If you have a home priced under $300,000 and you are not getting good activity, something is wrong.  Yes there are a lot of homes on the market, a many month supply, but there are plenty of motivated buyers.  They have three big incentives to buy now:  Prices are down, interest rates are down, and for 1st time homebuyers (those who have not owned in the past 3 years) the $8,000 tax credit.  That tax credit is set to expire December 1 which may signal the end of the current ‘boom’.  Get your home sold today!   Let’s check a few things that could be affecting your home.

1.  Is the initial impression good, and I am speaking of the part of your home seen from the street?  Over my years in real estate, when working with buyers, it is not unusual for a client to say, ‘Let’s not even go inside.  There is  no way I am going to consider this’.  Unless the immediate neighborhood itself is rundown, the specific home we were looking at gives that impression when driving up.  Sometimes just a couple of hours of work out front would take care of that objection.

2. Are you priced right?  The vast majority of homes for sale are overpriced right now.  The sellers are still thinking 2006, and the price isn’t where it was then.  If you have your home priced correctly to today’s market, make sure everyone knows it; even put the price on the sign.  I recently helped a couple who decided to ‘trade-up’ by taking advantage of the larger price reductions of more expensive homes right now and were also willing to adjust their price (By the way, when everything was done, I believe they gained at least $50,000 of instant equity through the two transactions).  We priced their home right where it should be priced today, which meant it was priced lower than the surrounding competition (and there were several homes on the market in the immediate area), and we received two formal offers within six days, selling the home for full price.  You do not have to wait if you are priced correctly.

3.  Do buyers know about your home?  For a FSBO homeowner, this is the hardest part of getting traffic.  It takes several days when a home is first put on the market for prospective buyers to even know about your property.  If the home is listed, it can take up to ten days to reach the current buyer pool.  With a FSBO situation, you will never reach all the buyers, you probably will never even reach 50%.  There is no way for you to get the penetration a professional agent is able to achieve, so be sure to use every method available: signs, flyers, newspaper, Craigslist, etc.  Once you have reached the current market you are waiting for new buyers to enter the market and consider your home, but if there are current buyers, you shouldn’t have to wait for those new buyers; you should have already received an acceptable offer.