Archive for November, 2020

Is Your Brooklyn Home Not Selling?

Sunday, November 15th, 2020
Price reduced For Sale Sign

Selling your Brooklyn home can be a stressful time in the best of circumstances. But what happens if your home doesn’t sell as quickly as you had hoped? 

My highest recommendation is to maintain an open line of communication with your real estate agent. Ask questions if you have them. Don’t make assumptions and blame without verification. Your real estate agent is on your team.

Many factors affect the sale of a home. Some factors are in your control, some are in the control of others, and some are not in control of anyone involved in the transaction. 

Your responsibilities to consummate a successful sale of your Brooklyn home are items that you most likely can do something about.

Here are some factors in your control:

Price

The pricing of your home is one of the most important steps in the home selling process. It is a common misconception that you can ask for a higher price for your Brooklyn home and negotiate lower. This strategy frequently backfires, and the final sales price will be less than if the home were listed at the appropriate price.  A savvy real estate agent will find the most recent sales in your area for homes that compare to yours and guide you to a price that is substantiated by those comparable homes. A real estate appraiser will be looking at this information when it comes time for the appraisal. If there are negative factors about your home that you can not change, adjusting your price may be the only option.

Condition

As a seller, you will want to be sure that your home is in the best condition you can afford to present it in. If your home is equipped with the best the 70s had to offer, it may take more time to find the right buyer. If you have deferred maintenance that should be completed, do everything you can to get it ready for the market.

Preparation

Any repairs and preparation should occur before entering the home into the MLS. Preparing your Brooklyn home to sparkle and shine during the showings is always important even in a hot market. You may be wondering why. The buyer will form impressions from the moment they walk in the door. If they feel there are too many repairs or the home has not been well maintained, they will move on to the next home. Here is a link to a previous post that will help you prepare your home.

Limited Showing Availability

Preparing a home for showings can become monotonous if your Brooklyn home is on the market for a period of time. It takes a lot of effort to make sure everything is clean and show worthy. Getting the family and pets out the door can also become a chore. I’m sure there are days you just don’t feel like doing it. But, you never know when THE buyer is going to walk through the door. Understandably, there may be a time when it is not possible to allow for showings. You need to be as flexible as you can to allow the buyers access to your home. If they can’t see it, they won’t buy it. If necessary, ask your agent if it would be possible to request a few hours notice to show. That will give you time to prepare but won’t give the buyer too much time to find another house before they look at yours.

Odors

As the commercial says, we often become nose blind to the smells in our own home. There are many causes of odors that can turn off potential buyers. Pets, cooking, dampness, and mildew can all be factors that affect the smells in your Brooklyn home. Bring in a friend or relative who has a more sensitive nose than yours to do a walk through and point out any potential issues. It is important to eliminate the source of the odor and not just mask it with air fresheners.

Cluttered home office

Clutter

Clutter is a big problem and should be addressed in your preparation process. Yes, you still have to live in your home, but you have to give the buyer a feeling that there is enough space in the home. Closets are an area where clutter can turn a buyer off. When your closet is jam-packed full of clothing and accessories, you should remove the excess. Removing your clutter has a psychological effect, allowing the buyer to envision their belongings in the space.

Motivation

Your motivation as the seller will determine the trajectory of the sale. If you are listing your home for sale to “test” the market, you may not be open to any negotiation. This type of seller has a tendency to overprice their home. An unwillingness to cooperate with the buyer will make the completion of the sale very difficult.

Your responsibilities have a great contribution to the timing of your sale. Rely on your real estate agent to guide you through these steps. We sometimes put greater value on our own possessions than a potential buyer will. That is why it is so important to get the opinion of a professional who studies and understands the Brooklyn real estate market.

Let’s take a look at factors that someone other than you can control:

Marketing

Your real estate agent will be responsible for the marketing of your Brooklyn home. When interviewing real estate agents, you want to ask about their marketing plan. One of the least successful marketing plans is the three Ps:

  • Put a sign in the yard
  • Put it in the multi-list
  • Pray it sells

A good marketing plan will cover pricing, promotion, analysis of the competition, tracking, and timing adjustments if needed. Ask your real estate agent for their marketing plan before signing the listing agreement. Check out this blog post on marketing a Brooklyn home.

Photographing a room

Photos

Photos should be part of the marketing plan, but it is so important I wanted to mention it separately. First impressions of your home will come from the photos that potential buyers look at online. Most buyers start their Brooklyn home search online before they ever contact a real estate agent. Good quality photos make all the difference. These photos do not have to be done by a professional photographer, but they should be done with good equipment to provide clear, wide-angle shots of the rooms. Not having enough pictures is also a problem. There is a limit of photos an agent can add to the multi-list, but the agent should use all available. Some websites outside the MLS will also allow additional photos to be added. 

Unrealistic Buyers

There are always buyers who want to purchase a home in mint condition at bargain prices. Some buyers do not want to move into the home and make repairs, whether large or small. They will make a low-ball offer based on their feeling of what will need to be done in the home to meet their needs. Sometimes after the home inspections, they will ask for unreasonable amounts of repairs or a large credit.

Inspections

Many buyers are not educated that the home inspection aims to uncover any major ticket items or safety issues. These items are not always known by the seller. If the buyer has cold feet, they may decide to terminate their offer at this stage. Having a pre-inspection by a licensed home inspector is a good way to eliminate any surprises.

Appraisal

As mentioned in the Pricing obstacle, the appraiser uses information on homes that have recently sold in the area compared to your home to determine value. It is often hard to counter a low appraisal. If the buyer is financing through an FHA or VA mortgage, that low appraisal could remain with the property for several months.

 Lender

The lender’s approval of the mortgage can also become an obstacle. A pre-approval letter from a reputable lender is usually a confirmation that the buyer will not have any issues. On rare occasions, the buyer may go out and purchase a large ticket item before the approval of their loan that may change the amount they can borrow. A job loss, relocation, or other buyer’s employment changes have occurred, disqualifying the buyer for their mortgage.

Some factors are not within the control of the seller. Hiring an experienced, professional real estate agent can help you work through issues that may arise with the sale of your Brooklyn home. Coming up with innovative ideas to overcome an obstacle comes with experience.

The last category of factors is not within the control of anyone involved in the transaction. They include:

Location

The location of your home is a big factor in getting a home sold. However, short of picking up the house and moving it, you can not change the property’s location. Whether the location is good, bad, or indifferent is usually defined by each buyer based on their ideal. If your location is an issue, you will need to price accordingly.

Timing

Most markets experience busy seasons and less busy seasons of the sale cycle. If you happen to put your home on the market during a slow season, it may take longer to get your Brooklyn home under contract. That isn’t to say it will be impossible to sell. If fewer homes are coming on the market at that time, your competition will be lower. Buyers enter the market at many different times of the year for many different reasons. Selling during a slower sales season may work out well for you.

Market

The economy, the available inventory, and the interest rates all play a part in the local market. If we learned anything in 2020, things can change quickly. Keeping up on trends and predictions is an important part of a real estate agent’s business practice. But even then, the agent may not be able to predict what is going to happen with the market.

There are so many factors that can affect the sale of your Brooklyn home. A top-notch agent will be able to keep all the moving parts working to the same conclusion, a closing. As I mentioned earlier, it is important to interview the real estate agents you work with before signing the listing agreement.

Contact me, Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn Real Estate Agent with Fillmore Real Estate. As a Brooklyn real estate agent with over 30 years of experience, I can manage the moving parts for both buyers and sellers.

In the event, our office is shut down, we are always committed to your safety during the COVID-19 health crisis in compliance with the State of New York public health policies. I can be reached by phone at (718) 253-9500 ext. 1901 or by email at [email protected].