Are you waiting anxiously for someone to look at your house, let alone submit an offer? When a house sits on the MLS for over 30 days buyers start to wonder if there’ something wrong with it and a negative stigma begins to form. If you find yourself in this situation, you need to address it as quickly as possible or your house could sit on the market for months! Here are some action steps you can take if your house is sitting idle on the MLS:
Price Reduction
Sit down with your broker and review the recent comparable sales for your house. Your goal is to figure out if your house is overpriced. After you figured that out, have your broker show you what direction the market is moving in. If the market is steadily going up you may want to keep your price steady and ride it out until it sells for exactly what you want.
Conversely, if the market is trending down you’re going to have to make a tough decision. If the market is trending down and your price is too high buyers will naturally migrate to other options, leaving your house sitting…
Sometimes we factor our emotional attachments into the value of our house that others simply cannot appreciate. The person buying your home isn’t going to get the warm fuzzies while thinking about your holiday dinners, super bowl parties or the stain on the rug that you kept there because it reminds you of your Aunt Gretta.
Don’t make this mistake!
Stick to the comparable sales and have your Realtor make adjustments based on the difference those houses have with yours. While it can be pricey, an appraiser can also help you isolate a value and will be happy to answer any questions you have about how they come up with it.
FSBO
If your Realtor can’t sell your house on the MLS after a few months, sometimes it’s better to pull up your bootstraps and do it yourself! While this will take a large amount of your personal time, there are different marketing channels you can use to bring your house to the market yourself! On top of that, you don’t have to pay any commission!
Ultimately, it’s going to be up to you as to whether you want to spend your time doing it yourself. There are plenty of guides out there that can help you along the way.
Using the Big Box Real Estate Sites (Zillow, Realtor.com & Redfin to name a few) is a great option. These sites usually allow you to post your house for sale, upload pictures and add your contact information so that prospective buyers can call you to get more information.
Be aware that you’ll have to filter through tire-kickers and people who are looking to low ball you While it may not be an ideal use of your time, since you don’t have a Realtor to do it you pretty much have to handle them yourself.
You can also talk to your Realtor about a limited listing. This is where a Realtor lists your property on the MLS, but that’s legitimately all they do. They’ll upload pictures and your description, but they put your contact information in the notes so buyers can reach out. There is usually a flat fee involved that you pay when they write up the listing. This also keeps you from having to add your property to all of the Big Box Real Estate sites because the MLS adds it to all of them!
If you’re still living in the house, make sure the house stays extremely clean. If you’ve already moved out, consider hiring a professional to stage your home so it’s more palletable to buyrs as they walk through.
Neutrality is key when you’re cleaning up and getting your house ready. Take down all of your family photos and if you’re planning to paint before selling it make sure that you’re using neutral colors like gray or white. Talking to your local paint store or looking at listings on the MLS can help you identify what colors to use.
The reason you’re doing all of this is so buyers can imagine themselves living in the house as they’re walking through. That’s really hard to do when they’re staring at a picture of your Great Uncle Benny catching that 15 pound fish with a Natty Light in his hand!
If you do decde to stage your property, you may also need to rent a storage unit, for your own furniture and other extra belongings that are not being used on a daily basis. Make sure your taking that cost into consideration as your preparing to execute your plan.
Do Some Updates
Curb appeal, or how attractive the entire property appears to someone when they’re driving by, may be a problem…
The outside of your home is the first thing that potential buyers. It can literally make or break their decision to walk through your house. If it looks like sasquatch just tromped through the daylilies and threw pine straw all over the yard, it could drive away potential buyers and leave your house squatting on the MLS…
Spend some time and money putting new mulch in the yard or planting some flowers. Mow the grass and make sure there’s not too many weeds in the bed. Tree trimming can also help with curb appeal.
And here’s one thing that pretty much everyone misses: edge your yard and kill all of the grass between the cracks in your driveway! You’ll thank us later.
Also, take a close look at your light/water fixtures and decor. If your house is outdated and antiquated in design, you won’t be appealing to the larger group of buyers who want something move-in-ready.
While every person has their own definition of “move-in-ready”, most people want all of the scut work done. While there are those buyers who are looking for somethign they can “make their own” or a “fixer upper” deep down they want to do as little work as humanly possible after they move in. The more up to date your house is, the less time your house sits on the MLS. It’s really that simple!
Conformity is also a major consideration. If you made a lot of exterior changes to your home and it’s not jiving with the “aura” of the surrounding neigborhood it could lead to your house sitting on the MLS for an indefinite period of time.
A lot of buyers tend to shy away from properties that are too different. It leads back to our primal need for being accepted.
While there’s not much you can really do if your house isn’t conforming, you can certainly spend more time highlighting those difference to make it appeal to buyers. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find that buyer who doesn’t care what anyone thinks and will buy it because of its differences!
Complete Repairs
If you’re trying to sell your house in “as-is” condition you could find your house sitting on the MLS for a long time.
Even when you’re working with a Realtor, the home selling process can still be taxing. This leads many sellers to try and avoid as much of the work as possible while also seeking the maximum value. This manifests in the regular repairs being dismissed and left for the new buyer.
But a majority of buyers can see right through the facade. They want a move-in-ready
If you’re crossing your fingers and hoping that the buyer won’t notice then be aware that most Realtors will recommend each buyer to have an inspection don on the property, which will identify all of the repairs that it will need. Once received by the buyer, you’ll get another laundry list of items that will need to be done! This could mean thousands of dollars in repairs, depending on what problems are discovered by the inspector.
If you haven’t already, hire your own inspector and have them identify any repairs that should be done. Then, have a professional complete each repair. These professionals can also make you aware of any local, state, and federal laws governing repair disclosure when conducting the sale of real estate, which will clue you in on the repairs that will need to be made.
It’s also important to remember that if you don’t complete a critical repair or lie about one you could face legal ramifications, even if you were unaware of a problem with your property before the sale.
The Easiest Solution…
There’s a much better solution when selling your house, especially when it’s been sitting on the MLS for far too long. The solution is a direct sale to Helping Home Solutions!
If you would rather save your time and money while skipping all of the headaches and expenses of listing yourself or with a real estate agent, we’re here to help. We’ll be buying your property as-is and our vast experience means that we understand the risks involved.
We can close on your schedule, so you can take the time you need to make preparations. Why not just sell directly to Helping Home Solutions?! Call (252) 227-0274 or send us a message today!