How to sell your Summit County home in a tough market
If you have a home for sale in Breckenridge, Frisco, Silverthorne, Copper Mountain, Dillon or Keystone, you need to do two things in order to get it sold in today’s market; price it right and make it look pretty! Simple things, but not always done properly.
Pricing today is like walking a tightrope. On the one hand you want a list price as low as you can in order to attract as many Buyers as possible. The lower the price, the bigger the Buyer pool. On the other hand, you need to leave yourself plenty of room to negotiate so that the Buyer will feel like he got a real deal. Better yet, a steal! I find that many Buyers will make an offer of 90% or less of the list price and if a Seller counters with a higher price, just walk away and try someone else. Those Buyers have absolutely no emotional connection to the home or condo at all. They simply want a deal. Sometimes they have to kiss a lot of toads before they find their prince, but they are willing to give it multiple tries and eventually they find one one that works.
Hearing that, a Seller’s first reaction is to want to price much higher than the home is worth to give them room to come down. The issue there is that if it looks like it is overpriced compared to other similar properties, it won’t even get looked at. If no one looks at it, they won’t make an offer on it. The trick is to price so that it fits into the current market, or even looks like a good value compared to the rest, and hope that you can work the offers up to about 95% of list price. Our statistics show that the average sale price has been at or near 95% of list for the last several months, so it is a good place to expect to be. If a Seller gets a low offer and the Buyer won’t move up in price, by turning down the offer, the Seller is gambling that someone else will come along and buy it at the price he or she wants. They are also assuming that the market won’t worsen and prices soften in the meantime. They can either accept a sure thing or gamble that someone else is willing to pay closer to what they want.
Making a property look pretty is more important than ever when a Buyer has a lot from which to choose. If you were handed two boxes, both of the same size and knowing that both have a $100 item inside, and one was a Tiffany box with a turquoise Tiffany bow and the other was a box wrapped in reused gift paper and no bow, which would you take? Of course, the answer is obvious, and it is the same for any home for sale. I am inserting some photos of a condo we have listed in Frisco. It is a studio condo and the lowest priced property in Frisco at $175,000. It has a great location, good amenities and is one of the best units in the building with a private deck, a fireplace, a covered parking space, ski locker and it is south facing. The owner’s sister in law staged it for us, and what a great job she did! She could start a new career doing it for TV shows like “Sell my House!”. I don’t need to tell you which photos are before and which are after.
People often think that staging means bringing in more “stuff” but usually it means taking it away. Decluttering does a lot to make a room look larger. Freshening paint, bedspreads and decor items (no dusty fake flowers) can lighten and brighten a room. Even if you have a Buyer with little emotional attachment, they are still going to pick the prettiest one. Second home owners and /or investors do not want a second home that requires as much work and upkeep as their primary residence. They want it move-in ready, clean and nice….no extra work required. It is worthwhile for a Seller to invest a little money and a lot of sweat in preparing the home to sell, especially in a slow market. Are you an out of town Seller? No problem, we can help. There are staging companies in town. Nancy Ewing at Creative Angle REdesign does a great job. And more than once, I have made trips to Bed Bath and Beyond to replace bedspreads and other items to make listing of mine look better and sell faster.
While marketing will help to get more exposure for a home, even a billboard on I-70 is not going to help if it is not priced properly and/or doesn’t look good. Put your time and investment into those two items and your Realtor will invest in the marketing, knowing that it is a saleable listing.
