This is a tale of two houses…

one home sold like a hot potato and the other one died on the vine. They are actual homes but the locations have been hidden to protect the current homeowners.

From the surface, this never should have happened. We are in THE HOTTEST market any local Real Estate Professional has seen in the last 3 decades. The shortage of available homes is unbelievable. Homes that never receive an offer, while pretty common just a few short years ago, are the rare exception in the present market state.

In a moment, we’ll get to the real reason one home was “the life of the party” while the other was “the wallflower” that got overlooked…

But first lets take a look at  how similar these two homes really are…(they could be twins!)

How similar are they? You be the judge:

• They both have 3 bedrooms and 2 baths
• They both have a 2 car attached garage
• They were build about the same time
• They are both ranch style homes
• They both have formal living rooms and family rooms
• They both have fireplaces.
• They are both about the same size.
• They are both in a desirable neighborhood and in great condition
• Same school district, same distance to amenities…even the same builder!

But what drives a buyer to pick one home  over another?

What are the reasons homes sell?…there are only two.

Price and Exposure!!

With today’s technology, about any Realtor with a computer &  internet access (basically all of us)  can push out their listings with little effort to over 900 websites with a just a quick click. This means within 24 hours, anyone searching for a home could have found these listing on Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com… or any of the 897 other possible real estate sites.

If these listings met the criteria of a home buyer’s saved search, the information would have been served up to their Inbox!

But let’s dig a little deeper…

The first home sold within 10 hours. It didn’t even get a chance to populate around the web. By the time the major portals even heard about this home, it was tied up in a great little cash contract at over list price…all within the first 10 hours and after 7 showings.

No, it wasn’t about exposure. The second house received WAY more exposure than the first, and it failed to attract a buyer.

It could have only been…the price!!

Pricing a home is not an exact science. No one can predict precisely how much a buyer will be willing to pay for a given home.

But these homes were $24,900 apart!! What buyer in their right mind would pay almost $25,000 more for a home so similar they could have been separated at birth! 🙂

And the really sad part? Buyers who may have considered the overpriced home probably never even saw it. They were searching for a home that best fits their criteria IN THE APPROPRIATE PRICE-RANGE. 

The buyers that DID see the overpriced home had better choices to consider…and the poor over-priced-but-still-very-nice home just couldn’t measure up. It got passed over.

Passed over again…and again…and again until it became an unappealing “brown banana” and fell off the market.

As a seller, the correct pricing strategy is the most important decision you can make..

And you need someone with experience and the right tools to guide you through the process. A full 90% of successful marketing  is accomplished when you determine your list price.

Miss is by more than 5-7% and your chances of a successful sale at an acceptable price drop dramatically. Your stress is through the roof (no pun intended). You’ve sabotage your own sale!

Don’t leave this import decision to an unskilled (or worse, an uncaring) agent who may just want to get their name “out there”. You’ll be left discouraged, stressed and wondering what went wrong.

Contact us today or give us a call @ 765-623-9711.

• We’ll help guide you to the appropriate market price…a price that fits your time-frame.
• You’ll see bottom line sales prices for homes like yours, your current competition, and homes to which the market has spoken a firm “NO”.
• You’ll know what you can expect to walk-away with after the sale.
• We’ll determine together if this is the best time for you to sell.

There’s no charge! It’s just part of the great service we offer.