Twelve tips to sell your house in a crummy market

Worthwhile reading over the weekend for those of you trying to sell a house right now -- 12 tips, plus a few extras, to sell your house.

The list compiled by Marni Jameson contains some of the usual suspects (Number 2 is "start at the curb", and Number 3 is "Paint!"), and I'll print the entire thing below. What struck me is the tidbit of advice that came after the 12 tips: get real about price.

In an effort to make this unpopular advice more acceptable, San Diego broker Sandy Fish puts it diplomatically. Don't ignore the competition:

"Fish helps clients get realistic about their homes by showing them what else is on the market in the same price range. 'When they see what they're up against, including new homes, that often motivates them to get real about their price and what they should fix up,' Fish says.

Click below to see the top 12 tips.

1. Get the right mindset. Once you list your home, detach yourself.
2. Start at the curb. Look at what people see when they pull up.
3. Paint -- it's money in a can.
4. Focus on the entry.
5. Catch up on maintenance. Get around to the repairs you should have been doing all along.
6. Look for alternatives to expensive or messy upgrades.
7. Consider new appliances.
8. Add some house bling. Make anything metal in your home look new and shiny.
9. Start packing. "The average home would show much better if it had 50% less stuff," real estate broker Fish says.
10. Remove the "you" factor. Sorry but home buyers don't care about your trophies, your hobbies, your taste in art or your photos.
11. Clean house.
12. Banish smells.

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: LA Times

Comments

[E]

1. Lower the price

2. Lower the price

3. Lower the price

4. Lower the price

5. Lower the price

6. Lower the price

7. Lower the price

8. Lower the price

9. Lower the price

10.Lower the price

11.Lower the price

12.Lower the price

The other 12 suggestions are superfluous if you price it at a fantasy level.

[Ace]

These are the 12 things to do to sell your home in a average to good market.

If you look through the MLS at the houses that sold, very few did any of these things. Instead they listed the house for 110% of what they owe. When that didn't work, they stopped paying their mortgages, trashed the place and then let the bank sell it at the right price.

[Laker]

Complete waste of time doing the 1st 12 suggestions.
As this Fish guy is saying Lower the price , don't ignore the competition!
In Flat or Down market, sellers need to have the best price on the street. If there is a property better that is asking less than them, and it is not selling - there is no chance in hell they will sell theirs !!!

check out one street Corbin Ave just north of the 101 fwy that has about 5 houses for sale in a stretch of 0.5 mile. There is one REO house asking $799,000 and another larger, nicer, better house for sell by a private seller (not bank) for $749,000. None of them is selling...
What is the chance the REO at $799,000 will get sold if the other at $749,000 is not selling....
STUPID GREEDY BANK!

[Wilson]

Only one suggestion necessary:
1) Lower your price to 1998 levels.

And because we are about to go head long into a terrible recession, DO NOT account for inflation. Just leave it at the 1998 price.

Then maybe, just maybe, in a couple of years, the home sales market might go back to keeping up with inflation.

[Phyllis Harb]

Add to the list:
expect to be inconvenienced: keep the lights on, drapes open for showing, and keep the home cool and in show condition

[BottomFisher]

number 13: Remove the pit bulls and illegal plants and lighting in the attic space.

[sfvrealestate]

I posted a link to this article on my blog, too. This article offers really good advice; it's stuff I tell my sellers all the time (whether or not they listen is another story). However, the part about the front door is a little overdone; painting it is usually enough.

[E]

1. Get the right mindset.

(no...it's not worth that much...get your head out of the clouds)

2. Start at the curb.

(do you see all the other houses for sale up and down your block? That's your competition. You'd better price your s#ithole better than theirs unless you want it to sit for an eternity)

3. Paint. It's money in a can.

(Brought to you by Home Depot, Lowes and all the other home improvement centers that have lost their asses in the meltdown)

4. Focus on the entry.

(No need to overly dress it up...your house *isn't* that special)

5. Catch up on home maintenance.

(that's right you cheap, lazy a$$ homedebtor...unless you really want to cry at the lowball offers you'll get.

6. Look for alternatives to expensive and messy upgrades.

(hint...lower your damn price!)

7. Consider new appliances.

(Ignore suggestion #6...brought to you by your local failing appliance dealer)

8. Add some house bling.

(Brought to you by the people that sell you useless crap to fill your termite infested shack...and home stagers everywhere!)

9. Start packing.

(That's right...get rid of all that useless crap filling every nook and cranny of your hovel. You should have ignored tip #8)

10. Remove the "you" factor.

Who wants to look at pictures of your fat wife and ugly kids anyways?

11. Clean House

Damn Pig...don't you know the obvious?

12. Banish Smells

Filthy homedebtor. Try taking a shower.

[Tax Forclosures]

Great information you provided to sell the house in crummy market.... Great post! I love how keen your insight is into something most people overlook..

http://www.johnbeckseminar.com

[Steve]

Good basic tips. Espeically important is get rid of the junk/stuff. It amazed my wife and I all the unnecessary juck the ava=erage Amercian has that owns them. Here are to signs you have issues, have a two care garage and can get no cars in the garage, you have your own closet full with additional crap in other closets throughout the house. Less is more.

[Andrew]

Some great advice on preparing to sell you home is also available here: http://healthcheck.weebly.com/

[Rich]

I sold a condo and bought a house earlier this year in the eye of the storm, so I've experienced both the buying and selling side in the middle of the current "crisis". A few tips of a different nature from my perspective:

--maximize your free resources. My realtor did only the basic listing on "industry" resources like MLS because that's what the contract required; I went out and created listings on Zillow, Craigslist, Trulia, local newspapers, and even the local college newspaper. It generated lots of extra traffic.

--pictures matter. take the most arty pictures you can. Move stuff out of the way if it makes a better picture; don't settle for blurry. Buy a better camera if need be. Buy a wideangle lense (film equivalent 28mm or less) to get pictures of the whole room in one shot. Pictures are what bring people in from the web; hire a pro (other than your realtor, who isn't a photographer) if that's what it takes.

--pump your agent for information. A lot of the agents showing my place didn't leave any feedback, so I bugged the realtor to harass them for it. I found out useful factors about why some people weren't interested. If you find out even one thing you can change it might be the biggie, like a linoleum floor you think is okay but everyone else hates.

--curb appeal is big. The first house I made an offer on had some problems but had huge curb appeal; it felt like a good risk. The house I finally bought also had huge curb appeal that made some of the outdated interior stuff seem not so bad. I may be a sucker for curb appeal, but maybe I'm not alone. Mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges may be more important than a lot of interior stuff for some buyers...

--smell tip: I found a hardware store that sold pump sprayers of scented cedar essence. Before every showing I would spray every little corner of the house and crack open a window to let it circulate. That stuff made the house smell fabulous, it was like money incense. Go lightly, in case someone has allergies, but go everywhere, including under toilet lids (!) and kitchen cabinets.

For kitchens, buy a bottle of Goya extra virgin olive oil and leave the cap off. This brand is highly aromatic and will make your buyers think they're in a chef's kitchen...

--check data. You would not believe how many mistakes mortgage brokers, banks, lawyers, and realtors can make on paperwork. Like looking up taxes for the wrong address or getting the wrong down payment info for closing. Trust, but verify, as the gipper said.

--worry. If you love a place but see a rotted beam on the basement ceiling, don't gloss it over. Assume the worst and talk it over with your inspector until HE says it's not big.

[geomath]

If you've cleaned your house (11) and it still smells (12), then you didn't clean it very well.

As to #9, I first suggest going through all of your stuff, deciding what you don't want to take with you, and getting rid of it BEFORE listing the house. Lots of people needlessly spend money on storage bins when they would have had plenty of room if they'd just gotten rid of all the things they ended up getting rid of anyway.

As to #10, unless you have an inordinate amount of pictures plastered all over the walls (or have *really bizarre* artwork up), potential buyers aren't going to pay attention to your photos and artwork. They're buying the house, not your pictures. The important thing is to make sure you don't have so many things on your walls that nobody can see the walls; if people see a wall where every square inch is covered by something, they are going to wonder what you're hiding.

Plus, if you just painted, you want to show off the walls by covering them with as few things as possible.