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Many Home Showings and No Offers, What is Wrong?
Not too long ago we closed on a property that had many home showings and no offers, and there was nothing wrong with the property itself. It had been priced too high. Once we brought the price in line with what the market would bear, the home sold. Without question. Nobody asked why has this been on the market for so long? They could see why.
It was also a difficult sale for the sellers. They had no mortgage, so apart from paying for utilities and property taxes, it didn’t cost much to keep the home on the market. As the listing agent, I wasn’t complaining, either. The home’s location was excellent and it made the phone ring with buyers for others homes. I will be as patient as my sellers.
However, usually when there are many home showings and no offers, it generally means there is something wrong with the property. The way to cure that problem is to figure out what is wrong and fix it. If you can’t fix it, then lower the price.
What could be wrong, you might ask? It could be condition. Some homes without updates or the wrong kinds of updates will get passed over by today’s discriminating millennials. Buyers dislike oak cabinets, white ceramic counters or white appliances. In those instances, you have two remedies. Paint the cabinets, install quartz and replace the appliances. Or, substantially reduce the price. What first-time home buyers want today is very different from buying trends in the 20th Century.
It could be location. Some homes built in front of major freeways (what were they thinking??) are challenging locations to sell. Moreover, if you can see a school when standing in the front yard, that’s a bad location. In those situations, sellers have only one remedy. Make that house the cheapest home within a 1/2 mile radius. Same principle applies to a bad layout. It is generally too expensive to change the layout, which means the price needs to account for the configuration deficit.
Many home showings and no offers? Perhaps the home looks differently online than the photographs reflect. Once inside, buyers could decide it doesn’t meet their list of requirements. If the home could use a little TLC, it is OK to market it that way. Let buyers know what they are getting into, and they will be better prepared to view the home. When hopes are dashed the minute they step inside the home, that is not a good buying experience.
Sometimes it can be the season, typically the months of December through February can be slow. You also can’t count open house traffic because those people are not necessarily buyers. Those are people who like to attend open houses, or people walking and driving by.
Of course, the bottom line solution in just about any situation in which you have many home showings and no offers is a price reduction. But before automatically slashing the price, be sure to consider other factors first.
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.
