Evaluating the Effectiveness of Common Home Selling Strategies

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Once you’ve decided to put your home on the market, of course you want to get the best deal but if you ask for too much people won’t even come and look at your house. How should you handle it? Brentwood Realtor Monte Mohr has valuable insight and answers to some pertinent questions in today’s market.

Bonnie from Nashville wrote in and asked…

“I am putting my home on the market soon but am trying to decide on an asking price. My father says I need to ask at least $10,000 to $20,000 more that I expect to get because the buyer will want to negotiate that much. Is that true?”

With all due respect to Bonnie’s father, things used to be done that way. We used to build in big allowances for negotiations. But many times in today’s world the consumer knows everything about the property before they ever go and look at it; they know what you paid for it, they know what the market analysis looks like and so forth.

It is far better to price your home where you’re willing to sell it because it’s all about getting traffic in the front door. If you can’t get people into your house, you can’t them emotionally attached to the house, and buying a home is an emotional decision. So I will tell anybody to price their home as low as possible because it will be better in the long run.

Skip and Cindy are selling their real estate in Goodlettsville and they had the following question…

“Our home is currently on the market and our agent has suggested that we offer through MLS to all potential buyers our refrigerator, washer and dryer to help it sell. We see you on Channel 4 and want to get your thoughts on the subject before doing so. Will including these items help our home to sell?”

I see this practice a lot; it’s not uncommon for agents to encourage people to do that. But when you include things like closing costs, a refrigerator, or a hot tub, etc. is they become gifts, and people forget about gifts; there is no value extended. Here’s an example of what you could do instead. If you have a $200,000 home and someone offers you $180,000 you can counter back at $195,000 but you include the refrigerator, the washer and dryer, and the lawnmower; things like that where there is an added value extended. It’s the only way to get the value out of the items. If you include them up front, people will forget about them.

Carrie from Franklin submitted this question…

“My agent suggested that I pay a $1,000 bonus to the selling agent and that would help my home sell. Do you believe this is a good idea?”

I see this strategy quite often and I honestly think it becomes a negative strategy because here is what happens…

I’m sitting in my car heading to the next showing and the buyer asks me to look at the listing information on the property. I hand it to them and along the bottom line where the realtor comments appear, it says, “$1,000 bonus for selling agent.” Right away the buyer is thinking, “Whoa! Wait a minute! You’re not going to be objective Monte, because you’ll make a bonus if you sell me this house.”

I think a buyer’s comfort level with the agent’s objectivity and guidance may be compromised in that situation. I feel that $1,000 bonus ends up undermining the potential sale of that property. To be honest, it’s far better to use that $1,000 to lower the asking price, or something else that isn’t going to potentially influence the agent’s opinion of that property. When an agent gets excited about a property just because they’re going to get a bonus, it all seems a little too superficial.

Today’s final question comes from Jim who has a house for sale in Mt. Juliet…

“I have heard you say that in this market you must price your home right or it will not sell. I am concerned that if I price it as low as I probably should that people will make offers even lower than my asking price. What can I do to keep that from happening?”

A lot of people have this concern and I hear it all of the time. Here’s what I have to say about this very common concern…

We CAN’T control what somebody is going to offer for your home, but we CAN control what you will ultimately take for the property.

A few weeks ago I had this same conversation with some other people in Mt. Juliet who wanted to price their home at $209,000 because that’s what they thought they could get for their property. Based on the comps, I didn’t think they would get that much. So they used my “We Sell Homes 4 Free” program where I work for free and they saved 3% on the commission costs. With that savings, they were able to price the home at $199,900 instead of $209,000.

Within 24 hours we had 3 offers and they ended up getting more than asking price. In this case, the fear of loss kicked in and we ended up with people bidding against each other. Fear of loss is much more effective than building in a price for hopeful negotiation. I tell my clients that I’d rather you have 6 offers to say “no” to, than 6 months, or 1-2 years from now, we’re sitting her twiddling our thumbs with nothing to talk about. Get people in the door and create a fear of loss.

We have some great examples of Happy Customers to share…

Carl and Rosanne are like so many of us Baby Boomers who don’t want to do stairs anymore. They wanted to get a one level home. In a short time they were able to sell their home in Franklin and move to Thompson’s Station. They said, “We saved over $6,800 with Monte’s ‘We Sell Homes 4 Free’ program and were able to size down.”

Charles and Maria were in a similar situation in Smyrna, but they had only owned their home for a short time so they didn’t have any equity. Here’s what they have to say about their experience, “By using Monte to purchase our next home, he sold our current home for FREE and saved us almost $9,000!”

How does the “We Sell Homes 4 Free” program work?

I am committed to helping people lower their asking prices in order to sell their homes in today’s market. In order to do that, I’ve lowered the costs associated with selling a home. I waive the entire listing portion of my commission if someone simply promises to buy their next home through me within a reasonable amount of time.

This program is really working. I closed on 18 properties last month and 15-16 this month. I’ve helped a lot of people sell in a tough market because: 1) they’ve been able to lower their costs, 2) so they can lower their price, 3) as a result, they increase the volume of people going to see their home.

If you need help buying or selling a Middle TN home, please contact Monte directly at [phone].

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