Page 47 - Selling secrets 5 18 2023

Reasons for messy homes vary. Some sellers are pack rats,
and their home reflects that behavior because boxes are
piled everywhere, and rooms are stuffed with personal
belongings. This is a considerable obstacle to getting a
good offer. Other sellers have several children, which can
make it challenging to maintain a home that’s always
clean and show-ready. Potential buyers should be alerted
that the seller has vacated the house to show it at its best.
Otherwise, shoppers might interpret a vacant home as
meaning a “motivated seller” who needs to sell quickly.
One comment on a real estate on-line forum tells of making
an offer of $30,000 less than the asking price, believing the
owners might be getting desperate to sell. They were asking
$300,000. The buyer was sold on it anyway and would have
paid more, but “haggling” began well below what was
expected because the buyer read the fact that the home was
un-lived in as a clue to a desperate-to-sell owner.

BUDGETING YOUR “BIG PRODUCTION”

When preparing for sale, think of your home as a movie or
stage play set, arranged precisely for the intended
purpose—to earn you more money on the sale of your
home. Your home-staging expenditure might range
from 1% to 3% of the listing price of a home. On the
other hand, it may result in selling the house for 5%
to 10% more. That would be a $6,000 investment on a
$200,000 home sale, resulting perhaps in an increase of
$20,000 in the sale price.

A study showed that sellers who spent $500 on staging
recovered a whopping 343% of the cost when they sold their
home!

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