Sellers: Steps to Take Before Reducing the Price of Your Home

If your home has been on the market for a few months and you have not had any bids, or worse yet, you have not had many showings, it's time to talk to your Realtor about it.  This is NOT always about the price, although that may be contrary to what most agents will tell you.

In Connecticut, and more specifically, Greater Fairfield County, our MLS system allows agents to input a lot of helpful information for buyers, except it is not always utilized. In today's market, every little but counts. PERIOD- Oh, and by the way, none of these items are "little" when it comes to selling your home.

There are at least ten things on your MLS listing alone that will affect your home's marketability. Make sure that these items are addressed  first BEFORE you reduce the asking price for your home.

It's a BIGGIE!  What does your MLS listing look like?

Unfortunately, you have to be diligent about making sure that your home is represented in its best light on the MLS. The information from your MLS listing is "fed" to Realtor.com,  Yahoo.com Real Estate, Trulia, Zillow, AOL  Real Estate, and scores of other highly visited real estate websites. Incidentally, Yahoo Real Estate has MORE visitors per month then Realtor.com, so it's not only about Realtor owned websites.

What should you look for on your listing?

1. Make sure that the information is correct and complete, and the description does not duplicate any of the fields that are already there. You only have a certain amount of space in that description. If it is redundant and has information that is already provided elsewhere on the listing, that is a GRAVE error on your Realtor's part, and you are losing precious buyers and dollars  because of it.

2. Check that the room measurements and room descriptions are included, too. Do you think that's a minor thing? It's not. Buyers want information, and certain buyers will not even bother giving your home a second thought, much less look at it if they don't have any idea that the living room (for example) is big enough to hold certain furniture that they have and love.  Does the living room have hardwood floors, or sliders to a deck? If it's not on your listing,  the buyers may assume that you have carpet or linoleum, or something else rather than hardwood.

Why would a Realtor omit that? Sheer unprofessionalism, laziness or both, in my opinion. Does your master bedroom have its own bath? The listing better read that it does.  If your bath has a whirlpool or steam shower, that should be there, too. These things may sound VERY basic to you, however I can tell you with clarity that whether your home is listed for $500,000 or Five Million, there are glaring marketing errors to the tune of about 86 percent. That's right. Eighty six percent.  For the listings that I see, I calculated the percentage of OBVIOUS MARKETING ERRORS  to be 86%. I cannot believe the number is that high, and the lowest error rate that I have seen was 79 percent.  There is a very good chance that your home is in the majority, SO LOOK AT YOUR LISTING!

3. Are the taxes correct? Is the mill rate correct?  Is the lot size correct?

4.Another BIGGIE: Is the square footage of your home correct? If your agent estimated the square footage, included the basement in the actual square footage or rounded the square footage up to an even number,  IT WILL HURT YOUR HOME'S MARKETABILITY.  Yes, I am yelling here. I see it done all the time. Let me tell you why it's a very bad idea to fool around with the square footage as recorded in the town's Assessor's records

5. If you  or your agent estimates the square footage, and the number is incorrect, you may actually be sued. There is case law that I am aware of, on this where a buyer demanded a refund on the purchase based upon what he THOUGHT he bought, which turns out is not what he bought at all. I do not remember the square footages in this judgement. I do remember that the seller had to refund  "x" amount of dollars, and that was calculated upon the sales price of the home  for the square footage as presented in the listing, and then adjusted downward based upon that number to the actual square footage of the home. The agent was sued for misrepresentation  as well.   YOU ARE LIABLE FOR YOUR MLS LISTING, TOO.

6.Want to include the finished area in your basement in the MLS Listing in the main square footage section?  Not a good idea. Here's why: Let's say your home is 3,020 square feet. Your finished basement area adds another 1260 square feet. Of course that should be mentioned in the listing, but not in the main field for square footage. Your home would appear to be 4,180 square feet, and it would blatantly obvious to a buyer had a minimum square footage requirement. Trust me, they are not buying your home, when you started out with "a lie" on the square footage.  Your home may also appear  that is too big for someone who would otherwise look at it, and maybe not even bother too much with a finished lower level.  All it takes is one obvious untruth on your listing, and everything else falls under scrutiny, and  concern. Don't do it.

7. Rounding up square footage of your home? I tell my buyers to be on the lookout for any home that's listed as having square footage with an even number.
For example- 2,500 square feet, 4,000 square feet, etc.That tells me that I cannot trust the rest of the information to be as accurate.  If the home is 2,476 square feet. Say so. Don't oversell it or misrepresent it.  Market the home for what it is. By the way, I have only encountered ONE house in 26+ years of being in the business that had an even number of square feet. With the owners permission I added one square foot to the actual number so it did not look like it was estimated or rounded up. We also disclosed that as well.

8. Misrepresenting the condition of a home: The surest way turn a buyer off is to have the listing say that it's in mint condition when it's not absolutely in mint condition. It can be in fairly good condition but it's not mint, so don't market it that way.  C'mon agents. You know better than that. When a house needs repair or cosmetics, you can soft sell it, but don't go the other way around and make it wonderful when it's not.  I'm sorry, but Sellers, you're guilty here too, if you have not seen your listing and okayed it.  You know whether or not your home is in mint condition.  The buyer that  thinks that your home is in perfect condition  when they get to your home is even more disappointed. Just remember how you felt when you were looking at homes and went to a house based upon its purported move-in or mint condition. What did you think? You didn't buy that house, did you? Did you wonderwhat standards that listing agent had if they truly felt that this particular home was in mint condition? You get the drift

9. Public Schools Information: Make sure your listing has the public school information for your home. Buyers and agents alike search upon that criteria. If you see BOE or PBOE in the elementary, middle or high school data fields on your listing,  that's more  laziness on your agents part. BOE is a lot easier for some agents to type than making a call to the superintendents office to find out which public schools children would attend if they live at your address. For the record, BOE stands for Board of Education, and PBOE stands for Per Board of Education.

10. Internet Remarks:  This may not be evident in the MLS printout sheet of your home. Where it will be seen is on the multiple listing aggregator sites like Realtor.com, Yahoo.com Real Estate, Trulia, Zillow, AOL  Real Estate and others.  If your agent did not specifically enter remarks in this portion of the listing, then your  listing will not have any descriptive remarks on any of these sites.

You shouldn't even have to check that your Realtor is doing things the proper way, so most sellers never even bother to do so. You would be surprised at the lack of a thorough job  coming from a recommended agent. And here's a good one- The agent that seems to have a lot of listings is not necessarily the best. All of those listings haven't sold and are still on the market. Think about it.

If you want the best representation with a better than average sales to list price ratio and shorter time on market. Call me. I'll get your home sold, and do it the right way

Tweet