How to Sell Your Home Faster

Having your home languish on the market for months on end is the biggest fear of many sellers. Luckily, the Southwest Florida housing market has picked up recently, as seen in our dwindling inventory, but there are still things you can do to improve your home’s chances of selling quickly.

1) Clean like your life depended on it!

There are so many things in a home that get dirty and go unnoticed year after year. Dirt accumulates around the woodwork, dust bunnies nest under the furniture, and vents start recirculating as much dust as air.

You may not notice these little details on a daily basis, but potential buyers will. Perhaps not consciously, but enough to color their impression of your home. To make sure your house looks sparkling clean to even the most OCD of potential buyers, you need to clean from top to bottom, quite literally. Here are a few of the places to make sure you clean:

• Ceilings and corners
• Window frames and crevices
• Around door frames and baseboards
• Light switches and power outlets
• Inside closets, cupboards, and drawers

Bottom line: Get yourself in dirt elimination mode. If you see a single speck of dirt, eliminate it!

2) Complete projects and fix anything that isn’t in perfect working order.

You know that drippy faucet that has been on your to do list for the past three months? Now is the time to fix it. Squeaky storm door? Break out the WD-40. Even all your blown light bulbs should be replaced.

There are two types of repairs around the house: major overhauls, and small things that need maintenance periodically. Whether it is a corner of carpet that keeps coming up, an outlet that doesn’t work right sometimes, or that hard-to-get-to light bulb that has burned out, all minor repairs need to be completed in order for your house to show at its best.

3) Stage your house like a show home.

Think of it as a transition period: the time for you to stop thinking of the house as yours. Certainly your buyers don’t want to think of it as yours, so your first step is to get rid of anything personal. Family pictures, framed diplomas, and other mementos all have to go.

The next step is to eliminate clutter. You want every room in your house to look practically bare to you, since chances are you have been living with the clutter for so long that you have grown accustomed to it. You should expect to put about two-thirds of your belongings into storage. For instance, you should store:

• Unnecessary furniture
• Scatter rugs
• Most of your framed art, except for a few neutral pictures
• Off-season clothes
• Most of your books and collectibles
• Bathroom and kitchen items you don’t use regularly
• Anything that doesn’t fit neatly into its place

When you are done, your house should be full of nearly blank walls and wide-open expanses of floor in every room. Furniture, carpeting, and even the paint on the walls should be neutral, as too much personal style is a distraction. Remember, think show home: Potential buyers can’t picture themselves living in your home if it looks like someone else already does.

4) Focus on curb appeal.

Once you have cleaned and cleared the clutter inside the house, it is time to focus on the outside. This part is extremely important, because of the way homebuyers shop for homes these days. In 2009, a study by the National Association of Realtors found that 90 percent of buyers start looking for a home online, which means that how fast your home sells may depend on how photogenic it is. If your home doesn’t look ravishing in the first picture, in other words, potential buyers may pass it over without a second thought.

Even after browsing listings online, a large percentage of homebuyers drive by the homes they are considering before even considering a showing, so your curb appeal becomes even more vital.

Generating curb appeal requires a lot more than simply mowing your lawn and planting a few flowers. You will find you get the best results if your front yard is fully landscaped to show off your home to its best advantage. If you don’t have a green thumb yourself, consider hiring a landscaper to do this for you.

5) Set a competitive asking price.

How your home looks has a lot to do with how many showings and offers it gets, but the price can determine how many people bother looking at the listing in the first place. In today’s market, many buyers are compelled to buy based on the idea of getting a good deal. If your listing isn’t poised to look like a "good deal," it won’t get much attention.

But how do you determine a good asking price for your home? The answer is to have your selling agent do a comparative market analysis on the neighborhood. This is one of the most useful tools at your disposal, because it analyzes all the comparable sales in the last six months. From the data you can determine the going price per square foot for a home like yours, and use that information to set your asking price at a tempting level.

The more competitive your asking price, the more interest you will get in your home. Without showings, you won’t get offers, and without offers, you can’t sell your home. Think of the asking price as a lure to encourage potential buyers to bite.

6) Choose the right agent.

Last but not least, your choice of an agent can make a huge difference in how quickly your home sells. A good agent knows the neighborhood well and is able to advise you on an appropriate asking price, for starters. But even more importantly, a good agent knows how to market your home in order to get results.

As I already mentioned, the majority of homebuyers begin their search online, and a good agent knows this. In order to be successful in today’s housing market, a selling agent has to make a strong showing online. Their website has to be state of the art with visually appealing virtual listings and plenty of other online resources, and they need to be savvy about other methods of online marketing, such as blogs, newsletters, and opt-in mailing lists. The more aggressive your selling agent is in this department, the more publicity your listing will get, and the faster it is likely to sell.

My point is, there are a lot of factors that go into how quickly your home sells, but it is important to remember to look at the big picture: how all of these pieces fit together as a whole to draw the buyer in. A beautiful home that is poorly marketed or inappropriately priced won’t sell any faster than a poorly shown house that is well publicized and priced competitively. The homes on the market that are selling the fastest right now are the ones that have all of these things: made to look beautiful inside and out, competitively priced, and well represented.

Whether you are looking to buy or sell a home in Southwest Florida, I invite you to take a look at my website. With a variety of the top online tools, great marketing coverage, and familiarity with the neighborhoods in Lee and Collier Counties, I have what it takes to sell your house quickly and easily. Ready to sell? Let’s talk! Feel free to give me a call any time!

Contributed by D. Michael Burke, P.A. Keller Williams Elite Realty
Michael@CoconutPointRealEstate.com / www.CoconutPointRealEstate.com