sell fast

How you do a price reduction in a Seller’s Market

by John Rice

Okay, so you have made a mistake and overpriced your house. No worries. The market is strong enough that you haven’t shot yourself in the foot, you’ve just wasted a little time.

Back when the market was bad, it was even more critical to get the price right from the get go. The reason was because there were so few buyers entering the market. If they came to see your house and didn’t like it, a small price reduction wasn’t much motivation to come back and see it. About all you could do was made a big price reduction or wait for new buyers to emerge into the market.

Today, there are new buyers out every day. I don’t think in this environment that you need a huge price reduction to get your house sold. While it is true a lot of the same buyers who saw your house probably haven’t bought anything because there is literally nothing else to buy, your best bet is to catch a buyer who just started looking.

I think right now, I would suggest a small price reduction. That could serve two purposes. The first is that it might just cause a buyer who is tired of losing out in multiple offers to come back to you. It also makes it attractive to those brand new buyers. Every buyer loves a price reduction.

If your house makes it past the first day on the market and you didn’t get an offer, something is wrong. Whatever the issue is, a lower price always helps. If you reduce the price a bit and it still doesn’t sell, keep reducing the price a little until it does.

Of course, the best way to prevent needing to drop your price is to start out with the right list price from the beginning. Pricing it correctly usually means a faster sale and a far greater likelihood of getting multiples offers.

How a Seller can protect themselves in a Seller’s Market

by John Rice

What?

It’s their market. Why would they need to do anything? Aren’t they the ones holding all the cards?

Yes, they are. However just because it is their time right now doesn’t mean they don’t need to do things to ensure they got the best terms possible and had a smooth transaction.

So here we go!

DO NOT SELL YOUR HOUSE OFF MARKET-I know this is very popular right now and us realtors love it because it is easier. It has become sort of a status symbol. Sellers feel like their house was more exclusive that it was. Buyers feel like they got an invitation to the after party. It isn’t a good idea though. The market is crazy right now. Buyers are tired of making offers that don’t get accepted. They want a house. I have seen numerous times where I will get multiple offers on a house and one buyer will go way over the list price to get it. Let’s say you get five offers. Four of them are pretty much the same and then there’s one that is waaaaay better. Come to find out, they had lost several houses and were just tired of it. Their attitude was that they were not going to lose another one again. Long story short, you never know what your house is going to sell for until you expose it to the market.

DON’T TAKE THE FIRST GOOD OFFER-There is no question that if you have a decent house and don’t overshoot the value with the list price, you are going to get multiple offers. Too often I see sellers in a rush to accept one. They know it is a sellers market but since they don’t buy or sell houses all that often, they are afraid of losing a buyer. It is up to their realtor to let them know that the buyer is not going to suddenly rescind their offer if it is not accepted within a few hours of receiving it. The only time you want to be in a hurry to accept an offer these days is when it is the ONLY offer you got. I think it is best to give the market at least 24 hours to see the house and let everybody know the cutoff for sending offers. That deadline implies you have multiple offers even if you don’t and makes buyers in a rush to decide if they want the house.

DON’T SELL THE HOUSE “BY OWNER’-I know this one sounds self serving. The temptation to save paying real estate commissions is appealing for sure. I see more for sale by owner sellers having deals fall apart or selling for less than they could have gotten for their house. This could be an entire blog series so I will just skim the top. To begin with, few sellers take good pictures of their houses. That makes people less interested in seeing it. Then they can usually only show the house when they are available. That means fewer showings. Then they don’t leave for showings. Buyers ALWAYS feel awkward when a seller doesn’t leave. They think they need to be in a hurry or can’t open closet doors. They feel like they are invading the sellers personal space. Even worse are the sellers who want to lead you around and tell you unimportant details about their home like telling you what the kitchen looked like before remodeling it. Newsflash, painting a picture in the buyer’s head of the old ugly kitchen does not help to sell your house. Then they go with the highest offer, which on the surface sounds good, but the buyer has to sell their old house first and they were preapproved by “By-Pass Mortgage and Bait Shop” which is located somewhere in Arkansas. Then they feel like they shouldn’t do any home inspection repairs since they have been living there and that leaking roof has never bothered them. In the end, few for sale by owner sellers know if the offer they have is the best one and if it is likely to close. They often kill their own sales since they don’t know what they are doing.

ALWAYS ASK FOR THE TERMS YOU WANT, EVEN IF IT WASN’T IN THE OFFER-If you have several offers, try to combine the terms you like from all of them. Sometimes it works. Let’s say you like the price of one offer, the closing date of another, the possession date of another, and the inspection type of another. What you do is pick the one that you think has the best chance of closing (cash or preapproved with a lender your realtor knows is good, bigger down payment, etc.) Then you see if that buyer can match the other terms you like. You might say to the buyer’s agent that you really want to work with their buyer but you also would like to close on such and such date like one of the other offers you got, and that you’d like the buyer to not do a home inspection like one of the other offers you got. It is a friendly way of letting them know that while you like them the best, you might just go with another buyer who has already agreed to those terms. My experience is that most of the time a buyer is more than willing to alter a closing date, possession date and possibly change their inspection type to get the house.

Want to know where the market is, TODAY?

by John Rice

I like to do these market updates every once in a while. When I do, I do them in real time. What do I mean by that? I meant that the info is right now. Most of the time when you are hearing about the real estate market, it is from sources that are a month or more behind, or it is from a national source that is giving you a dated snapshot of the market for the entire country. My data is taken from the MLS in the past 20 minutes and is specifically for the Bluegrass area.

I won’t geek out and break down all this data into price range, which town, or property type, but there were 24 existing home sales that went pending in the past 24 hours. Do you want to guess how many of them sold within 2 days of being listed? You would think it would be all of them based on what your realtor friends post online, or what you read in the news. But, of those 24 houses, only 4 of them sold in less than 2 days. There were 8 that sold between 2 and 10 days. 4 sold between 11 and 30 days. 4 sold between 31 and 60 days. And 4 sold between 61 and 90 days on the market.

Let’s look at the houses that closed in the past 24 hours. While pending sales give us a snapshot of what the market is doing right now, freshly closed sales give us a snapshot of where the market was a month ago since it usually takes 30 days or so to close.

How many of the closed sales do you think got full price, or over full price offers when these sales went pending last month? Again, you would assume all of them, right? Of the 23 closed sales posted today, only 8 of them sold for the full list price. 5 sold for over the asking price. One sold for $10k over the list price in a neighborhood where I have seen this happen frequently. That means 10 of the closed sales went for LESS than the full asking price.

I could go a lot of ways with this blog post, but I think I will take this chance to say that you really need an agent that knows when you need to offer the full price, when you need to go over the list price, and when you can make an offer for less than the list price. The market is so fast right now that I think a lot of buyer’s realtors are not looking at comparable sales in the neighborhood. They are just so focused on getting an offer in fast that they don’t really take the time to figure out what the house is really worth. To me, that is the most important bit of info we have to offer a client. I have had many listings in the past year where I had a ton of showings and didn’t get an offer on the first day on the market. Then the next day a realtor is frantically trying to reach me saying they are about to send a full price offer and are so glad the house is still available. Well, if I had 12 buyers look at the listing and didn’t get an offer, truth be told the house probably wasn’t worth the list price……but I am not going to tell the buyer’s realtor that, I just tell them where to send the offer.

That’s the data. I am by no means saying the market is slowing down. It is after all the middle of winter which is usually the slowest time of the year. I do think the market will stay strong for quite some time. I just wanted you all to know that not every house sells the first day on the market for full price or more. I want to help separate the perception of what the market is like compared to the reality.

Kicking a buyer to the curb made my seller $10k

by John Rice

My seller was impressed that I sold his house so fast.

Big whoop.

Just about every house sells fast these days. back in 2008-2011 was when selling a house fast was something to brag about.

Today, I think the most valuable thing a realtor can do for a seller is helping them pick which offer to accept and taking some strategic steps to keep the deal glued together…..or strategic steps to easily get into an equally good contract should the one you have fall apart.

So, the house I am talking about was priced at the tippy top of the market. It got a ton of showings and the only offer we got was from somebody who had a house to sell. People with a contingency have to come in stronger than a buyer without one, so getting no other offers and a full price one from this buyer is a sure sign we got 100% the full market value.

The offer was contingent on the buyers selling their old house. I never like those, but I don’t mind them if I can get the buyer to accept an immediate kickout clause. A kickout clause is when you can keep the house on the market, but if some other buyer makes an offer the seller wants to accept, the first buyer has to be given the change to get the house if they can buy it without having to sell their old house. Usually the time period for the first buyer to either put up or shut up is 24-48 hours. Naturally, a lot of buyers and their realtors don’t like to show houses with kickout clauses. It can be heartbreaking if the first buyer actually can remove their contingency and buy the house. BUUUUUUUT, with an immediate kickout clause, the seller can enter into a contract with the new buyer and all they have to do is tell the first buyer they just lost the house. It is the best of both worlds for the seller. You get to keep the buyer who is paying top dollar for your house and you get to keep looking for a better buyer. There is nothing to lose.

There is a third great thing about having a contingency contract with an immediate kickout. It is called leverage. One reason I advised the seller to accept the offer if the buyer would do an immediate kickout clause was because I wanted to be able to tell future buyers that we already had a full price contract with the immediate kickout.

Well, a few days later, we did get an offer that was about 95% of the list price. I told the other agent that we had a full price offer on the table with an immediate kickout, and her buyer would need to go full price in order to make the seller kick the first buyer to the curb. They agreed to it. Without the presence of that first buyer’s contract, I would have had no leverage to get the new buyers to come up $10,000.

I more than paid for my own commission by strategically positioning my seller to get the most money.

How many days on the market are best?

by John Rice

One.

One day on the market is best.

A lot of sellers feel like if their house sells immediately that their realtor under priced the house.  Some of them feel like realtors shouldn’t make that much money when a house sells fast.

Here is the truth from 14 years experience:  1)  A house will always sell for market value.  If it was under priced, buyers will bid over the list price.  2)  The effort between selling a house the first day on the market or it taking 6 months is not that different.  Being the listing realtor is a lot like fishing.  You bait a hook with your marketing and cast it in the pool of buyers.  Then you wait for one to bite.

Enough about the realtor perspective, how about why this is somehow great for the seller?

Statistics tell the story.

A seller is much much much more likely to get their full asking price when it is a new listing.

When a house hits the market, every buyer in that price range comes out to see it.   They often see other buyers leaving the house before they see it and/or have other buyers waiting to see it when they leave.  Buyers know that they need to act fast if they want the house.  They know that other buyers may want it too so they better put out their best offer first.  There is a sense of urgency.

If it sells, it will most likely sell for the full list price.

Once all the buyers currently in the market have seen it, a seller will only get showings as new buyers emerge into the market.   There is no frenzy.  No buyer is afraid of losing the house so they want to see how low they can get the seller to go.

A phenomenon that has been happening since buyers have been able to set up their own saved searches on Zillow is that buyers seem to look at a house online only once when it is a new listing.  Few buyers these days will comb through rejected listings.  They opt to just wait for new listings to come on the market…..which means a house that did not sell quickly is unlikely to ever have a buyer reconsider viewing the house.  It is like it doesn’t even exist to them.

So, how many days on the market are best for the seller?

One.

One day on the market is best.