1. Emotional appeal. Make sure your home looks, feels, and smells its best. You’re competing with 900 to 1,200 other homes for sale. Buyers buy on emotion . . . let your home be the cleanest, freshest and cheeriest, and you’ll have a much faster sale -- at a higher price. You want lots of people to say or think . . . "Wow! This is nice! I would like to live here!"
2. Lots of light. For maximum effect, turn every light on, even on a sunny day. Open all window shades. Clean your draperies and curtains. Make sure your windows are spotlessly clean. Let the sun in and keep all those lights on. Leaving all your lights on for two hours costs only 23 cents, and makes your home look larger and more spacious.
3. Constant exposure. Your home won’t sell unless buyers know about it. To get top dollar, be sure to have your home repeatedly and regularly exposed to qualified, ready-to-buy buyers. Some brokers charge you a discount commission, then don’t advertise your home. This is a mistake. The $500 or $1,000 you save in commission is more than offset by a sale price of $4,000 or $10,000 less than what you would have received if your home had been properly marketed. Remember, buyers can’t know about your home unless you or your broker has a marketing plan to ensure that your home is brought to the attention of home buyers.
4. Nontraditional advertising. Eight-three percent of buyers looking for a home in the $50,000 to $100,000 price range are first-time home buyers. Many first-time home buyers don’t even know they can afford a home. They don’t know that owning a home costs less than renting. They think that they need 20 percent for a down payment, plus closing costs! If your home is in the first-time-home-buyer price range, a substantial portion of your marketing dollars should be aimed directly at first-time home buyers. This means advertising and marketing in areas other than the "Homes For Sale" classifieds or Open Houses or Homes Magazine.
5. Education. First-time home buyers are more likely to pay top dollar for your home. If your home is in the first-time home buyer price range, make sure that your marketing program shows first-time buyers the benefits of home ownership and how affordable your home is. Design a marketing plan to get first-time home buyers to see the inside of your home. Make information available to them that shows how a large part of their month-by-month payment can be covered by properly structuring their withholding with their employers.
6. Familiarity with Lending Programs. Most home buyers, especially first-time buyers, don’t have the knowledge about the different lending programs to get them into affordable housing. A low down payment and affordable monthly payments make or break a sale. Knowledge of these many programs can mean the difference in your home simply sitting month after month and a timely sale. Whether you are attempting to sell your home yourself or working with a Realtor, it is imperative that someone along the way has this knowledge.
7. Aggressive Target Marketing. Lots of buyers will buy your home for less that it’s worth. The secret in getting top dollar is to find a buyer who is perfectly "matched" to your home. Right now there are at least ten buyers who would love to own your home, can afford it, and would pay a fair asking price, if only they knew about it! Some of these buyers may not even be thinking of buying yet, but if they knew about your home would love it! It takes a lot more than just a sign in the yard and an ad in the paper to market a home effectively. Aggressive target marketing will find those buyers!
8. Create Urgency. The Rule Of Full Price states that if a buyer feels the asking price is fair, and has a sufficient sense of urgency, the buyer will pay the full asking price. I always try to create a perception of competition in marketing homes. The more that prospective buyers are aware that many others are also interested in your home, the more urgency they feel about coming to a decision.
