Real Estate News

When your home doesn’t sell, nothing could be more frustrating. All your moving options and time tables are in a standstill because the home hasn’t sold. Typically, after a home has failed to sell the homeowner lowers the price or switches agents. However, real estate agents and pricing aren’t the only reasons a home didn’t sell. Let’s look at the most common reasons why a home doesn’t sell.

Bad First Impression

Imagine for a second that you’re working with Florida Realty Marketplace and we have 5 homes for sale in Haines City to look at. Imagine that we just viewed some amazing new construction and now we drive up to a home that has ankle-high weeds and dead shrubbery in the front yard. What would you do?

You’d do what most people do. You’d move on to the next house. Unless the price was so significantly less than all the other homes, you’re going to move on. First impressions are everything when you meet people and when you shop for homes.

Messy or Dirty

Similar to a bad first impression is a dirty or messy house.  Imagine that same home tour. You drive up and it looks nice enough on the outside. However, when you open the door there are kids’ toys everywhere.  At first, you’re a little disturbed but think it could just be a fun home with kids. As you move through the home, you see pots and pans left on the stove, stuff all over the bathroom sink, and even clothes on the floor of the closet. 

Are these things that should disqualify a home? After all, it’s really easy to clean this stuff up. Unfortunately, the answer is almost always yes.  Homebuyers are notoriously uncreative. If you are going to force them to use their imagination, you better price it to allow that imagination to run free. 

Outdated

So far we’ve covered very easy to fix problems with a home and almost non-logical reasons why buyers don’t choose a home. These superficial reasons are legitimate. The problem isn’t so much that they can’t see past the dirt or mess. It’s that home buyer typically are very poor cost estimators.  They see your daughter’s pink room and assume it’s going to cost at least a few hundred dollars to get it back to neutral.

That’s why when they see a home that’s outdated, doesn't have the amenities you're looking for, or perhaps simply not upgraded as much as competitor homes, they aren’t interested. When a home buyer looks at a dirty home, they might not choose it and simply be unaware of the psychological processing going on. However, when a buyer sees an outdated home, they know the problem upfront.  What they don’t realize is often they are miscalculating the cost update a home by as much as 100%.

Stubborn Seller

At Florida Realty Marketplace we help all kinds of people and we’ve heard all kinds of things being said. However, there is one word that pops up time and time again and it’s an alert that the transaction might be difficult.  That word is “ain’t.”  As in, “I ain’t doing … “

If a home buyer has decided to make an offer then chances are really good there could be a closing and a move date in the future. However, false perceptions and sometimes even personal feelings get in the way.  

For example, we’ve had sellers say, “I ain’t paying no closing costs!” The reality of this scenario sometimes is that the seller can actually net more money but may have to pay the closing costs.  The seller has a false perception that the closing costs will cost them money.  (Want to know how to pay closing costs for the buyer and get the most money? Contact us!)

The reality is that often small compromises in certain areas can smooth a home selling transaction.  However, nothing shuts down a home sale like a bad attitude.

Real Estate Agent

We’re on a quest to talk about every reason a home doesn’t sell. Our list wouldn’t be complete without talking about real estate agents. Unfortunately, real estate is a business like many others where 20% of the agents do 80% of the work. The other 80% of agents are probably wonderful people but just aren’t treating real estate like a business.

A real estate agent can cause a home by simply not doing their job.  All real estate agents aren’t bad, just the ones that do the following…

●    Agents that take photos with their cell phone instead of using high-quality photos
●    Agents that fail to research the price properly
●    Agents that fail to inform the client about the condition of the property
●    Agents that don’t make the homes available to be shown
●    Agents that communicate poorly with the other agents. (Did you know that 85% of home moves involve 2 real estate agents!)

Pricing

All of these are reasons that homes don’t sell, however, there is one reason that rules them all. Your home price is the single factor that causes your home to sell.  I know, that’s a very real estate agent thing for us to say.  Here’s the logic behind it…

Bad First Impression can be overcome at a lower price. Messy homes can be overcome at a lower price. Outdated homes can be overcome at a lower price. Bad real estate photos? Price the home low enough to attract buyers.

In every study, the research is clear that pricing the home is the single most important thing that real estate agents and sellers can do.  If you have one of the other problems listed above, then chances are you need to slide the price down or improve the property.  If you use a home valuation tool like ours, it's basing the price on a "best case scenario" type of situation.

If your home failed to sell and you want to know why contact us today and we’ll tell you!