3 Best Tips If Your Home Isn't Selling

Recently, an army buddy "from way back when" found me on Facebook and saw that I now operated a Real Estate Office. Upon discovering that I had 20+ years of experience in selling homes, he asked me to give him some advice. Apparently, he had hired a real estate agent to sell his house four months ago and nothing was happening. He wondered what a homeowner should do if a home isn't selling.

I reminded him of an old Ray Kroc saying we used to hear all the time:

Are you green and growing, or ripe and rotting?

If you have a home on the market in Tallahassee, you need to know what to do if it isn't selling. Waiting for a buyer is a mistake. There is no such thing as market time any more, either you are selling, or you are not! I tell home sellers that it takes 4 to 14 days to sell a home, even in a buyer's market. If you have properly exposed the property to over 90% of the potential buyers and nobody decided to buy your home, then you have a decision to make:

1. Price your home so that it is attractive to buyers
2. Wait until buyers find your home attractive

Since home values are still dropping in most US housing markets, the second choice is a matter of years, not months. So I gave him my 3 best tips for people who have a home that isn't selling.

3 Best Tips For Selling Your Home Now

If you list your home for sale with a REALTOR®, then your property will be placed for sale in the Tallahassee MLS. From there, it will be fed to all of the large, international aggregate real estate sites such as realtor.com, trulia.com, zillow.com, century21.com, remax.com, coldwellbanker.com, etc. All of the real estate franchises pick up and distribute every listing in the MLS, so don't for a second think that is going to get your home sold. After all, roughly 60% of the homes listed for sale in the Tallahassee MLS last year failed to sell, so this is NOT an internet marketing plan.

If your home has been on the market for 14 days or longer, then you need to take action. Immediately. Home values are dropping and you are not going to do well by waiting and hoping. Demand an appointment with the Broker of the office and use these three tips to help you make the decision that will get your home sold.

• Tip #1. Have the broker of the office sit down with you and demonstrate what is going on in their internet marketing plan. Sure, your home (like more than a million others) is on the large aggregate sites. But is in on Craigslist? Have the broker show you your ad on Craigslist and what the plan is to drive the traffic to your single-property web page. Craigslist is only a small part of the solution, but if you don't see at least five ads for your home on Craigslist in the first two weeks, your home is not reaching the entire market.
• Tip #2. Find out what the broker is doing to make your listing stand out. With nearly 5,000 homes listed for sale in the Tallahassee MLS, yours cannot afford to be like everybody else's. After all, 60% of the homes listed for sale last year failed to sell, can you afford to be like them? Demand to see the strategy that they are utilizing, on the internet, to drive buyers to your home. You do not need to be a real estate expert to grasp the plan. It should make great sense to you if it is well explained.
• Tip #3. We know that 94% of homebuyers are using the internet, so find out what non-property-specific marketing plans they are executing to draw traffic to see your home? If "advertising" on the internet is the answer, you are in trouble. After all, have YOU clicked on a paid ad recently on any of the search engines? Have you ever clicked on a banner ad?  Did you buy something? Don't you think buyers for your home are going to be just like you too?

Ultimately, you need to be highly impressed with the online activity that your real estate company is creating to get your home sold, or you to know that your home is not going to sell. If you are impressed, then the problem isn't the marketing plan, the problem is that you are overpriced. And that means you need to consider your two choices that were explained at the beginning of this article. You must lower your price so that it will sell, or you need to plan on waiting (years) until values have first fallen, then risen to the level that will allow you to sell at your asking price. Doing nothing is a poor choice.

*Joe Manausa Real Estate is a brokerage company headquartered in Tallahassee, Florida. Its unique business model provides specialists to both home sellers and home buyers, and the results speak for themselves. JMRE has significantly more 5-star reviews on google than any other local competitor. Joe Manausa Real Estate is a leader in internet marketing and utilizes search engine optimization, email marketing, social media and data analytics to get their clients’ home sold faster and for more money than any other Tallahassee brokerage firm. For more information, visit www.manausa.com or call us at (850) 366-8917.