Mar. 2, 2007: Today's Metropolitan Phoenix real estate market should dictate price of a home for sale
How much effort should you put into listing your home for sale?
After the past 15 months, that's almost a silly question. There are more than 40,000 homes for sale in Greater Phoenix, with an average time on market of almost four months.
How much effort should you expend to sell your home? Whatever it takes.
We tend to be very careful about the listings we'll take, because we want our homes sold in four days or four weeks, not four months.
But that leads us to the most important thing you can do to make sure your home sells while others languish: Price it to the market.
Home values in the West Valley are down 12 to 15 percent from the peak. If you're pricing to the peak market and not this one, your house will not sell.
I want to talk about some innovative marketing ideas, but no amount of marketing can overcome a too-high price. If you are unwilling to price your home to the market, you might as well spare yourself the agony of listing it.
Now let's go through the home and repair everything. You don't need to remodel -- unless you really do -- but everything should work as advertised.
Have your Realtor walk through your home. Anything that you feel the impulse to call attention to, or to divert attention from, should be repaired or replaced. Your most sales-worthy competition is in turnkey condition. So should you be.
Your Realtor should either be a home stager or have a relationship with one. Either way, an expert needs to go through your home with a critical eye, giving you room-by-room instructions on what to get rid of, what to pack away, what to move, what to emphasize.
Your stager might add furniture or decor items, or it may be sufficient to redeploy the things you already own. The point is to enable buyers to move themselves in psychologically, without your own lives getting in the way.
Next week, we'll talk about some passive marketing tools that can swing the balance your way.
Greg Swann is the designated broker for BloodhoundRealty.com, a full-service Metropolitan Phoenix real estate brokerage. This article originally appeared in the West Valley regional sections of the Arizona Republic.
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