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Creative sellers’ tactics

By Melissa Wirkus

If you are one of the millions of people who are looking to sell their home right now, you know that it can be very tough.

According to the National Association of Realtors, there are over 4 million homes for sales on today’s market!

With all of the homes for sale on the market, sellers are going to extreme measures to get their home noticed and lure-in a buyer amidst all of the competition.

A November 2, 2006 article by Aleksandra Todorova of SmartMoney.com, “Extreme house-selling strategies,” lists the five most creative things homeowners are doing to get their houses sold.

“It’s a tough time for home sellers. While the media competes for the direst gloom-and-doom real-estate-bubble headline, crowded open houses and bidding wars are becoming a quick-fading memory. Homes prices are down, and so are sales.”

One way to get a sale closed is to tempt the buyer or buyer’s broker with an incentive, discount or promotion.

“Forget about bidding wars. If they want their property to move these days, sellers have to offer incentives to the buyers and even their brokers, says Anthony Margueas, a realtor with Amalfi Estates in Pacific Palisades, Calif.”

Normally, in addition to material incentives such as a vacation or appliance upgrade, they normally take the form of help with closing costs, or buydowns of the mortgage interest points.

Two more creative things that sellers are doing involve the house itself. One is “staging” the house to appeal to the most potential buyers, and the other is throwing a party at the house.

“With that many homes on the market, how do you make yours stand out? Wendy Sarasohn, a realtor with the Corcoran Group in New York, finds nothing attracts a good crowd like a well-planned party. ‘I find an excuse to have an event at the space that I'm selling,’ she says. ‘It just injects new energy and focus on the property.’”

The next strategy being employed by smart wannabe sellers everywhere is to be prepared in advance for everything involved with a home sale, especially if it is your first one.

“Just got an offer? Better act fast. With all his properties, Margueas prepares in advance all reports and paperwork — the termite report, for example, title insurance, the physical inspection. ‘That way, the minute we get an offer we give all those reports to the buyer and the buyer's agent and they can review them within a few days,’ he says. ‘That's when they're most excited about the property.’ The longer it takes to receive these documents, the more likely it is that the buyer sees another property they like or get buyer's remorse, Margueas says.’”

If there are no buyer’s in sight, the last option that homeowners have is renting out their place until they find a buyer. This will help with the burden of being saddled with two mortgages at the same time.

“Worse comes to worst, consider renting out your home while the market recovers. (Being a landlord, of course, isn't easy and comes with a slew of legal responsibilities and tax implications.)”

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