Selling Homes Fast And For Top Dollar

If you're thinking about selling your home, be it in the Tucson real estatemarket or any other city, there are six crucial steps that you have to keep in mind. If you understand and execute properly on these six key steps, selling your home will be a lot more smoother than you thought.

The six key steps you have to know are:

• When is the right time to sell my home?
• Buyer's and seller's markets
• Determining the right price for your home
• Utilizing a CMA
• Strategic pricing
• and Price adjustments

   

We'll start the guide with finding the right time to sell your home.

Ask yourself. When is the right time to sell your home?

Only you know the answer to it. What are the reasons of wanting to sell your home?

Is your desire a want or a need? Do you need to live in a bigger home to better fit your growing family? Or do you need to downgrade now that your children have left your nest? Is a job in another city calling for you to relocate? The reasons can be diverse as colors in the rainbow, and the reasons can be pressing or laid back.

The best thing for you to do is write down on paper what your top 3 reasons are for why you desire to sell your home. If you have a spouse, it's smart to do this activity together so that both of you are on the same page. Many problems occur in real estate transactions because couples hit a road block in the middle of positive progress.

You need to know your reasons of wanting to sell your property because at the end of the day, all homes can be sold. As long as you know your reasons, you'll be able to gauge by what time you want your home to be sold and for how much.

There are 3 markets when it comes to real estate markets. Buyer's, Seller's, and Transitional. I'll start of with Buyers.

Buyer's markets are real estate markets that benefits buyers more than it benefits sellers.

Buyers in this market have more homes to choose from, slow to stable growth in property values, properties with sellers that are motivated to sell, and incentives that are provided by the sellers or builders.

Seller's markets are real estate markets that benefits sellers more than it benefits buyers.

Sellers in this market have less competing home sellers, stable to fast growth in property value, and increased attention and action from buyers.

Transitional markets are real estate markets that are in between buyer's and seller's markets. It can turn to either market fairly quickly; it can be thought of as a board balanced by a stand in the middle. With any stress put on either side, it fall into a new market.

You will know when you're in a transitional market when market analyses produce conflicting results, such as quickly rising appreciation rates on home values along with rising inventory of homes on the market. Or small differences in listing and selling prices with rising days on the market for properties to sell.

What are the key determining factors in real estate markets? They are the 5 following factors:

• Average Sales Price - the average price of homes sold
• Average Listing Price - the average of all listing prices of those homes
• Difference in Listing Price and Sales Price - the average difference of what people list their homes on the market for and what those homes eventually end up selling for
• Average Days On Market - the average length of time that homes are on the market until closing
• Inventory on Hand - how long it would take to sell all of the available homes on the market at the rate of monthly property sales

So you need to know the reason of why you want to sell your home, but you also have to know what kind of market you're going to be selling in.

Sellers who know the answers of why they want to sell and what type of market they're going to sell in, win. You have to position yourself for a victorious sale.

A home that sells is a home with a fair listing price. When you price your home, you can't price it so low that it sells so easily because you'll lose out on money that should've been yours, and also on the other hand, you can't price your home so high that it ends up never being shown to prospective buyers. A selling home has to be priced relative to market value.

The High Price You Pay When You Overprice Your Property

Many people have the notion that homes sell no matter what price you put it at, but that's the furthest from the truth. If you overprice your home, your home will not be shown to prospective customers. And when you drop your price after your home sitting stale on the market, it's likely that your property already has a negative stigma attached to it. When homes sit for long on the market without selling, people always think that there is a problem with the property. And you do not want that.

So what is the right price for your home? The right price for your home is what a buyer think its worth and is willing to pay. Because you have to think about it like this, at the end of the day, you receive the selling price in cash, not the listing price.

When you price your home, a question to ask is this: What's the most important issue at hand? Is it price, or is it time? Do you need to have your home sold by a certain time? Or can you hold out for the best possible price without altering your life much? These factors have to be considered to find out the right price for your home.

A real estate agent can help and guide you when it comes to pricing your home, but ultimately, the decision is yours. The ball is in your court. By knowing which is more important, price or time, it'll be much easier for you to come up with a listing price for your home.

What's a CMA? A CMA is a competitive market analysis, a report that compares one property with similar properties in the neighborhood to determine a listing price or price range for your home.

What kind of properties are found on CMAs? There are 4 types and they are:

• Active Listings - homes currently on the market
• Pending Listings - homes that are under contract, but not successfully closed
• Sold Listings - homes that have successfully closed. You can see the initial listing price of the listing, along with the final closing price
• Expired Listings - homes that did not sell and were taken off the market

CMAs are tools to assist you in coming up with a reasonable sales price for your property. They're not the end-all answer for pricing your home. All homes are different. A property can have an upgraded bathroom or kitchen that will raise the property value, or a home can be in so much need of maintenance that the price of the property has to be lowered substantially. And a home can be in a desired neighborhood next to a beautiful park that will raise the value, and on the other hand it can be next to an industrial factory that lowers the value.

There are many aspects to be considered when pricing your home, but CMAs are a big help in showing you what similar homes are selling for and have sold for. If you need more help in pricing you home, it'd be worthwhile to contact a professional property appraiser.

To get the most exposure and interest for the home you want to sell, you have to price your property strategically. No longer do homebuyers flip through newspapers or print ads for prospective homes to check out, they now search online on REALTOR.com or search on Google for real estate. Back in 2006, the statistic was that more than 70% of homebuyers used the internet in the search of their next home. Being that it's much past that time, the statistic should be more along in the 90% range. As a homeseller, the placement of where your home will be should be one of your top concerns. Homebuyers search for properties in price ranges, in increments of 25,000 up to 100,000 dollars.

Your Home is Not a Value Meal

The way prices work at your grocery store and at McDonald's does not transfer into the real estate industry. Some homesellers and agents have this weird notion that if they price the property with a bunch of 9s or a bunch of 7s, such as $299,000, the property will sell quicker. That's far from being true and let me tell you why.

When a homebuyer searches online for a home, they might search in the price range of 200K to 300k, and your property will show up in the search results. But what if the homebuyer were to search in the 300K to 350K price range? You end up losing out on a whole group of prospective buyers all because your home was short $1,000!

When you're selling your home, it's crucial to get maximum exposure for your property. Every eyeball counts. You might be thinking that I'm making a big deal out of nothing, but let me assure you, the property browser that was abandoned could possibly have been a likely candidate in buying your home. As a home-seller, you cannot discriminate on who sees your property, and you also cannot expect all buyers to come to you. You have to go to them. You have to position yourself properly and present your property to those that are interested.

Sold Price Ranges

Within market reports that are provided by your local REALTOR associations that are provided monthly, you are able to find the statistics of sold price ranges. You can find for yourself which price range was the most actively sold within the report. So let's say that the 200K to 250K price range was the most actively sold with 250 sales per month. We can come to the conclusion that most of the home-buyers are looking at homes at that particular price range. So if you had a home appraised by an appraiser at 198K, you might want to price your property at 200K with an incentive that justifies the price increase. It's also the same if you had a home appraised at 254K... You might want to sacrifice some money on the listing price to be within the most popular price range.

As a home seller, your main goal is to have your home shown to as many prospective home buyers as possible. So here's a question for you.

What is the key factor in getting your property shown?

The answer is price. Price is the first thing that attracts the buyers to see your property. A property's price has to be in the home buyer's price range for them to even entertain the idea of buying your home. Overpriced homes do not sell whatsoever so that idea should be thrown out the window. An overpriced home can gain interest, but an overpriced home will not sell because the lender will not finance the numbers.

If you over price your home, not only will your house not be shown, but it'll make your neighboring homes look like bargains compared to yours. You'll be doing your neighbors a favor but for yourself? Let's not even talk about it.

But as time goes on, it may not even be your fault that your home ends up overpriced. Markets move as time goes on. You might have priced your property when you listed it property, but circumstances can change for your listed home if the market has moved. In this case, you have two options.

1. You can wait for the market to catch up to your listed price, which is perfectly fine if you have no rush in the need to sell your home, but this can take months to even years.

2. You can adjust your property's price

If you have chosen to adjust your price, one thing you have to accept is that you were never going to sell it at your unsuccessful listing price. There's no use in holding that thought that never held any merit. What's done is done, and it's time to move on if your property was overpriced.

When you do adjust your price, you can do so in 2 ways. You can do multiple small price reductions, or you can do a single, substantial price reduction. This is your choice, and each of your choices gets recorded into history because websites will show when and how many times prices have been changed. What I can tell you is that when you do multiple price adjustments, you're going to lengthen the days on the market for your home which will most likely creative a negative stigma on your property. This will lead to prospective buyers fleeing from your home, and it will bring in the bottom-feeding investors who'll aggressively negotiate with you to get a grand deal.

The smartest way to go about price adjustments is to price your property correctly once again, relative to the market, and priced to win. This will have agents and buyers in your city interested in your property, which is what you want and need. It's not selling your home less than what it's worth, but positioning yourself within the market to create interest.

Selling your home is a dynamic process. The market moves and shakes everything within it. It can end up in your favor or it can end up as a loss. Price adjustments are part of the game, and you have to be on top of it to sell your home fast and for top dollar.