There’s nothing wrong with entering the Central Texas real estate selling market with optimism. But if you’ve been trying to sell your home for a while without much traction or interest from buyers, your optimism might be waning.
Sitting on a home that doesn’t sell is discouraging. Fortunately, there are strategies that smart real estate agents use to pique the interest of home-shoppers. You can implement these tricks as a homeowner to gain more sales momentum for your property.
The truth is, there are several common sale-slowing factors that might be at play in your listing. Here are the three that we find exceptionally common, listed as the solutions you can use to get your Central Texas property out of its silent rut.
1) Make a prospective buyer feel like they’re stepping into their own home
A key ingredient to home salesmanship is making a property feel like it already belongs to the prospective buyer. That means getting rid of any obvious clues that your family lives in the home.
Before a real estate agent visits the house, remove all your family photos from desks and dressers. This eliminates any clue that someone else occupies the home. It can seem like a silly detail, but the effects go a long way.
Also, make mirrors commonplace. This isn’t some corny gimmick to help shoppers literally see themselves in your home. Instead, the additional mirrors help small rooms in your house feel larger, and dark rooms appear brighter.
Declutter the house! No one wants to envision their life as one of disorganization. By tidying up your home and finding an alternative place to store excess toys, tools, and decorations, you provide a more comfortable environment for real estate shoppers.
As you remove extra items, avoid storing excess clutter in your closets. Most families will be looking for ample storage space, and if a closet appears crowded then the family may perceive that as a sign of insufficient storage capacity.
2) Give your home the attention it needs to stand out
Many homeowners find it a challenge to find the motivation it takes to spend time and money on repairs for a home they are soon to leave. To stand out and highlight your home as the kind of property that prompts high offers, you should try to go the extra mile with renovations.
Give your home a freshening up. Often the simplest updates can make a substantial aesthetic change that will catch the interest of Central Texas home buyers.
Start with the simple things.
- Paint your walls. Adding to your home a fresh coat of paint can work wonders for brightening up the interior and exterior of your home.
- Replace old, easily-interchangeable features of the home. This can mean changing your fans, installing news doors, replacing old faucets, taking down curtains, and changing old lights. A few low-cost fixes can quickly sharpen the appearance of the interior of your home.
- Give your yard its due attention. You only have one chance at a first impression. Make sure that when a family pulls up to your home they experience the comfort of a neatly trimmed yard, and beautiful, weed-free flower bed (if you have one). Commit a weekend to bringing your yard back to magnificence, or pay your yard-keeping company to take on that extra labor.
- Focus on your home’s hardware. Squeaky doors, windows that need an unusual amount of force to open, and old utilities like a leaky washer or antiquated microwave can detract from an otherwise great home. Don’t let that attention be stolen from the potential selling cost of your property. Pull out the WD-40, and replace all that needs replacing.
Be aware, not all renovations are low cost. Sometimes the repairs necessary to sell your home can cost your family a little more up front. When you consult with your real estate agent, ask him or her about damages or aspects of your home that may be chasing prospective buyers away before you get them to the bargaining table.
For another comprehensive list of ways to improve your home, check out our other JB Goodwin blog that gives 10 tips for selling your Austin home.
3) Use top-tier marketing practices
Occasionally a homeowner gets lucky. He or she puts their home on the market with very little work, and by the next weekend that home is sold. If you’ve gotten to this point in the blog, however, this might not have been your experience to date.
The next step is to beef up your marketing tactics. Here are a few marketing basics that go a long way toward getting interested buyers to pursue your Central Texas property:
- Provide the best possible photos. If you don’t own a high-definition camera, consider borrowing, renting, or commissioning someone to shoot the interior and exterior of your home. Low quality and/or poorly lit images can be a huge deterrent for eager buyers. Do your best to take pictures that capture whole rooms in a single picture, instead of a corner by corner. If you zoom in too far, your home appears much smaller to those browsing photos online. Also, avoid uploading duplicate images. Be sure to upload between 10-15 images to provide a holistic view of the highlights of the entire property. High def, professional photos will quickly gather the browsing attention of home buyers.
- Tell your home’s story. Photos and objective details of a home won’t usually help your home to stand out: “2bd, 1bath, single story” descriptions are a dime a dozen. Sharpen the persuasiveness of your marketing by practicing feature-driven copywriting salesmanship. Talk up what makes your home unique, and then ask your most talented editing friend to read over what you wrote. They can help you to avoid typos and make sure your message is clear. Tell a story that makes a house sound more like a home.
- Hire a quality real estate agent. Homes don’t sell themselves. To land a strong sale, it helps to have an effective agent working with your family every step of the way. Do your research. Only work with a firm and agent whose reputation guarantees their proficiency.
If you’re in the market to sell your Central Texas home, a JB Goodwin real estate agent is the proactive consultant you need. We put your family first. Our professional marketing, local selling expertise, and knowledge of the Central Texas trends will help you secure the best deal for your property. We look forward to helping you get top dollar for your home!
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