It’s not a seller’s dream scenario: you put your house on the market, hoping for a quick sale — but boy were you wrong. After putting your home on the market, you may be wondering why you haven’t received any offers or showings.
1. Poor Communication
The main reason that homes that are reasonably priced are not selling in 2022 is that the seller is not communicating effectively. You will not be able to fix the issues preventing your home from selling if you do not communicate them clearly to your seller. The only option left will be to ask for a major price reduction.
How to Fix This Problem & Sell Your Listing
The following text discusses the importance of clear communication with your seller, starting with your listing presentation, market overview, staging consultation, and comparative market analysis (CMA). By having clear communication with your seller from the beginning, you set the tone for a successful business relationship. Buyer’s agents need clear expectations about how to interpret market acceptance through marketing response, showings, and feedback.
You can improve communication with your seller today by requesting feedback from buyer’s agents over the phone. Call recent listings that are pending and ask the listing agents about their activity level and offers. Schedule a meeting with your seller to discuss your findings.
It is more likely than not that at least one of the other problems on this list is preventing the home from selling if your market is not totally dead.
2. Ineffective Marketing
Sellers may become disgruntled when their residence does not instantly sell. They often like to focus their frustration on something related to your marketing.
Before you react defensively, examine your marketing to see if it can be improved. If you want to sell your home quickly, sometimes making small changes to your marketing strategy can make a big difference. You might be able to sell your home at or close to your asking price.
How to Fix This Problem & Sell Your Listing
To find a comparable home, start by searching the MLS for a home with similar features. Is your listing even showing up in the search? This is a quick and easy way to check if you have the correct information.
For example, a beautiful home was listed that didn’t get enough showings because it was located behind a golf course. When someone searched the MLS for properties in golf course communities, that listing was not included. Why? It was discovered that the box had not been checked for Golf Course Communities when entering the listing into the MLS. Once this simple mistake was corrected, the showings doubled!
3. The price is too high
Homebuyers pay attention to overpricing. A majority of agents have seen or heard about buyers who have backed out of contracts due to inflation in home values.
One way to tell if your home is priced too high is if it’s been on the market for a while and hasn’t received any offers. Pricing a home for sale is deceivingly complex. If you want to know how much buyers would pay for your property, you need to look at recent sales and compare your property to others on the market. Make adjustments to your property’s price based on how it compares to others.
The Home Value Estimator can help you figure out how much your home is worth. Answer some questions about your home and address, and we’ll give you a preliminary estimation of your home’s value in less than two minutes.
However, an online estimate is just a starting point. If you are not sure if you priced your home too high, you can ask a real estate agent for their opinion.
If you want to get an idea of how much your home is worth, one way to do it is to listen to the feedback you’re getting from people who come to your open houses and showings. They were disappointed at the home’s quality compared to what they expected for the price.
You can also browse local listings. If your home is priced higher than homes with better features and more upgrades in the area, it likely means that the problem is the price.
What’s the fix?
In most cases, it’s time for a price drop.
A reduced price may make it seem like you won’t get the value you wanted. Price reductions are a common occurrence and sometimes necessary to bring in buyers.
Approximately one in four recent sellers needed to lower their asking price before finding a buyer, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.
So how much should you drop the price? It is not advisable to continually lower the asking price of a house as it gives the impression that the property is overpriced and unwanted.
If a listing is getting a lot of showings with no offers, a 1% markdown might entice the right buyers. If the home isn’t selling, the price may need to be reduced 2% to 3%.
When you are looking for something online, it is important to be aware of the price filters that are available. Buyers will generally search for homes in increments of $25,000 to $50,000. Be aware of moving into the next price range to get the property in front of the right buyers.
4. Restricted Showings
To sell a home for top dollar, you need to allow buyers to see it. Sellers have been listing and selling their homes without being seen by the buyer in person, which has been a problem for a few years. Obviously in a buyer’s market, this won’t work.
Some sellers are uncooperative in allowing showings of their home, even in a slow market, because they believe that buyers are eager and willing to buy their home no matter what. There may be tenants in the property who are preventing showings, or the owners may not want to be bothered. You need to convince them that the market has changed and that buyers are not making offers like they used to.
How to Fix This Problem & Sell Your Listing
You need to be accommodating with your showing schedule and make sure your home is available to be seen often. It is important to have an honest discussion with your seller to explain why selling their home may be difficult if they restrict showings. Use data to show sellers that homes that are shown more sell faster. You need to convince them that more showings will lead to a faster sale.
5. Low-quality Photos
When discussing homes not selling, photography should be given its own category. We’ve all seen MLS photos of bathrooms taken with a cell phone, with the reflection of the agent in the mirror. Your listing pictures might have bigger issues that are preventing the home from selling.
The goal of any listing picture is to show off the best features of the home and not give the buyer any reason to eliminate it from their home tour. Too many agents include photos of homes that have too many flaws.
How to Fix This Problem & Sell Your Listing
If the pictures are not great, it may be worth hiring a professional photographer to reshoot the listing. Look at each photo you post on Zillow or social media carefully. Remove any pictures that show cluttered rooms, busy streets, power lines, small or unmanicured yards, or anything that would turn off a buyer.
6. You’re working with the wrong buyers
Let’s say your home needs some work. The roof is old, the construction materials may contain asbestos and are not in the best shape, and there is some water damage in the basement that cannot be fixed right now.
If you’re a seller who needs to sell your home quickly, an off-market sale may be a better option for you. Many buyers can be sticklers about home conditions. A 2020 survey of over 2,000 adults from Coldwell Banker found that 80% of Americans said they would prefer to buy a move-in ready home over one that requires renovations. A majority of millennials and Gen-Xers would rather have a smaller home that doesn’t require updates than a larger one that does.
What’s the fix?
You could sell your home to a real estate investor, house-buying company, or iBuyer instead. Some buyers who purchase property directly are okay with homes that need a little work. Most pay with cash. It normally works like this: you give some information about your property, the buyer makes a cash offer, and then you can either accept or decline the proposal.
If you are interested in this route, you can request a cash offer from HomeLight’s Simple Sale platform. You will be asked questions about your home, such as how much work it needs and how soon you plan to sell, in order to gain a better understanding of your situation.
7. Glaring Condition Issues
Unfixed maintenance issues like peeling paint, a dead lawn, or worn-out carpets can discourage a buyer from making an offer. Many buyers will avoid a home that looks too much like a place of work. In the most severe cases, it could even prevent the property from being able to be used as collateral for a loan.
You and the seller probably talked about any necessary repairs or updates that they were willing to do when you took the listing. If everything was perfect, these items would have been fixed before the listing was photographed and placed on the MLS. You’re not in a perfect world, but you are reading this article. If there are problems with the condition of the home, like flaking paint or stained carpet, it can make it harder to sell.
How to Fix This Problem & Sell Your Listing
The remaining repairs were either too expensive, would take too long, or the seller didn’t think they were important for selling their home. You should talk to the seller about why these problems might make it hard to sell their home, and suggest that they fix the problems that are affordable and won’t take too much time. It would be better if you could convince them to increase their budget and shorten their timeframe.
8. HOA, Fees, or Taxes Are Too High
High homeowner association (HOA), taxes, and fees can have a big impact on how much a buyer can afford to pay for a property.
For example, if you have a loan of $1000 at an interest rate of 5.25%, you will pay approximately $5.50 per month in interest. The purchasing power of a potential buyer for your listing is $18,000 less if the home is in a special tax district and the taxes are $100 more per month than similar homes in the area. That’s not chump change for many people.
How to Fix This Problem & Sell Your Listing
Most buyers are only concerned with their monthly payment, so listings with higher taxes or fees are less likely to get an offer. If you are selling a property that has high taxes or HOA fees, you could try asking the seller to agree to pay the taxes or HOA for one year. This would give the buyer time to adjust to the higher payment.
Bottom Line
Homes are staying on the market for much longer than they have been in recent years. Reducing the price is not the only solution to get a home sold, sellers do not want to hear this. The market today is such that you need to take more initiative to sell your listings. Putting in a little extra effort upfront will help ensure your listings sell without having to significantly lower the asking price.
