For Sale sign

A humble, low-tech For Sale sign stuck in your front yard or nailed to your house is, without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to tell folks looking for a home in your area that your property is on the market.

Real estate brokers know sign calls (people calling to get more information about a house after they see the For Sale sign) are far more likely to result in a sale than ad calls (people calling about property they read about in an ad). Why? When ad callers find out the location of the advertised property, the style of the house, the age of the house, or some other basic fact they’d already know if they’d actually seen the property from the street, they more often than not reject it. Sign callers, on the other hand, obviously like the neighborhood and at least the property’s exterior, or they wouldn’t have called; they have a higher probability of being serious buyers.

Good signs are simple and large enough for people to read easily. They include these elements:

• The words “For Sale”
• A phone number to call
• The phrase “shown by appointment only” (unless you want people dropping in on you unexpectedly at all hours of the day and night)
• Website link (we cover using the computer to market your house in Chapter 13)
• The listing broker’s company name (if you’re using an agent)

This information is all you need on a sign. To attract folks driving by your house, use a two-sided sign placed perpendicular to the road so people can read it from either direction. If you have a corner lot, use two signs so both streets fronting your house have signs.

Be sure your sign makes a good first impression. Recycling is fine, but don’t let your agent reuse someone else’s old, beaten-up For Sale sign on your wonderful property; get a spiffy new one. A worn, dented, faded sign makes your property look equally tired. Don’t put up the sign before you’re 100 percent ready to sell, because after the sign goes up, you will start receiving calls.

Classified ads

The classified section of your local newspaper is a cost-effective way to reach prospective buyers. Because most house hunters look at property on weekends, run an ad in your paper’s Sunday real estate section or its weekend edition. If you’re handling your own advertising because you’re selling your house without a broker, get some tips from the pros. Study real estate brokers’ ads for ideas on phrasing your ad. People who work in the classified-ad department usually can help you draft an ad and suggest standard abbreviations — such as “br” for bedroom, “ba” for bathroom, and “fp” for fireplace — so you can save money without confusing readers.

Thanks to the ubiquitous Internet, you may get an even bigger bang for your classified advertising buck. Most newspapers automatically put classified ads on their websites, so potential buyers from all around the world can look for a house with the click of a mouse. Check to see whether your local paper offers this benefit.

Multiple listing service (MLS)

A multiple listing service (MLS) is composed of and operated by local real estate brokers and agents who pool their listings so information about property listed by any MLS member is immediately available to all participating members. Brokers and agents enter new listings into their computerized MLS database as soon as the listing contract is signed. Price changes and sales also are same-day entries. In most places, nonmembers (that is, the public) can’t put property into an MLS.

If your property is listed with a real estate broker, insist that it be put into the MLS. An MLS listing gives your property wide exposure to a potent pool of market-educated buyers currently working with all other MLS members. If you’re selling without an agent, consider paying a discount broker to put your property into the MLS. As we note in Chapter 8, if you use the MLS, you must offer a commission to a cooperating broker who procures a buyer for your property.

Listing statement

The listing statement, also called a property statement, is a data sheet and is given to people who tour your property on Sunday open houses or people who are shown through your house by appointment. Listing statements are effective point-of-purchase ads containing more information than you can put into a newspaper ad or an MLS listing (see Figure 12-1). This sheet offers you a chance to wax poetic about the special features of your property.

To satisfy buyers with short attention spans and too much to do, include an abstract to briefly give basic facts about your property. The headline, “Gardener’s Delight” in the listing statement in Figure 12-1, emphasizes the property’s hot button. A good listing statement takes people through your house room-by-room, pointing out special features they may not notice, such as the working fireplace with gas starter, the built-in curio cabinet, personal property such as fireplace tools included in the sale, garden plantings, and the intercom system. A few other tips to remember when writing your listing statement include the following:

• Don’t use fancy 17-syllable words when simple ones will do.
• Avoid rhetorical overstatement, such as “world’s most fantastic view” or “extraordinarily enormous living room.”
• Keep the write-up short — one page maximum.
• Always include a disclaimer similar to the one we include at the bottom of our sample listing statement.

The best way to avoid getting sued because your house is smaller than you claimed it was is to avoid giving any personal opinions about square footages unless you’re absolutely, positively, 100 percent certain sure about the measurements. If you’re inadvertently a few square feet shy of the square footage you stated, you could end up being sued by a nit-picky buyer with a tape measure and too much spare time. Actual square footage is less important than your buyers’ conclusion that your house is big enough based on their visual inspection.

Computers

In addition to the computerized MLS, brokers have websites they use to advertise their listings. As previously noted in the “Classified ads” section earlier in this chapter, most newspapers put classified ads on the Internet so computer users can access them without having to dirty their fingers with newsprint. We devote Chapter 13 to describing ways you can use a computer during your sale.

Word of mouth

Word-of-mouth advice sounds so darn primitive coming right after “Computers” in the preceding section, but networking is an extremely effective form of targeted advertising. Tell people you know — friends, business associates, folks who go to your church, club members, and especially your neighbors, that your house is for sale. Make a point of inviting your friends and neighbors to your first open house. Who knows? One of them may have a pal who’d love to buy your house. Stranger things happen every day.

Brokers’ opens

If you hire a broker to sell your house, one of the first things your listing agent does after you’ve signed the listing contract is tell the local brokerage community about your property. One extremely effective way to get the word out is scheduling a brokers’ open — a special open house exclusively for local real estate agents.

Agents generally work with at least four or five serious buyers at any given time. After these buyers have, for one reason or another, seen and rejected all the houses of interest to them that currently are on the market, they go into a holding pattern waiting for a listing of just the right property. One primary mission of agents working with buyers is to scout out new property.

A brokers’ open is amazingly targeted marketing. No guarantees, of course, but don’t be surprised if the first brokers’ open leads to a sale. After all, having 50 agents tour your house is the equivalent of showing it to 200 or 250 motivated buyers.

Although your house obviously won’t appeal to every one of the agents’ buyers, you can bet it’ll press hot buttons for a few of them. Well-priced, attractive property almost always generates immediate showing requests. With the advent of cellphones, agents don’t even have to wait until they get back to the office to call their clients about the fantastic property (yours, we hope) that they just saw on a brokers’ tour.

Most areas designate one particular day each week as Brokers’ Tour Day, the day on which agents and brokers tour newly listed properties. If many new listings enter the market the week of your first brokers’ open, some agents won’t see your property because of scheduling conflicts with brokers’ opens on other houses. Even if only a few new listings are available when your property hits the market, some agents won’t see your house because they’re on vacation, have offers to present, have escrows to close, or are holding other houses open themselves. Whatever the reason, the way around scheduling conflicts is to be sure that your listing agent schedules at least two brokers’ opens.

Weekend open houses

We start this section by noting that folks usually think of public open houses as Sunday open houses. That idea is prevalent because most houses are held open on Sundays. However, no law says you can’t hold a Saturday open house every now and then to scoop up people who can’t come to a Sunday open house. For that matter, you might also hold an open house on a Monday or Thursday evening after people get home from work. There are no rules here. Don’t be afraid to get creative. Having planted that thought in your mind, we refer to all public open houses from now on as Sunday open houses for simplicity’s sake.

Compared to brokers’ opens (see the preceding section), you have lower odds of making a sale directly by holding a Sunday open house. But if you’re trying to sell your house without an agent, you won’t have access to brokers’ opens.

After you open your house to the world at large, not everyone who walks through the front door is a legitimate buyer. You get Lookie Lou types who are trying to pick up some decorating hints and curious neighbors who always wanted to know how your house looks on the inside. You also get real buyers who were attracted by your open house sign but need a home in a different size or price range. Unfortunately, other than an address, open house signs don’t contain a wealth of specific information to help qualify prospective buyers.

The incidental traffic isn’t necessarily bad for you. Unless your visitors are terribly antisocial, people who come to your Sunday open houses probably have friends or neighbors who want to buy in the neighborhood. Word of mouth is powerful advertising (see the section “Word of mouth” earlier in this chapter).

In a perfect world, nobody steals. Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect. Leaving small, easily portable valuables lying around during open houses is an open invitation to thieves. Either put expensive jewelry, precious coins, rare stamps, and your other small valuable items into a safe deposit box or figure out another place to put them so they are out of harm’s way. Go through your medicine cabinets. Remove any medications that may be of interest to a thief. If you expect a great many visitors, see whether your listing agent can get another agent to help with your open house. One agent can show people through your house while the other stays at the front door to greet visitors, get names, answer basic questions, and, last but not least, watch for folks leaving the house with suspicious bulges.

Preshowing preparations

If you don’t know exactly how to generate property curb appeal and subtly stage your house, turn to Chapter 9 for the details. In this section, we cover a few final things you must do to maximize the showing process:

• Make showing your property easy for agents: The easier your house is to show, the more often agents will show it, and, most likely, the more you’ll get for your house and the faster it’ll sell. If you force agents to get a house key from you before each showing, you’ll have fewer showings because some agents are too busy to get the key, and others are too lazy. Instead of personally doling out your key each time there’s a showing, you have two options:

  • Give the listing agent a key if your house is only shown by appointment.
  • Have your agent put a house key in a lockbox that agents open by using a special lockbox key or electronically coded lockbox card.

  From an agent’s perspective, nothing is more embarrassing or frustrating than trying to explain to an antsy buyer the reason she can’t unlock the front door. Before you give the listing agent keys to your house, make sure that the keys actually unlock the door and that the lock works smoothly. (This is your chance to make a good first impression on the buyer.) Lastly, if the house has an alarm, make sure it’s disarmed or that the showing agent knows how to turn off the alarm.

• Make yourself scarce during showings: If you have a listing agent, leave the property while your agent shows it. Some buyers are too polite to say so, but having you hover over them as they tour your house is very inhibiting. Serious buyers want to look into all your closets and cabinets, look under all your sinks, and explore every nook and cranny of the house — but they won’t if you’re hanging around.

  By the same token, as long as you’re around, buyers won’t make derogatory comments. Sometimes, the most important information you get from a showing is the reason why someone doesn’t like the property. Correcting a problem or overcoming an objection starts by finding out about the problem or objection. Your agent should follow up every showing by calling the buyer’s agent to find out whether the buyer intends to make an offer and, if not, why not.

  You can’t vanish during showings or open houses if you’re selling without an agent. Try, however, to be as unobtrusive as possible when buyers tour your property. For example, don’t walk them through the house pointing out the obvious: “This is the kitchen. Here’s the bathroom. This bedroom is where the kids sleep.” Instead, point out special things they may not notice, such as the high ceiling in your dining room or the fact that a hardwood floor is under the wall-to-wall carpet in the family room. Make your points selectively and remember the quality of your guidance is more important than the quantity.

• Get used to living in a fishbowl: If you follow our sage advice, your house will sell quickly for top dollar. However, the sale probably won’t seem quick. The best proof of the relativity of time is living in a house that’s for sale and may be shown any time of the day or, within reasonable limits, night. You can’t ever leave the bathtub dirty or dishes in the sink or clothes on the bedroom floor or cook liver and onions or lounge around in your bathrobe on Sunday morning or… . Be of good faith. This, too, shall pass.

The final showing

You may think you’ve been put out of your misery after you accept an offer to purchase your property. “Goody,” you say, “no more showings — I can have my life back.”

Not quite. Inspections by the buyer’s property inspectors aside, one extremely important showing remains: the inspection an appraiser makes as a condition of your buyer’s loan approval.

This final showing to the appraiser is critically important. If the buyer’s loan isn’t approved because the appraiser thinks your property isn’t worth the amount the buyer is willing to pay for it, your deal falls through, and you’re back in the fishbowl again.

Take these two steps to prevent an appraiser from undervaluing your house:

• Shower the appraiser with attention and comps. Your agent (or you, if you’re selling your house yourself) should be present during the appraiser’s property inspection to “sell” your house one last time. In addition to pointing out to the appraiser each and every valuable feature of your house and the neighborhood, your agent can give the appraiser an updated copy of the comparable market analysis (see Chapter 10) originally used to establish your asking price. The appraiser can use the comparable sales data to justify the sale price.
• Spiff up your house one more time. Appraisers are supposedly above being influenced by a house’s appearance. Theoretically, appraisers won’t get a bad impression if your property looks lived in. Sure. No matter what appraisers say, they are human. Perfectly staging your house one last time almost certainly makes a favorable impression on the appraiser. And if you’re going for a record sale price in your neighborhood, every little bit helps. One thing’s for sure — it certainly can’t hurt.