Nevermind that - why am I suddenly getting all of these calls from real estate agents??
It's frustrating, isn't it? Your listing has expired on the Multiple Listing System (MLS). Not only do you have to now figure out the smartest next move toward selling your home; you are getting tons of calls and unwanted mail from local real estate agents. How fun! If only you'd gotten that kind of response from buyers when the home was still listed for sale, then you wouldn't have to go through all of this! The good news is that the reasons are usually few as to why a home does not sell. There are many potential causes to a home sitting on the market for a long time only to see the listing expire, but it usually tends to be any or all of the three reasons below. In fact, lots of times the rest of the effort to sell the home was fine, but these three biggies were overlooked or not done correctly. We'll go over those reasons next, but the important thing to remember is that selling real estate requires persistence and staying motivated! If it was easy, everyone else would be doing it too, right? Hang in there, we can help with the Premier Midtown "Three P's" of effectively listing your home.
Okay, so what went wrong?
It's best to think of each of these potential reasons for your home not selling from the buyer's perspective as much as possible. It all clicks into place when you consider how you would have viewed your home listing as a home shopper who didn't know the home the way that you do.
1. The Pictures (as in quality, as well as composition - or the staging of the home)
If you were looking for a home and had a ton of options coming at you from Zillow, your Realtor, Craigslist, etc. then just compare the home shopping experience to browsing on Amazon, or even using an online dating app, as funny as it seems. You give a few seconds of attention to the pictures/profiles you like, and quickly disregard all of the rest. The ones you really like, you'll email about or even decide right there are your final selections, and stop looking at other choices. It's the cruel nature of the "internet shopping" experience, but that's how it works - especially with limited time to make an important decision based on so many similar looking options! As the seller, it is hardest to psychologically adjust to look objectively at how your home is depicted in photos. After all, you've lived at that home for years, maybe, so you know that the kitchen (though shown in a dark, grainy, titled picture in this example) has been the site of many great times and you just know someone else will love it like you did! You have the history and know the context of the home, so it takes extra effort to look at a picture of your home and decide whether it looks terrible, regardless of the home itself being wonderful. Image is everything in online marketing and shoppers have to be shallow and quick to say "yes" or "no" to an option due to time constraints, so having stellar marketing images will help make sure that the pictures are not working against you in selling the home. As for getting the pictures, having a savvy real estate brokerage like Premier Midtown on your side is the best way to get marketing photos that will produce results. We only use professional photographers with real estate knowledge to decide from their own objective standpoint how best to show your home to potential buyers, and at no extra cost to our client, of course.
2. The Price (as in too high, as well as lack of willingness to adapt the price as needed)
This one is pretty easy to comprehend from the buyer's perspective, also. If they have multiple options and their goal is to get the best house they can for the lowest price possible, what do you think they're going to do if they don't like the price range of your listing? (Hint: they usually won't tell you; they simply vote by not calling on the listing!) It is crucial to have a realistic outlook on pricing, as well as full understanding of how competing properties are priced (meaning homes that have the same room count, amenities, general location, and other similar traits, making them as relevant a comparison as you can find). Therefore, as the seller, you must be ready to make adjustments to price as needed (this can be a good thing too, as a rising market can allow for increasing the asking price, too - just don't fall into the trap of going too high, or holding out for a higher price if you have a buyer today!) We say this only because we've seen how some sellers will decide not to budge on their asking price, regardless of what market data and comparable sale analyses show at the time. The result with that level of stubbornness is no sale. The longer the home stays on the MLS at an unattractive price, the fewer buyers' agents will bother calling to make an offer, also, thus compounding the problem. The takeaway: adaptability in pricing, as well as using a solid listing agent (yes, like Premier Midtown!) who will keep you up to speed each day on all things related to pricing. Not just any price to sell the house right way, but a final closing price that has been finely customized for each transaction to ensure the seller gets as much as they can from selling their home.
3. The Presence (as in marketing efforts made, as well as effectiveness of those efforts)
Perhaps a misunderstood component of selling real estate, marketing is more than just listing your home on the MLS, maybe on Zillow, and in various forms of print media (which is a declining way to get results, in the smart phone era). How innovative was your listing agent in planning a strategy to sell your home? These days, just about everyone carries a smart phone and uses the internet, email, and social media. In fact, we ought to write a non-real estate related blog about the phenomena seen since the '90s in how consumers have adjusted to the "Too Much Information" Era. You could even look at how it has affected your own way of picking and using information, if you wanted. Consider the average person with a smart phone and many social media, news, and other subscription services that send push notifications, newsletters, and updates all day long. Then actual emails from friends, family, work, etcetera, etcetera! We simply don't have time to go through all of the stuff we get in our inboxes all day, nor do we have time to look at the millions of cool websites out there which all offer similar information or services. This level of information abundance has required us as information consumers to have tunnel-vision, so to speak, in that we only will notice and actually read through things that have gotten through our subconscious mental barrier that blocks out information we find less important. This occurs even if that lightning fast verdict we make could be cutting good information out of our awareness! How to avoid that involves delivery more than content. Now compare this to how your listing agent crafted your home listing's presence, in terms of marketing. Did they use run-of-the-mill, cookie-cutter methods to find you a qualified buyer? What did they do which you might say was different? That's really what it's all about in this day and age; being effectively different in order to cut through the clutter out there! As a simple example: if you were standing outside of a big corral looking at a herd of 100 bison, and only a few were standing far from the crowd, you'd probably at least notice them, right? Our point exactly: one small presence can stand out from that of many others if it perceived as unique - otherwise, the first response is to see just the crowd, in which individuals loses their presence. There's more to it all than that, but we will say that Premier Midtown has proven marketing talent which has allowed us lots of success for our clients using the lowest-cost methods applicable. This allows us to save you money in the selling process, and get you results.
After these big three reasons why listings expire, there are other possibilities like a lack of accurate data, poor communication across the board, or even things beyond a seller's control, like a house down the street having burned down recently. It could even have been that your home simply was on the MLS too long without any updates made to keep the listing fresh (to envision that, compare it to when you go shopping: if one day you saw a can of fruit by itself and marked "on sale," and then you came back a week later to find that it was still there for the same price - what would you think about that?) There are plenty of other "why it expired" reasons we can discuss with you as your listing agent, but the key to all of this is to realize that selling real estate can be challenging, and will take commitment from the seller to see the process through. If you go into the selling process prepared to prevent the above issues from happening, and ready to keep a positive and patient outlook, then the rest is up to your listing agent and you'll almost be certain to sell your home - even if you've already tried before!
Premier Midtown Realty: "Your Partners in Midtown Sacramento & Central Valley Real Estate!"
Ryan Wagner, California Real Estate Broker. CA BRE license # 01968073.
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