| The three major factors in getting a home sold
are the marketing price, motivation of both the buyers and the sellers and the marketing
plan of the real estate agent. The things you can control are the initial marketing price
and your own personal motivation for selling the property. The real estate agent is
responsible for implementing the marketing plan. Take the time to honestly answer and
write down a few notes for the following questions: 1.
Are the benefits of moving important enough to you to price your property at the fair
market value or close to the fair market value?
2. Is your opinion of value based on recent
(within the last 3 to 4 months, six months at the latest) neighborhood sold prices?
3. Does it make sense for you to stay in the property any
longer than you have to stay?
4. Are your financial needs influencing you to want to
price your property higher than the fair market value?
5. Are you willing to seller finance a portion of the
financing for a potential buyer, if necessary?
6. Where are you moving to?
7. How soon do you want to be there?
8. Have you heard about any other properties in your
immediate vicinity that will be coming on the market relatively soon? How does your
property compare to that property?
9. Do you have other properties that need to
be sold?
10. What do you really want to be doing in
the next 6 months? Next 12 months? Where would be the best location for you to be doing
what you want?
In the best case, you can anticipate the following type of
scenario to unfold with respect to the listing, sale and escrow process:
Properly priced properties should receive an offer with 30
days of being listed on the Multiple Listing Service. Generally, an escrow will take 30 to
45 days until the sale is complete. So in this scenario, a seller can expect the sale
process to take about a minimum of 60 days. If we have 1 or 2 price reductions before we
get an accepted offer, the entire process can take about six months to complete.
Consequently, sellers should consider listing their property about 3-6 months before they
absolutely have to move to the new area. |
