According to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors®, nearly ninety percent of homeowners use a Realtor to sell their home year after year. Furthermore, similar to the national trend, Massachusetts homeowners who hired a real estate agent to sell their home in 2006 garnered a median selling price that was 23.4 percent higher than homes sold by property owners on their own. This article provides additional detail to explain why hiring a professional marketing agent is a smart choice.

The desire to keep all of the proceeds from the sale of one’s home is quite enticing at first glance. After all, there will be a state sales tax, attorney fees, a potential capital gains tax and other miscellaneous closing costs. So, the very idea of “cutting out the middle man” initially sounds like a smart move. Why not save that 4% to 6% or so in Realtor fees when you can do just as good a job selling your home as a professional can? The problem is that you can’t.

It seems once a homeowner puts a “For Sale by Owner” sign in front of their home and places an advertisement in a local newspaper; their home becomes a magnet for unqualified buyers and bargain hunters. After all, these folks already know that you are not paying for professional representation, so they skim that percentage amount right off the asking price before commencing price negotiations.

And what happens if you have priced your home incorrectly in the first place? Many unrepresented sellers over-price their home (thereby helping other homes sell) while others unknowingly under-price it. Many Internet sites give general estimates of a home’s value – but fall short when it comes to knowing local market trends and understanding the uniqueness of each property. When compared to other parts of the country, condos and single family homes in greater-Boston are not “cookie cutter” look-alikes. No amount of Internet research can take the place of an in-person, professional assessment of your home’s positive attributes as well as its challenging flaws – and provide staging/merchandising advice to minimize or eliminate those flaws (please refer to my recent article entitled: Staging Your Home to Sell).

Correct pricing and merchandising are just two aspects of selling your home at a competitive price within your desired timeframe. What about the costs of advertising and marketing (and do you know the difference between the two)? Most buyers (80 to 85 percent) initially turn to the Internet for their home search before contacting a Buyer Agent. It’s simply not enough to hire an agent to put your home in MLS while you do all the rest. Selling a home today requires local, regional and national exposure. Marketing agents have access to a vast array of websites, many of which are inaccessible to the general public. Moreover, a good marketing agent has developed strong relationships with other Realtors to facilitate “getting the word out”.

What about hosting broker and public open houses, and requests for private showings during weekdays? Do you really have the time and patience for these time-consuming activities? Be aware that many buyers don’t feel comfortable “thinking out loud” in the presence of a homeowner, or providing honest feedback directly to a homeowner for fear of hurting their feelings. A professional Realtor, on the other hand, solicits unvarnished feedback from each Buyer Agent. Over time, repeated observations and comments can help you and your Realtor to re-stage a room, fix a flaw, adjust the listing price and/or revise the sales strategy. As an unrepresented seller, you do not have access to this continuous feedback loop to help you modify your selling strategy (if you have one).

Now, fast-forward: once you have a potential buyer, how can you be assured that they are well qualified financially to purchase your home? You will also have to attend the home inspection(s), lender appraisals, track buyer adherence to contingency dates and are responsible for overall project management of both sets of attorneys, the buyer’s lender, and a host of other players to ensure a smooth, on-time closing.

After reading this article, is there any remaining doubt in your mind that paying a Realtor 5% or 6% of the sales price of your home for all these services is money well spent, especially when your home has a good chance of selling for approximately 23% more than it would if you try to go it alone? If so, please feel free to contact me for additional information.

In my two most recent articles (see Staging Your Home to Sell and The Danger in Over-Pricing Your Home), I shared my thoughts with you on the importance of correctly pricing your home to sell, and ensuring that it is attractively staged, or “merchandised”. Both of these steps are critical to the timely sale of your home at the highest market price possible – under any real estate market conditions. Yet the most critical ingredient for success is the agent you select to sell your home in the first place.

What selection criteria should you use? The problem is that most of us know at least one person – likely a friend or relative – who is in the real estate business. Even more of us know several real estate professionals. I’ve often heard folks struggle to decide who among their friends, relatives and acquaintances should get their listing – and their main concern is that they don’t hurt anybody’s feelings. Please stop and think: is this how you would select a doctor, an attorney, an accountant or another professional? Hopefully your answer is a resounding “no”! Therefore, doesn’t it make sense to similarly apply a set of stringent selection criteria to determine the most qualified professional to sell, that which for many folks is your largest financial asset, your home?

Here are a few truisms for your consideration: real estate professionals are not all the same! They are not interchangeable. Each does not have the same education, skills and experience, or marketing and negotiating ability. In fact, there are some fundamental prerequisites you should look for to help you begin eliminating candidates for your consideration:

• Your agent should have a Realtor^® designation after his/her name – at a minimum. To become a Realtor, an agent must take an ethics course every three years – and pass an exam. Does this mean that a licensed real estate agent who is not a Realtor is unethical? No – but it’s noteworthy that some agents go the extra mile to be held accountable to a higher set of professional standards than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts requires to maintain a license to practice real estate. Advanced training (you know, the other funny letters after the name) is even better. Additional training is proof that the agent values continuing professional education and ongoing self-improvement.
• Your Realtor should be in full-time practice. He or she should not be someone who dabbles on the side to supplement their income from their primary full-time job. Why? Because they won’t necessarily be available to show your home privately in a timely manner while at their full-time job, or develop a strong network with other full-time Realtors who will help sell your home by bringing their qualified buyers to see it. Skill and competence develop over time with a good deal of sales experience – not a mere fraction thereof. If “practice makes perfect,” lots of sales experience makes for an even better agent! Part-time practice on the other hand: well, I think you catch my drift.
• You want a good listing agent, right? Wrong! You want an outstanding marketing agent!This isn’t a matter of mere semantics. Marketing agents develop thoughtful, customized, marketing proposals. Listing agents are more apt to give “listing presentations” that are usually more about them, the number of properties they’ve listed and the virtues of their firm’s “brand name” as opposed to their own strategies to get your house sold as quickly as possible while netting you top dollar. (Caveat: “Top dollar” should be interpreted in the context of current market conditions).
• A listing agent is primarily interested in one thing: getting listings. The more the merrier! While this in and of itself is not a bad thing, have you ever asked one of these folks how they plan to market your home? Do they know the difference between marketing and advertising? Who will show it privately, and within what time period following a request from a buyer agent? We’ve all seen agents who advertise a multitude of listings at the same time. If your listing agent is overwhelmed, you suffer the loss of potential buyers!
• When I’m not showing my own listings, I’m invariably working with buyer clients. I’ve not always had good luck in getting my calls promptly returned by agents with – in my opinion – too many listings to be able to effectively market each one of them. If and when I do get a return phone call, I’m invariably told – especially in some notable suburbs – to “get the key from the lock-box”. Or, worse yet – “come to our office to pick up the key!” Folks, I’m here to tell you that your agent, or a very well trained team member, should be present at each and every private showing.
• Note that I stated a very well trained team member. An agent who is “covering” for your primary agent should be as familiar with every minute detail of your home as your primary agent. A buyer agent and his/her client will otherwise walk into and out of your home with no more information than they’ve already gleaned from the MLS or LINK description. A good buyer agent has many detailed questions to ask. So if your agent isn’t there in person to answer the questions while simultaneously emphasizing the positive attributes of your home, he or she is simply not doing a good job. Of course, this then begs the question: exactly what is being done to earn their professional fee? A “for sale” yard sign and a key in a lockbox are not sufficient, especially in a buyer’s market.
• Demand to see what your agent has written in MLS and LINK, and demand to have them augment the information if there are fewer than 10 photos, a weak lackluster description of your home that does not set it apart from others, and/or the lack of a visual tour or dedicated website. Additionally, ask your agent about the strength of their online presence. On how many national and international websites will your home be marketed? A sharply increasing number of buyers now look exclusively at online for homes as compared to hard copy newspaper advertisements.

One final truism: You get what you pay for. Hire a discount firm and you will receive discount services. Pay your agent less than the norm for your community (I’m not promoting any kind of price-fixing), and unethical buyer agents will show other properties similar to yours – rather than yours – especially if the supply of available homes exceeds the demand. If you successfully convince your agent to lower his/her professional fee, congratulations! You have just hired a weak negotiator! Any professional who is readily willing to cut their own income will invariable encourage you to settle for a lower offer, rather than strongly negotiate a higher sales price on your behalf – count on it. Finally, since all agents have fixed costs, what line item do you think suffers most when you ask them to reduce their professional fee? If you guessed correctly that the marketing budget for your home will suffer, I’ve made my point. If not, I gently invite you to read this final paragraph once again.

The holiday season is fast-approaching! Annual holiday store-front windows are once again dazzling would-be shoppers as they pass by. Have you noticed that a particularly well-done window display beckons you to enter a store to see what additional interesting items are for sale? Upon entering, you start to browse – and you might even purchase something if the store is clean, well-lit, and its products are attractively displayed in an appealing manner. As you pick up an article of clothing, you may say to yourself: “I can see myself in this!” This simple self-statement is the desired result of effective merchandising.

In my most recent article (see The Danger in Over-Pricing Your Home), I shared my thoughts with you on correctly pricing your home to sell. The next critical step to get your home to sell faster than others and as close to your asking price as possible is effective merchandising – better known in the real estate world as “staging”.

Most of us have walked into a brand new model home at one time or another. What kinds of adjectives come to mind to describe what you’ve seen? Here are some of mine: fresh, inviting, clean, sparkling, uncluttered, spacious, organized, odorless, warm, manicured, relaxing, refined, soothing, elegant, immaculate and so forth. On occasion, I’ve left a model home saying to myself: “I can see myself living in a home just like this one!”

When it comes to selling your home, the inherent challenge is that you probably don’t live in a model home. Therefore, you need to put your best foot forward to make your home as appealing as possible to prospective buyers who will see it on-line, attend an open house, or view your home privately with a Buyer Agent. Your home must be merchandized or staged to look as much like a model home as possible to get the highest price possible. In the same way that store-front window displays can entice a buyer to enter a store, the photos of your home that are displayed on the internet should entice buyers to see your home in person. Yet before those photos are taken, if you’re like most homeowners, you have some up-front “homework” to attend to.

While we each have our own unique style of decorating with which we’re comfortable and feel “at home”, as a prospective home seller you need to take a step back and ask yourself if the way your home currently looks presents it in the best possible light. If not, what steps can be taken to effectively merchandise your home? Here are some general rules of thumb I’ve learned over the years:

Buyers need to envision what it might be like for them to live in your home. They want to be able to “project” their life into your living space. The problem is that most people are not very good at “envisioning”. This challenge is even more difficult if your own life is staring (or shouting!) back at them everywhere they turn. So, put away all those cute souvenirs you’ve accumulated over the years. And by all means, remove ninety to ninety-five percent of your framed photos of family and friends. Finally, discard all the unused items you’ve been meaning to toss for years! In a word: un-clutter!

• Does your home have a tired, overly “lived-in” look? Perhaps it’s time for a fresh coat of paint here and there. Polish and shine all wooden and metal surfaces. Cover scratch marks. Dust and vacuum thoroughly! Add a touch of fresh flowers and flowering potted plants.
• Are your windows encumbered by too many heavy window treatments? Lighten up! By all means, have your windows cleaned, your drapes dusted – or even removed and replaced by sheers and valances to let as much sunshine into your home as possible. Sunshine evokes cheerful thoughts and feelings. Darkness, on the other hand, is depressing to most folks.
• Yes, you can have too much furniture (and most of us do)! During an open house, many people will be in your home at the same time. They do not need to be falling all over your furniture to get from Point A to Point B. Ensure that there are clear pathways throughout your home. Be honest: do you have to make a concerted effort to walk around a piece of furniture because it obstructs your way? If so, swap it with a smaller piece of furniture, put it in a different room, sell it or put it in away in storage altogether.
• Many of my peers advise that all walls should be painted in “neutral colors”. I personally disagree. Too much beige or linen white is simply – boring! On the other hand, if your walls are bright sunflower yellow or glow-in-the-dark green, you need to tone it down a bit. Try softer shades in the same color family. Light sage green and soft butter yellow go nicely with many decors.
• If you are advertising a three-bedroom home, remember once again that most buyers will have difficulty envisioning a den or an office as a bedroom if it doesn’t look exactly like a bedroom. In short, the furniture in each room should not contradict the description or label you are trying to attribute to it.
• Rooms always look smaller when empty. If your home has not sold by the time you need to move out, speak with your marketing agent about renting some furniture, wall hangings and other “props”.

The foregoing is admittedly a very short list of common challenges because it’s impossible to cover all unique scenarios in a general article. If you are fortunate enough to have a good “eye” for decorating – terrific! Otherwise, find yourself a good Realtor^® who has this gift and includes (as I do) staging advice as part of his or her marketing proposal. If not, default to a professional decorator. Although this third option will cost you some money – it may just be well worth it in terms of an overall return on your investment.

My next article will discuss why a seller should choose a strong marketing agent as opposed to a mere listing agent. There is a world of difference – stay tuned!

If you are like most sellers, you want your home to sell for as much as possible. It’s only human nature. Therefore, you may be tempted to list your home for the very highest possible price and hope for the best. But if you are really serious about selling your home, this mindset can result in a long waiting game in which you can end up losing – significantly. Not only will your house eventually sell for less than it is worth if it sells at all; you also will have forfeited your ability to move on with your life within a reasonable timeframe.

Let’s begin by reviewing a meaningful, time-honored truism. Are you aware that your home has the best chance of getting a reasonable offer within the first three to six weeks on market if it is correctly priced to sell from the very beginning? If it isn’t properly priced, you can bet that your home will help similar properties in your neighborhood sell long before yours. Assuming that you do not want your home to promote the sale of all other homes but yours, what should you do?

The first step is to get a competent Realtor^® to visit your home to understand what you believe are its best (and worst) features. Be honest, because buyers’ and especially their Buyer Agents’ eyes will be far more dispassionate and critical than yours. The next step is to have the Realtor show you what similar homes in your area have sold for within the past three (3) months in this changing market (a six-month look back would be more appropriate under level market conditions), how long it has taken them to sell, and how many price “adjustments” were necessary before they did sell. Your Realtor will also point out homes that did not sell, and therefore have become what are known as “expired” or “cancelled” listings.

With all the information that is available to buyers on multiple web sites and the increasingly popular social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and so forth), buyers are becoming incredibly savvy – and many can instantly spot an overpriced property on their own.  If a buyer is also working with a knowledgeable, reputable Buyer Agent, you can bet that your home will be identified as being overpriced virtually from the moment it is listed. The result is that your home will be overlooked by many potential buyers during the critical “first impression period”. The more it languishes on the market thereafter with a series of price reductions, the less desirable it becomes in buyers’ eyes due to the omnipresent “there must be something wrong with it” syndrome.

Under no circumstances should you choose a real estate agent who agrees to put your home on the market at “your” price without being able to back that price up with the aforementioned market statistics. Beware of agents who don’t know the local market conditions well or – far worse – an agent who will tell you exactly what you want to hear just to get your listing. In my profession, this unscrupulous practice is known as “buying a listing”. Under these circumstances, you can expect to hear shortly thereafter that the market has “suddenly changed”, and that your price must be adjusted at once (downward, of course). And perhaps again, and again.

By way of marked contrast, a more seasoned (and/or more ethical) agent will turn down the opportunity to list your home at an unrealistic price. Why? Because he or she has a reputation to uphold, and will not make an unrealistic promise that nothing short of a miracle will deliver. If he or she also pays out-of-pocket for your marketing materials, an overpriced home is a waste of both time and money. That said, there are also those of you out there (I’ve met you!) who will steadfastly dismiss a seasoned agent’s solid pricing advice. Please move on with my very best wishes. Otherwise, please respect your Realtor for the professional that he or she is – because the vast majority of us are knowledgeable, ethical and hard-working. Any buffoon can be an “order taker”. Is that really what you are looking for in a well-qualified real estate agent? Of course not!

In closing, I would be remiss if I didn’t share that pricing is not the only reason why some homes don’t sell promptly – or at all. And, believe it or not, sometimes pricing is not the reason for failure to sell whatsoever! Therefore, this particular article is intended to be the first in a three-part series. My next article will discuss the importance of properly staging your home to sell, followed by the significant consequences of choosing a good marketing agent as opposed to a mere listing agent. There is a world of difference – stay tuned!