at $95k (within three weeks of getting the new realtor!). My husband and I are currently trying to sell his house. We started at $89k, just dropped this week to $87.5k, and will likely drop to $85k if no offers soon. Our current realtor has gotten us lots of showings, one offer (buyer backed out), and held open houses. She is well known in town for selling houses in our price ranges...she has "sold" signs everywhere. We spent $2500 having our downstairs rooms professionally painted and %1000 on new kitchen vinyl, plus two TONS (literally) of decluttering...we rented a Dumpster and hauled away two tons of junk.
I agree...pray a lot!

Where are you? I would love to buy a house for

We are going to bite the bullet and buy, move and list vacant but clean and move-in ready. We are gambling that it won't sit for a long time, but we have a four year old, 2 dogs, 1 cat, my hubby is a slob, and I am just not the best housekeeper in the world. We are packrats. It just won't show as well with us in it.

Once we are gone - good cleaning company, interior/exterior painting, screen/recoat hardwoods downstairs. We will give it XX number of days on the market and then we will attempt to lease it. I see much less stress and probably a net gain in bottom line.

Roof is 6 years old and HVAC and hot water heater are new. Refrig stays and maybe the W/D. I am hopeful that for around $240k in East Cobb, GA it will get picked up quickly.

Dearborn, MI (Ford Motor Co. HQ--not a happenin' market). Had an offer in about 6 weeks in winter.

How? Priced it cheap. We also moved out and had some painting done before putting it on the market. Had a nicely (of I do say so myself) remodeled kitchen to set it apart from the other homes in the price range, even the ones with more than 1.5 bathrooms. Definitely didn't recover a penny from that remodel, but we didn't have to carry two mortgages in 2 states for long, so no regrets. (No regrets except I did love that house!)

Kept it priced right. This house would have sold for at least $30,000 more in another neighborhood, but b/c of the comps in my neighborhood, I knew I had to keep it lower priced. (Lesson learned: DO NOT make your home the nicest one on the block, LOL.) Keep it clean. Keep it decluttered. We sold in about a week.

I guess I just don't understand. I'm assuming that all this price "right" and reducing pricing means that you still aren't losing money? So your houses apparently appreciated quite well and the idea is to not emotionally, psychologically overinflate what you think that is? So your making less money or breaking even than others who price higher.
I've never lived anywhere where this is much appreciation AND I have a tendency to be an "improver". So I've actually always lost money and am in the process of losing more than ever. I also never seem to get anyone to come down on the price of anything I buy:0

marys1000,

In our case, our house did not appreciate that much...less than 3% yearly (average) for the 19 years we have lived here. We bought into a seller's market, and it was 10 years before we would have shown any profit on the house. During the next 8 years, our house finally started apprciating, but the last year prices are stalled or seem to have slipped a bit. While we have updated things as they became worn, we were careful not to "overimprove".

Now that we are approaching retirement and want to relocate, we will have to sell our home. We are in no hurry, but in order to buy a retirement home, we have to sell this one. So we, like others, will do whatever it takes to sell. We were going to offer sellers a substantial cash-back at closing so they could make any improvements they wanted, like new bathroom fixtures, new kitchen countertop, flooring, etc., but our realtor/neighbor advised us to replace these things before we put the place on the market because younger buyers want homes that are already updated. If my husband and I buy an older home, I'd rather get a great deal on a rundown (but structurally sound) place and fix it up ourselves with the improvements we want.

I'm hoping that by offering a place that is "move-in ready" and offering a smaller cash-back allowance at closing that we won't have to drop the asking price. But we will if we have to. The other side of this is that in the area where we want to move, housing prices have dropped 10% or more. So we're hoping everything will even out.

housing prices have dropped 10% or more

Where do you find this info? Did a realtor tell you that?
And generally it just seems that on this forum people sure have a lot
of money to play with on their pricing. I don't know where a lot of these people are but they must be places like FL, NJ, east coast, west coast. Us humble Midwesterners have a little tougher time:)

Mary -- where the "priced right" strategy comes in is in knowing the sold comps for the area and pricing it strategically within those guidelines. Some sellers have a tendency to attach too much importance or value to their home and need to take a step back and look at it impartially. We haven't always made a killing on our homes, but had the luxury of always being transfered and real estate commissions and closing costs were picked up by the relocation company. So not having to pay those costs meant that at least we didn't lose money, but on some of our homes where we only lived a year or two we would have certainly lost if we had to pay associated selling costs. Not every real estate transaction turns a profit, many do not. Ultimately a home will sell on price, and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

How I sold:
First, I decluttered & put everything neatly into the basement. I had neatly stacked plastic storage boxes, so the basement looked very organized. People could see that the entire house was CLEAN & NEAT. It gave a them a feeling that the home was cared for. That's very important to the buyers.

-decluttering meant that I removed some furniture & half of my clothes, towels, & stuff from the closets & pantry. That made the house look like it had more storage than anyone would need.
THAT was a big selling point. Those who looked into the closets were very impressed how neat & spacious the closets were. That was only an illusion-lol

- I cleaned, literally on my knees. All the trim/baseboards/whatever were washed & polished to take out any scratches(stained wood trim). The house looked NEW!
- Every inch was cleaned, so if you looked into any crevice, it was clean. As I said, the closets were half empty & very neatly organized.

I purchased beautiful planters & such & filled them with fresh flowers at the entrance.

I emptied the garage.

Finally, I staged. I purchased a few style non-specific items. Neutralized the WALLPAPER (thats' right, wallpaper in half the house!) with plain curtains etc.
Staged the kitchen so that the laminate counters were "unnoticed." I diverted the eye from some of the detractions or sale hindrances...

I always turned on all the lights and/or opened up all the curtains during the day. It showed beautifully...Hey, if I were looking for a big house like that I would have purchased it-LOL

- I had a last minute "to do" list. I needed an hour before the house could be shown. I followed that list to make the house look its' best. On that list were things like: Put the dog beds in the basement. Place the picture by the stove. Put fresh apples into the bowl...Last thing said to spray the house a bit with Fabreeze. Just a fresh touch, not too much.
Yes, I drove us crazy, but it worked in this tough market.

I thought the price was good too. I sold without a realtor.
Of course, my first buyer backed out. That's another story. However, the initial buyer was THE FIRST person who came through my Open House door! My point in mentioning this was that my house impressed the first looker to the point of purchase. How ever lame of a buyer he turned out to be...well, he got scared, his friends told him the RE market was crashing. Surprise!- our RE market is still fine, esp. now in the Spring.

It took me a while to relist & I lost the momentum & got caught in a horrid winter market, but had 2 buyers around Christmas. Those were the only two buyers who saw my house decorated for Christmas (it looked real cozy). I sold it FSBO.

I worked harder than ever, selling my last house. Then again, the price tag was higher this time & I had a lot of sins to cover (my 1995 decorating-yuck) & I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the house since I wasn't going to live there.

Bottom line: decluttering, staging & pricing right, worked for me.

The right realtor for us. We had moved out of state right after listing it (due to job relocation). Had a very nice realtor who just happened to have sold two houses on teh street recently, but it was a fluke. She works in the adjoining town, could never put together an open house except on very short notice (too short to advertise), etc. We foolishly signed a 6-month lease.

We KNEW we should ahve gone with the guy who was always on the realty signs as the top seller of the month (consistenly over 2 years) who has an office less than a mile away. Listed with him in early Dec and closed in late April but had a contract in late Feb. He was a ball of fire from the first day and had 40 couples look at the house in a month, and that was over Christmas! Previous relator had 6 in 6 months.

Research the very best realtor you can, one who hustles. We bought the house in one of the hottest markets in the country and realtors had become order-takers, not marketing people. Interview several and get a go-getter!

So how do you find those realtors? Do you call various companies and ask for statistics? I've heard this advice before but don't know how to go about it. I'm not in one specifically densely packed area so the guy with the most sold signs just doesn't work here.

Everyone that has been in our house (from friends to appliance repairman) said it is very warm and inviting so I new we had emotional appeal.

A couple of years ago we had a home inspection just to see what needed to be fixed. The inspector said he'd never inspected a house just for the homeowner before. We made all the fixes on the report and kept the house perfectly maintained.

When we were ready to list, the house was spotless and de-cluttered and, I think, priced perfectly due to years of following the market. We didn't leave it up to my agent to price the house. If we had, we would of sold the house for 10k less than what we got.

The house was listed for a few hours when we got a contract. The house wasn't on the MLS yet and the sign wasn't even in the yard yet. People ask us if we think we sold too low but I don't think so. We got what we asked for and I'm pleased with the whole transaction. The inspection was flawless, no contingencies from the buyers, cash buyers and we have a four month lease-back (sold in March and we are still in the house).

So in summary:
1.) Emotional appeal
2.) Maintained
3.) Clean & de-cluttered
4.) Priced right

You only have one chance to make a "first impression". Curb appeal is critical. It won't matter how much decluttering you've done, granite instead of formica, new paint or 70's wallpaper, or hardwood replacing the old avacado green shag carpet if buyers don't fall in love when their car pulls up in front of the house.

Spend the extra time & effort on your landscaping. Dead grass, scraggley unpruned shrubs, trees planted too close to the foundation, sheared evergreen "meatballs" are subconscious deal killers. Odd that we don't get many inquiries on the Forum regarding curb appeal? It's your first chance to sell your home. If your landscaping looks awful buyers enter your home already primed to find things they don't like about the interior.

Our gardens have sold our homes for us. We've always timed our listing to the garden's peak. If it was a quick showing...we'd mow the lawn before running the vacuum. I'd spend 1/2 hour deadheading every morning. On our last sale, the young couple spent a good fifteen minutes walking through the gardens before they even entered the house for the first time. They were already "hooked"...all the house had to do was "set that hook" & we were sold.

Tricia

I sold in November of '06.

I would have to say that keeping the house spotless (inside and out) and pricing right did the trick.

Oh yeah, I prayed and prayed and prayed some more. Keep the faith.

What worked for us? Timing! We had a couple who had looked at the house before we bought it. They loved it then, and they still loved it when we sold. Luckily they were in the market again. :)

Try--I am in a Mississippi River town of about 30,000 people in Eastern Iowa.

We sold in MICHIGAN...which in itself is a miracle...

I think what worked for us was that we kept the house impeccable ( inside & out ) and we stuck with it for nearly 2 yrs. Also..it took just the right people to happen by, and love the house. It was SOLD!!

Oh...and BTW...almost forgot...the St joseph statue in the yard....um....we have it with us...in a place of honor in our new home!

Arizonrose is right - St. Joseph statue in the yard, buried up side down!!!!!

In all seriousness, and I'm serious about St. Joe, know your market area before you price the house. Granted we sold two years ago, but there was a tremendous amount of competition for houses in our area of CT.

We went to several open houses in our area. We saw what houses like ours, a raised ranch, were listing for. We did this before we listed with a realtor.

Since we had already signed a contract on our present house, we wanted to price to sell. We sold the first day we were on the market. Our buyers had been looking for at least 6 months so they also knew the market.

And we did all the other stuff people have said before - fresh paint in all the rooms, fixed all those little things that had waited for whatever, de-cluttered and de-personalized, new tile floor in the kitchen, new tile in the bath rooms. We also put in a new heating and hot water system. This was scheduled to be done whether we were selling or not but new mechanicals didn't hurt either.

Enjoy the journey.

eal51 in western CT