How To Speed Your Sale in a Slow Market

In southeastern Manitoba, home sales have slowed. And sellers are getting frustrated.

For the last decade, our area has enjoyed a boom – a fast-paced market where buyers were tripping over themselves to secure the house they desperately wanted to buy. Prices swelled, there were competing offers, and it was a thrilling ride.

In the last year or so, something changed. We suddenly have an abundance of homes to choose from in today’s market. Buyers are now able to take their time (and they surely do), and browse the wide selection. They are no longer desperate to get whatever they can.

This is why to sell a home takes much longer than it did only a year or two ago.

Homes listed on MLS can take twice as long to sell than they would have in the past.  It can take six months (or more) to sell your house in the R16 region.

If you’re a seller, this is disappointing news.

If you’re a seller in a hurry to sell, this is downright scary.

There is a way around it, but new markets call for new ways of thinking. Are you ready to adapt to the new market? If you are willing to change with the times, you’ll have an easier time. Stubborn adherence to past prices, old marketing, or even just your own perceptions though, can cause you a world of unnecessary hurt.

If you’re eager to sell, and willing to accept that the tides have changed, here’s how to change with them.

If your home is listed at 100% of market value, expect the sale to take six months or more.

Pricing at 95% of market value would bring you back up around 2-4 months.

Listing at 85% of market value may take closer to 3-8 weeks.

If your home is listed at 70% of market value though, which is what investors typically pay, you can expect a sale very quickly – in 1-3 weeks!

Then there are those who insist on listing above that value. Theirs can be a dark road.

That road often ends in the listing becoming stale, receiving low-ball offers, and then either selling for way, way, way below even market value, or being repossessed because the owners could not finance the long haul that kind of greed demands.

The bottom line is that you can control your bottom line.

You can’t force people to buy, but you can certainly sweeten the deal for them. And in a buyers’ market, that’s an essential element to selling your home.

Like much of life, it seems the home seller must choose between time or money.
Which are you willing to pay?

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Don’t Be a Sucker About Getting “Top Dollar”

Every seller wants top dollar, and every buyer wants to avoid paying top dollar.

Your agent – whether buyer’s agent or seller’s agent – wants the best dollar for you and them.

Is it win-win-win, or does someone have to end up being the sucker?

If you’re the sucker, would you know it? 

You Might be a Sucker if… (4 Ways To Tell)

If you think “Market value” is a fanciful figure plucked from thin air that is greatly affected by nostalgia, sentiment or greed-inflated estimates… you might be a sucker. 

Market value is a calculation based on factual research – this is about real numbers and trends in a specific locale. Think fact, not fiction.

If you think your house is worth more than everyone else’s just because you’re you, and if you don’t mind your family, friends and neighbors seeing your sky-high price… you might be a sucker.
You have been made a fool by pride, and everyone can see it on your price tag.

I have done this next one and not only did I not get a sale, neither did my sellers so it didn’t do anyone good.

If you are an agent who, desperate for a listing, agrees to list a house way above market value just to appease a client who will not heed the voice of reason … you might be a sucker.
People don’t just see your client’s sky-high price, they see your reputation on that sign too.  Keep it real, folks.
If you hire an agent because they promise you a higher sell price than any other agent… you might be a sucker. Market value is market value. Not even agents can change that. Price is only one small factor when hiring an agent.

…Have you been a sucker lately?