When it takes longer than you’ve planned (or can afford) to sell your house waiting is painful.
Here are three ways you can minimize the time you’re home will be on the market when it’s time to sell.
1. Price it right the first time.
Often home sellers knowingly list their home for sale at a high price “just to see” if someone will buy it for that price.
There are two main problems with this strategy. The first is that you get the most exposure the first few weeks your home is for sale. With an inflated price, you lose out on early interest from serious buyers. Secondly, 97% of buyers use a pro-Realtor. Those Realtors do their price evaluation of your home and recommend their buyers put in an offer at that price despite your high list price.
Homes that are correctly priced when put on the market can sell in a matter of days and weeks, not months or years.
2. Get good photos
Home buyers are searching online through dozens, sometimes hundreds, of homes making quick judgments based on a single photo. If they like it, they click to see more. Those photos can determine if they plan to schedule a showing ultimately leading to making a purchase.
IMOTO conducted a study with over 350 home listings and found professional photography sold 50% faster and 39% closer to the original listing price than similar homes without professional photos.
The statistics department at Latter & Blum, right here in South Louisiana, found listings using IMOTO’s professional photography saw 118% more views than comparable listings.
For this reason alone we invest more in photos and virtual tours, and even drone footage at times for homes we sell.
3. Plan to Wait
Waiting doesn’t start to hurt until it’s been longer then you expected. Unfortunately, most home sellers haven’t taken the time to manage realistic expectations around a timeline.
Realtors use a simple formula to get an idea of how long a home may take to sell. We recommend you use it too so you have an idea of how long you should expect to wait.
You’ll want to find out how many homes like yours sold last month, then divide that by how many homes like yours are for sale now.
Sold Homes / Homes For Sale = Months it takes to sell yours.
For example, if 4 homes in your area with the same amenities and sq footage sold last month, and there are still 8 on the market, then that means there it could take 2 months for the rest of those homes (including yours) to sell.
This information is a baseline, but it’s a useful tool for building a plan to sell your home. If you don’t have access to this information then just put your address in our calculator, and it will generate a free report.