How Market Time And Positioning Are Vital When Selling Your Home
Did you know that you don’t get the most money from your home sale by pricing it high? In this video, I’m going to show you the importance of market timing and positioning to sell your home for top dollar. I’ll explain everything from marketing to listing online so you know exactly how to make the most profit off your home in today’s market.
Positioning Your Home
One of the most common questions I get from clients is, ‘Hey, Chris, I want to sell my home for this high price.’ However, I'm going to show you how that doesn't work. The way you really sell your home for top dollar depends on how you position it and bring it to the market to receive the price that you're looking for.
But what is positioning? When we go to sell your property, we need to properly position it so that it's ready to go to the appropriate buyer that you're looking for. For example, I have a house right by Camp Pendleton. If I was about to sell my house, I’d probably market it to a Marine that lives by Camp Pendleton. On the other hand, if I have a property in a 55 plus community, then I'm probably going to be marketing people that are over the age of 55 and not necessarily Marines.
The ideal scenario is to create an emotional connection for the ideal buyer for your house. At the same time, you also want to create a buzz around its sale. That fear of missing out is key.
Pricing Is Key
The most important part of the home selling process is pricing. You want to go through the comps, which means looking at houses that just closed or are already sold that most closely match your current home. If you don't price your home appropriately, then it will sit on the market.
A house that sits on the market tells me, as a realtor, that it's overpriced. This is why pricing your house for sale is all based on strategy. We don't create the market; we just have to work within the market. The more market time you accumulate when your house is for sale, the less money you're going to get when you sell.
Have you or your spouse ever wanted something you thought was going to be gone tomorrow and that they would no longer have access to? A great example is the last year of coronavirus. Everybody was buying toilet paper—which at the end of the day, really hasn't been around for that long. But there was a huge fear that nobody was going to have toilet paper, prompting panic buying. That's what we want to do with your home.
The Importance Of Market Time
When a new house comes to the market, everybody knows that it's going to get a lot of attention. That also leads them to think that there's going to be a lot of offers on the home, especially in our current market. What I can tell you as a real estate agent is that when we go to sell your home, if a house has a lot of interest, then you’ll get a lot of competitive offers. That’s usually right where you want to be.
However, if you don't get multiple offers and you increase your market time, you're just spreading out the number of offers. This reduces your level of competition, which means that there are not as many people that are working against each other in favor of your sale. Have you ever looked at a house that’s been on the market for more than 30 days? What about 60 days or even 300 days? What was the first thought that came to your mind?
If the home is on the market too long, you’ll immediately think there’s something wrong with the house. People might think they can get a good deal on this type of home, which always means lowball offers for you. All these reasons are why listing your house for sale too high right off the bat can harm you in the long run and bring the value of your home down.
Listing Your Home Online
Another important thing to consider is how people search online for property and how that can affect the price of your home. People that are searching online on zillow.com or realtor.com are usually searching in $25,000 to $50,000 increments. So when we list your property at $605,000, we're missing out on that search group that only went up to $599,000.
This is something that you want to keep in mind when discussing the list price of your home. Pricing incorrectly puts a home out of reach for some eyeballs. But if you keep it a little bit lower, you can get a lot more attention on that property. You’ll also be getting a lot more views, and when selling your home, you want as many views as possible
Additionally, it’s vital how we describe your home when listing online. We want to have a cool narrative that walks people through the home. It should address all the features that you know and love, sharing that with a potential buyer that's looking at the property. The key is how we write the description of your property and how we connect on an emotional level with these buyers.
The Perfect Description And Finding A Buyer
Buyers will be reading about the home, picturing their family there, and imagining if they can grow into the home. For example, if we have a four-bedroom house that's right near a bunch of good schools in a great neighborhood, you're going to want to talk about all the parks, activities, and how family-friendly the neighborhood is. This will give them a great idea of what they're looking for in a home and the area that surrounds it.
On the other hand, if you have an investment property with two units, three units, or four units, I'm not going to talk about the neighborhood and where it's at. Rather, I'm talking about the cap rate, the return on investment, how often it’s vacant, and what those other opportunities are for the investor to take advantage of when they purchase the home.
The third thing that goes into positioning your property for sale is where we're going to market it. The appropriate buyer gets linked up with that and can make an offer on your home, potentially get under contract, and close this deal. An aggressive agent is going to go out there and find the buyer for your house. Instead of just putting a sign in the yard, posting on the MLS, and waiting for somebody to come to them, they will go get that buyer and bring him to your property.
Getting Top Dollar For Your Property
I hope this helped you understand how you can properly position your home for sale to get top dollar. If you have any more questions, please reach out to me and I'd love to discuss selling your home. We can talk about what strategies we can come up with to target that ideal buyer avatar and get them to purchase your home.
Don’t forget to also subscribe to my channel so you never miss an episode of my show all about making successful real estate decisions. Stay tuned to see what I feature next!
