Selling a Home in a Down Market

If you’re looking to sell your house in a cooling real estate market, you’re going to have to enhance its’ attractiveness as best as you can to garner the best price available. Here are some tips on how you can go about doing that.

Improve its Look

Improving your home’s aesthetics is one of the most important upgrades that you can do to your house. You want to attract as much attention to your house as possible while also making it look better than your neighbors. Consider some upgrades on your windows, doors, or even the backyard. When a prospective buyer comes into your home, they’ll want to feel as comfortable as possible – especially if you own a highly-valued property. If you want to take it a step further, you can use colors and design patterns that appeal to the widest audience.

Renovate

The renovations and major overhaul that you could potentially do on your house might sound appealing, but be sure that you don’t “over-improve” it. The amount that you’re about to invest in all these upgrades might not even get a solid return back. In other words, you might be “gifting” a newly remodeled bathroom to the new buyer if things don’t work out. In your home’s listing information, it’s important to include all of the custom features that you believe buyers will like. For example, if you have hardwood floors and custom ceiling fans that were just added, include it so it can give quite possibly give you an edge over other houses.

Optional: Hire a Stager

You have the option of hiring a stager to help design your space. These professionals understand how furniture should be laid out and will place it in an appropriate fashion to maximize your ROI. Many people believe that stagers raise the value of a home and this is sometimes true. While it’s not a significant rise in value, it still adds more to the entire listing price.

Fair Value

Price your home fairly in order for it to garner interest. By over valuing your home, you can ultimately hurt your chances of it being sold and even worse, it can linger on the market for long periods of time.

The Bottom Line

If you want your home to sell in a down market, you’re going to have to prepare it as best as you can. It will be quite tedious, but once you’ve sold it for a reasonable price, a huge weight will be lifted off of your shoulders. A down housing market can be underwhelming. Utilize every strategy that you can to get a significant edge.