Sept. 7, 2007: Doing an appraisal and an inspection in advance could swing the balance toward home sellers in Phoenix
It's not fun to be a home seller right now. We've talked about why your home must be priced right, prepared right and presented right in order to sell. But -- guess what? -- even that might not be enough.
There are subdivisions where twenty or more essentially identical houses are for sale. There may be at most one buyer for all of those homes in any given month. Still worse, that buyer's loan might not hold up all the way through the closing process.
The good news is that the belt-tightening the mortgage industry has been going through may be loosening up by a notch or two. There will be no more reckless loans to unqualified borrowers, but buyers with good income, good credit and good debt ratios are qualifying for very aggressive interest rates. And jumbo loan borrowers are being welcomed more warmly than they were a week or two ago.
But the problem remains: There can be so much inventory that buyers are literally paralyzed. On the one hand, they want to see everything before making a choice. On the other, they rightly fear that prices might be even lower a few months from now.
What should you do as a seller? Whatever it takes.
Here are a couple of ideas:
First, have the house appraised, price the home below that appraisal and leave the appraisal report out where buyers can see it.
Second, have the home professionally inspected. Do all of the repairs in the inspection report, then have the inspector back to confirm your work. When everything is ship-shape, leave that report out where buyers can see it.
You can't control lenders or interest rates. You can't control the price of homes into the future. What you can do is take away every buyer objection over which you have control.
Nothing matters more than price, so if you won't price your home to the current market, you needn't bother with anything else. Your house will not sell. But if you're committed to doing whatever it takes, these ideas could swing the balance.
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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