What is Your Home Worth?
The short answer is: Your home is worth what some else is willing to pay you for it, at a price which you willing to sell for. Every home has a Comparable Market Value that can be derived by comparing it to homes sold recently, and close by. Properly presented, this should be a range that swings from about %15 below the average of homes recently sold, to as much %20 above.
Your next question should be: How Can I Market My Home In a Way that Maximizes My Value (reaches into the %20 above category)? The answer is exactly the same answer that you would have if you were selling a boat, a car, a stereo system or any other item that you could potentially want to sell. INCREASE DEMAND. So, how do you increase demand? You can do it in a variety of ways:
Maximizing Demand
Maximize Your Exposure: Reach the largest potential pool of buyers you can reach into. The more folks who know about your home being for sale, the more potential for finding the right buyer.
Target Your Message: You may have a tremendous home, but you only get on average about two to three seconds to present it (via any popular form of advertising, including internet home search engines) and attract attention. If you don't have the buyers attention in that time span, they have moved onto the next potential candidate.
Target Your Campaign: Your home will attract a fairly specific group of individuals, or perhaps two or three different groups. Be sure your language and message reach deep into these groups. Trying to attract the wrong audience with broad sweeping language or terms is a waste of your time, effort and money.
Maximize Your Presentation: Buyers will make their first impression of your home from the street as they pull up. At any point during their visit, if they see something that they do not like the visit is over and they tend to move on. Some are looking for homes they can "fix-up", but they expect price concessions. Take some time to look into our articles about home presentation in our Library section for sellers.
Choose Effective Partners to Assist You: Knowledge about your neighborhood is important; knowledge about how to market it is even more important. Choose partners (agents, advertising opportunities) who can effectively get the message out and maximize your exposure. Pay particular attention to their assessments of both your home and the potential market you can reach into. Placing your home into a listing service for Realtor's is a start, but lack of focus for all the items above will reduce effectiveness.
Reaching Your Best Market
Successful marketing of homes within the Inland Empire requires careful planning to achieve best results.
There is a window of time during which your home will gain maximum exposure from the Real Estate agents in this area, and it will take place in the first week or two that your home is listed. No agent can duplicate this exposure through advertising of any kind. There are currently somewhere in excess of 15,000 Real Estate Agents of record in this area and they represent the strongest and best exposure you will ever get. Unfortunately, you will get one good chance at the attention of any that are interested in homes in your area.
Continuing efforts at advertising and promoting a home are very important, but this initial period of time can be critical. Effective marketing to agents is key. By maximizing your efforts in this regard you end up leveraging a tremendous sales force to gain exposure for potential buyers of your home. To get a sense of how important this can be, take a moment to look at the chart below which categorizes how buyers found their homes last year:
Attracting Buyers Agents
The greatest opportunity anyone selling a home will have, comes through the concentration of interest brought about by exposure to Real Estate Agents. Concentration of interest contributes to demand for your specific property, and demand keeps your home value high. If the agents in your area don't find the package your home presents attractive (pricing, presentation, terms), the vast majority will skip over your property when presenting their home buyers with candidates to consider.
Agents are very savvy about pricing of homes, due to the tremendous amount of research they must do to stay on top of this market. In fact they are the most educated buyers out there, and have to be to properly represent their clients. Most check the new listings daily. Attractive, fairly priced homes will be noted, and forwarded for consideration to their potential buyers.
If you home goes into the Market priced too low, you don't realize the maximum potential financial gain. Homes priced too high get little to no calls and very poor offers (offers often to come from folks trying to take advantage of the lack of attention).
How To Get Started
You can start this process by making yourself aware of what homes in your area are being listed for. While this is a poor market indicator, it is a start.
We can provide you with data about homes that have recently sold in your area, as well as basic commons that can be used to derive a fair price for your home. This data is best evaluated in the context of current market trends and existing demand.
We call this report a Comparable Market Analysis (or CMA) and it is one of the services we provide our clients without obligation or cost.
Reports also include the relevant Tax and Public records that potential buyers will have access to when considering your home.
We look forward to hearing from you. Please contact Steve Graham (Armstrong Realty) at (951) 833-5818.