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When Is a Good Time to Reduce the Sales Price in Sacramento?
The best time to reduce the sales price in Sacramento is pretty much never.
An agent from a real estate website asked when is it a good time to reduce the sales price, meaning if a home doesn’t sell within a certain time period, at which point should a seller drop the price. Trying to establish set guidelines is pretty much impossible because every home is different and the temperature of your local real estate market varies with the seasons, among other criteria.
For example, some homes are simply more difficult to sell than others. Sacramento homes in challenging locations are hard to sell, like homes that back up to a school or a basketball court. Sacramento homes without updates in an area of remodeled homes makes them difficult to sell. Sacramento homes with weird layouts, white appliances, old carpeting, no first-floor bedroom or full bath, tiny yards, deferred maintenance . . . you get the idea. And let’s not even talk about short sales in Sacramento, which fall to the bottom of a buyer’s wish list since most need to sell at market value but take 3 times as long to close.
I’ve sold homes that have been on the market for 90 days at list price, and we never reduced. Sometimes it takes the right buyer. I never discard a home as “impossible to sell” especially when the seller loves the home because it means there is another person somewhere else who will also love it. I just need to find that person and appeal to that buyer. Nobody is that unique.
However, in today’s Sacramento real estate market at this particular period of the year, a good time to reduce the sales price is NEVER. When buyers see a price reduction, the immediate thought that pops into buyers’ heads is “how much lower will they go?” They think a seller is desperate and maybe the seller is. They show no mercy and head straight for the jugular with a sharp knife.
The best way to reduce the price is to take the home off the market and put it back as a brand new listing. You hit the market just right, at the right time with a new set of buyers, and BINGO. The home sells. It’s a bit more work for this Sacramento Realtor, transferring documents, photographs, lockbox settings, so forth, but it works. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t advise my sellers to do it.
Perhaps a better question to ask is not when do you reduce the sales price but when do you reassess the marketing, the length of time on the market and make adjustments? At least monthly. Certainly, initially, at the 21-day mark. Some homes just take longer to sell.
Home Staging is Back in Sacramento and Elk Grove
Another sign of our slowly recovering real estate market is home staging is making a big comeback in Sacramento, especially among Elk Grove homes. For years, we had so many short sales in the midst of a down real estate market that many sellers did not stage their homes because they didn’t have to, wasn’t needed. How do you know if a home needs to be staged? Because some homes don’t.
First and foremost is how hard will it be to sell that home? Are there other factors about the home that could discourage a buyer from making an offer such as bad condition, horrible location, unreasonable price? It is a home that most buyers don’t want to buy? I also look at the competition. What else will a buyer see when they tour other homes nearby in this same price range. If other homes are staged, yours better be, too.
It’s not really the buyer’s fault that a buyer can’t visualize potential or, more important, feel the emotional tug of a home. Door opens, they walk inside, they immediately know whether they like the home in 3 seconds. The rest of the tour reinforces that original perception. It gets better or it gets worse depending on their first emotion.
Buyers try to “rule out” buying homes just as much as they “rule in” buying homes. Some believe in fate, whether or not you may agree with that premise, a perception of fate might be the buyer’s reality and you go with the flow. Curb appeal hits them first and the interiors second. Third they tend to look for the amenities they have told their agent they want, but they’re not nearly as analytical as sellers might expect. Staging a home helps to overcome barriers.
This is why it’s generally a good idea to make that home as attractive as possible and set the stage to encourage an offer. Just sold today another home in Elk Grove that was on the market for almost 3 weeks without staging at an attractive price point. After home staging, whammo. Two offers. It works like this all of the time. This is not an isolated situation. You’ve gotta remove all of the objections, and one way to do that is to stage the home.
