A Picture is STILL Worth a Thousand Words--No Matter How Good Those Words Are!!!

As everyone who's read my blog knows, I am a big advocate of selling visually.  We ALL buy with our eyes and that's never been more true than with the advent of the internet.  Below is a link to a great article detailing WORDS that will help listings get sold. 

I must say, as a homebuyer, I've seen hundreds of listings with these buzz words, as a matter of fact, one just yesterday.  But if all you have to offer me, or any prospective buyer, is a picture of the front facade, then I'm off to the next listing.  I don't care of Sidney Sheldon or Tom Clancy wrote the description!

Accompany a visual "story" of the property along with the verbiage in this article and I guarantee the number of showings will go through the roof!!!

Read on...

"Most Powerful Words In a Home for Sale Listing"

Are Optical Illusions Costing You Money?

What do you see in the image above?  A beautiful antique vase?  The profiles of two mature women facing each other?  Could be either one or the other...

It's all about perception!

Home sellers and real estate professionals have to understanding the concept of "buyer's perception."
As a seller, yes, you may have paid $250,000 for your home during the dreaded 2004 and yes, you may have refinanced, taking out $50,000 in PERCEIVED equity in 2006 to make improvements (that's another post in the making). But if your home is now on the market for $355,000, there is really no guarantee that you'll sell for that price. In fact, it's likely you won't get near that today.

Buyers today know properties are still trending downward; they know the longer a house sits on the market, the more room there will be for negotiation: translation--lower asking price. There are some listing agents that believe if there are no showings in 30 days, start dropping the price.  If there are no offers in 30 days, start dropping the price.

Some homes are actually worth the listed price, or at least really close to it.  The problem is they don't SHOW well so buyers PERCEIVE them as not being worth the asking price. Perception is everything and once a buyer perceives a house as not being worth the listed price, you've pretty much lost them.

I've seen homes that are spectacular, but with horrific decor.  Buyers are not looking for a house full of projects and the more projects they find in a home, the less valuable a home is to them.  Most are looking for move-in ready, turnkey properties.

I think as real estate professionals, it's our duty to get every penny we can for a property, especially if a seller is upside down.  Which is where staging or enhancing comes into play.

It not only will help build a lasting rapport with sellers (and hopefully referrals), but it helps our bottom line! 

This Debate is Still Raging On! Pre-sale Repairs, Are they Worth the Expense?



How much is ignoring that repair REALLY costing you?

I came across this article in the New York Times....http://nyti.ms/z7gECP

So, of course, it brought out the home stager/writer/ home buyer in me...

This market is unlike any in our lifetime. The pool of buyers has shrunk exponentially AND the pool of available properties has grown exponentially...translation: buyer's market!
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Since mortgages are harder to come by, and the "buy-hold-long-enough-for-the-value-to-go-up-then-sell-and-buy-a-bigger-house" days are gone, buyers know they'll be in their homes a lot longer, possibly forever!

So what seems minor to a seller, i.e., chipped paint, old light fixtures, etc, will turn off a buyer.  In most cases, they're looking for move-in ready and if they see too many projects in a property, they will move on to the next...it's just that simple.

What sellers have to realize, and especially those that are upside down in their mortgages, is that ignoring problems is costing them money than they realize:

• Every month that house sits unsold, the mortgage payment is due, taxes are due and maintenance has to be paid for. 
• Buyers seeing numerous repairs and therefore making offers thousands below asking, will put sellers in a possible scenario of bringing money to the closing. 
• The longer a property sits on the market, the less likely it is that it will sell for the optimal asking price. Property values in many parts of the country are still trending downward.

This is why stagers are more important than ever.  We can come in with an objective (buyer's) eye and find a property's "offenses" and fix them; increasing the chances of not only a sale, but getting asking price or really close to it.