Selling Homes Fast & For Top Dollar: The Complete How-To Guide

You might be asking yourself, "when is the right time to sell my home?"

I don't want to be pulling your leg but only you know the answer to that question. There's a better question you could be asking which is "why do I want to sell my home?"

* Is it a want or is it a need?
* Wanting to live in a bigger home?
* Maybe live in a new location?
* Or do you need to relocate because of a new job?
* Or unfortunately need to because a divorce or a foreclosure?

You need to know your reasons before you go any further. So please write down your top 3 reasons of wanting/needing to sell, although having 1 reason might be all that you need.

And if you have a spouse, make sure that both of your reasons of wanting to sell at least match. If they don't, you have to find a middle ground that both of you can live with, or it'll cause problems down the road when you're selling your home. And when you're in the process of selling, those problems aren't things that you'd really want to be dealing with. You can even lose the opportunity to sell if both partners aren't on the same page with each other at closing.

You need to know your reasons of wanting to sell. Because at the end of the day, all homes can be sold, but when you know your reasons, you'll be able to gauge by when do you want your home sold for and for how much.

The Markets of Real Estate

Buyer's Market-a real estate market benefiting buyers more than sellers.

* Many homes for buyers to choose from
* Slow to stable growth in property value
* Motivated sellers
* Incentives provided by sellers or builders, such as mortgage rate buydowns and home warranties

Seller's Market-a real estate market benefiting sellers more than buyers.

* Less homes for buyers to choose from
* Stable to fast growth in property value
* Sellers holding out for top dollar
* Increased attention and action from buyers

And the next market isn't one that's widely known by the public, and it's called:

Transitional Market-a real estate market in between a buyer's and seller's market. It can turn into a buyer's or seller's market in a very short period of time. Think of it as a board teetering on a point. Just with any slight changes, it will tip over. How do you know when it's a transitional market? It's when market analyses produce conflicting results, such as:

* Rising appreciation on home values with rising inventory of homes
* Small difference in listing and selling prices, along with rising average DOM

But now the question is, how are the markets determined? What are the key determining factors of real estate markets? They are the 5 following:

* Average Sales Price - the average price of all homes sold
* Average Listing Price - the average of all listing prices of those homes
* Difference in Average Listing Price and Sales Price - the average difference of what people list their homes for and what those homes eventually sell for
* Average Days on Market - the average length of time that homes are on the market until closing
* Inventory on Hand - how long it would take to sell all of the available homes on the market at the current rate of homes closing

So when you're selling your home, not only do you need to know your reasons of why you want to sell, but you also have to know the Tucson real estate market, if it's a buyer's, seller's, or a transitional market.

Proactive sellers win. So if you know the market, you'll be able to position your home to sell in your time frame and price range.

Determining The Right Price for Your Home

When you price your home, you don't want to price your home so low that it sells so easily and that you miss out money that you could've earned. Nor do you want to price your property so high that it ends up not even being shown. When it comes to pricing your home, you have to price it relative to the market.

The High Price You Pay When You Overprice Your Home

First of all, your home will not be shown. And when you drop your price after no one sees it, it's likely that your property will have a negative stigma attached to it. It'll have sat on the market for so long people will wonder to themselves, "What's wrong with that home? Why doesn't it sell?" So you'll just end up having to continue to drop your price on your home. And you do not want that.

You also might have a dream to overprice your home and that someone will magically appear and want to buy your home. Or that the market will catch up to your overpriced property. I have to pop your bubble. That just will never happen. And if someone were to come to you and want to purchase your home, when it comes to appraisals and getting a loan to purchase your property, the banks will not finance an overpriced property. Give up those dreams because those dreams have sellers losing big time.

So what is the right price for your home? Unfortunately, it's not what you think it is. The right price for your home is what a buyer thinks that it's worth and is willing to pay. Because think about it, at the end of the day, you receive the selling price in cash, not the listing price.

And when you price your home, a question to ask yourself is this: What's more important? Price or time? Do you need to sell your home in a certain time frame? Or can you hold onto your property and hold out for the best possible price. These all have to be taken into consideration.

A real estate agent can help and guide you when it comes to pricing your home. But ultimately, the pricing responsibility for your home is on you. If you know which out of price or time, it'll be much easier for you to determine a winning sales price.

Utilizing A CMA

What is a CMA? It's a competitive market analysis. A report that compares a specific home with similar homes in the neighborhood to help determine a listing price or price range for your home.

What kind of properties are found on the CMAs? There are 4 types of listings, and they are:

* Active Listings - Homes currently on the market
* Pending Listings - Homes that are under contract, but not successfully closed
* Sold Listings - Homes that have closed. You can see the initial listing price, and the closing sales price
* Expired Listings - Homes that did not sell and were taken off the market

CMAs are to be used as tools. They're to be used as guides in pricing your home. They're not the end-all answer for it. All homes are different. A home can have an upgraded kitchen and bathroom which will raise the property value. Or a home can be in so much need of maintenance that the price comes down. Or a home can be in a desired neighborhood close to a beautiful park. And on the other hand it can be next to an industrial factory pumping out pollutants all day.

There are many aspects that are to be considered when pricing your home, but CMAs are a big help in showing you what similar homes around you are selling for and have sold for. If you need more help in pricing your home, to get as precise and accurate as you can get, it'd be worthwhile to contact a professional property appraiser.

Strategic Pricing

To get the most exposure and interest for the home that you want to sell, you have to strategically price it. No longer do homebuyers flip through newspapers and print ads for their next home, they now search online on REALTOR.com and other real estate websites. Back in 2006, the statistic was that more than 70% of homebuyers used the internet in their search for their next home, and I'm pretty much betting that that statistic is much closer to the 90% range today. So as a homeseller, the placement of where your home will be should be one of your top concerns. Homebuyers search for properties in price ranges, be it in increments of $25,000 up to $100,000.

Your Home is Not a Hamburger!

The way prices work in the supermarkets and your favorite fast food restaurants do not work in the real estate industry. Some homesellers and agents have a knack to price their properties with a bunch of 9's in the mix, such as $299,000. Does that price entice you? Do you think pricing a home like that is a smart move?

That's not a smart home pricing practice, and let me tell you why. When a homebuyer searches online from the price range of 200K to 300K, yeah, your home is going to show up in the search results. But what if a homebuyer were to search in the 300K to 350K price range? You end up abandoning a whole group of prospective buyers of your next home all because $1,000!

When you're selling your home, it's crucial to get maximum exposure for your property. You might be thinking, "ah, big deal, Ron," but let me assure you, the property browser that was abandoned could possibly have been a likely candidate in buying your home. As a homeseller, you cannot discriminate on who sees your property, and also, you cannot expect all buyers to come to you. You have to position yourself properly and present yourself to all who are interested.

Sold Price Ranges

Within the market reports that the Tucson Association of REALTORs provides every month, you are able to find the statistics of sold price ranges. You can find for yourself which price range was the most actively sold within the month of the report you are looking into. So let's say that the 200K to 250K price range is the most actively sold, with 250 sales per month. We can come to conclusion that most of the Tucson homebuyers are looking into homes within that price range. So if you had a home that was appraised at 198K, it might be smart to upgrade your property or offer an incentive to justify your price increase to enter in the popular price range of 200K-250K. And it's the same situation if you had a home appraised for 254K%u2026 If you need your home sold, you might want to sacrifice some of your home's price to be within the most popular price range.

Price Adjustments

As a home seller, your main goal is to have your home shown to as many prospective home buyers as possible. So here's a question for you%u2026

What is the key factor in getting your home shown?

The answer is PRICE, and that's price in all capital letters. Price is the the first thing that buyers have to consider when buying a home because they can only buy what they can afford; and especially in today's market, buying an overpriced property will not be allowed by the lender. So you can get interest in your home, in turn getting your hopes up for the time being, but when the time comes for closing, you'll be falling back into despair because the equation just didn't add up. Overpriced homes just will not sell.

And if you overprice your home, not only will you not have your home not shown, but you'll make your neighboring homes look like bargains compared to yours. You'll be doing your neighbors a favor in this case, and at the end, you're left empty-handed.

As time goes on, it may not even be your fault that your home ends up overpriced. You might've priced your home relative to the market and competively when you first listed, but with market changes, it could end on the overpriced side of the price spectrum. At that point, you have two options.

Your Two Options

1. You can wait for the market to catch up to your listed price, which is perfectly fine to do but you have to understand and accept that this may take months and even years. The choice is yours.

2. Or you can adjust your price.

If you've chosen to adjust your price, one thing you have to accept is that you were never going to attain your unsuccessful listing price. So after adjusting, you can't tell yourself, "But I could've sold it for $20,000 more!" Not only will you turn more bitter and angry if you feel that way, but really, you'll be getting mad at things that never were going to be. What's done is done, and it's time to move on if your home was overpriced.

When you do adjust price, you can do so in two ways: You can do multiple small price reductions or you can do one substantial price reduction. Once again, it's your choice. What I can tell you when you do multiple price adjustments is that you're going to lengthen the days on the market for your home which will most likely create a negative stigma on your property, and this will only lead to buyers who'll aggressively negotiate with you to get themselves a deal. Doing this method will likely have you losing at the end of it all.

Or you can do it the smart way and price your property correctly, relative to the market, and priced to win. This will have agents and buyers interested in your property, which is what you ultimately want and need. It's not selling your home for less than what it's worth, but positioning yourself in the market to create interest and activity.

Selling your home is a dynamic process. The market moves and shakes everything within it up, which can end up in your favor and sometimes as your loss. Price adjustments are just a part of the process in selling your home fast and for top dollar.