Posted on May 18, 2012
Tara from Trulia.com had a great article:
A few weeks back, we talked all about (and I mean all about!) statements sellers should avoid making while they’re engaged in what I like to call ‘verbal staging:’drafting the listing description and marketing materials that create prospective buyers’ expectations about your home.
Though the subject started a rollicking conversation, many of you posed the sensible follow-up question:
Okay – then what should sellers say??
As you might have guessed, I have some thoughts on that matter, too! Here are 5 ‘verbal staging’ statements sellers should at least seriously consider making, when they’re working with their agent to market their home for sale:
1. Do Tell: Anything in or around your home that is ‘new’ (or nearly so). To a buyer, seeing features, amenities and appliances described as new-ish creates several connotations beyond the dictionary meaning of the word:
- ‘New’ implies modern: in look and functionality. New appliances, furnaces, and finishes like paint and flooring simply have efficiencies, functions and an aesthetic style that older ones don’t.
- ‘New’ implies clean: the suggestion is that even the most germaphobic buyer won’t have to fumigate the place with various disinfectant sprays to expunge decades’ worth of cooties (imaginary or otherwise).
- ‘New’ implies less work for your home’s eventual buyers – especially if what’s new is a necessity that home buyers often have to buy before they can move in or a cosmetic item that home buyers often like to replace (i.e., carpet, paint, fridge, etc.).
That said, you should actually avoid using the word ‘new’ - unless something has been installed since you’ve moved out, and has truly never been lived in or with. Better to specify ‘recently remodeled,’ ‘installed this year,’ or ‘updated in 2011,’ to avoid legal problems later.
Think broadly when you’re thinking about how to apply this advice – work with your agent to determine whether to call out anything that’s new-ish about your home, whether that be appliances, a recent kitchen remodel, paint or landscaping. For that matter, look beyond your home with this point, to anything new in the neighborhood that might be relevant to buyers-to-be, like a new school, park, subway station, shopping strip or Farmer’s Market.
2. Do Tell: Your home’s dominant features. Ask yourself: what’s the very best thing about this place? Then ask again until you have maybe a handful of items. That handful of things may contain great fodder for your home’s marketing materials. If you have to choose, prioritize features that (a) visitors to your home often comment on, and/or (b) that you have immensely enjoyed while living in the place. And think outside the box: consider things like the light, the floor plan flow, the amazing block parties, the Zen you achieve sitting in your garden, the smells and sounds and the nearby attractions you haunt. (Did I already mention the neighborhood Farmer’s Market?)
3. Do Tell: Anything that’s exceptional about your home – the things that differentiate your home from the competition. Is your home larger or does it have more bedrooms than the average home in your neck of the woods? Is your lot bigger or more private? Is your home a ‘regular’ sale in a sea of short sales, or the lowest priced listing in your super-chic subdivision? Does it have panoramic water views in an area where most homes overlook a canyon? No rear neighbors where most properties are surrounded?
I’m not suggesting that if you live in an Agrestic-style tract of cookie-cutter homes, that you stretch to find something – anything! – you can say about how your home is different. But you’d be amazed at how many home listings fail to point out the differentiators buyers really do care about.
Don’t let your home’s listing be one of those. To avoid that dire fate, it might be helpful to take notes when you ask prospective listing agents for their first impressions of your home as compared to others in the area. Another strategy is to revisit your listing description after your agent has collected the feedback of Open House hunters. What you’re looking for is not something to exaggerate into a stunning selling point; rather, the goal is to find something that’s unique about your home relative to other nearby or competitive properties.
4. Do Tell: The features your home has that you know buyers crave. If your home has uniquely compelling features compared with its competition, then say so. But even if your home’s features are not so unique, if it has some nuts-and-bolts features that give it wide desirability for a large segment of buyers in your area, it behooves you to express and emphasize them.
If people buy homes in your area because of its great school district and family-friendly activities, then mention the big, level backyard; the play structure and the fenced/covered pool. If your target buyers are looking for chic, car-free, urban living, talk about the Whole Foods Market and the gym on the ground floor of your building and the multiple public transport options within spitting distance.
Here’s where it’s good to mention any such features your home has that you know buyers in your area tend to look for that may be pleasantly surprising to those who just see your home onliner. This may include the actual size of very large rooms, the fact that you have a living room and a den, or all the amazing built-ins and customizations you’ve had professionally installed in your kitchen, closets, office, workshop, craft room or garage.
5. Do Tell: Incentives, extras and details that make the transaction easier or more favorable than a buyer would expect. If you or anyone else is providing any sort of bonus or incentive that promises to make the transaction even a small amount less expensive, smoother, easier or faster than the norm in your area, call it out!
This may include:
- HOA or closing cost credits paid by you (or your bank or relocation company)
- Personal property you’re willing to leave behind (i.e., furniture, electronics, yard equipment)
- Your willingness to finance part or all of the sale price
- The fact that your listing is not a short sale or foreclosure - or anything else of this sort.
Because you’re probably not nearly as well versed in what area buyers expect from a transaction as your agent is, this is one particular area in which you should look to your agent for strategic counsel.
Insider Secret: Keep in mind that prospective buyers may only see a few lines of your home’s description online, and may not be able to see everything that would go on a flyer, or even the detailed or agent-only remarks that local agents can see on MLS listings. So after you talk with your agent about which of these ‘verbal staging’ points to include, it’s important to actually view your home’s online listings to ensure that buyers can actually see the important points.
Agents: Besides the basics (beds, baths, square feet and the like), what home descriptors fall into your bucket of things you must include in a listing description or property flyer?
Posted on May 17, 2012
U.S. builders started work on more homes and apartments last month and requested more permits to build single-family homes. The increases suggest the battered housing market is healing.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders broke ground in April at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes. That’s a 2.6 percent increase from an upwardly revised March figure and near January’s three-year high of 720,000. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.
Building permits, a gauge of future construction, fell last month from a 3 ½ year high to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 715,000. But that was because of a 23 percent drop in the volatile apartment category. Permits for single-family homes rose almost 2 percent.
Even with the gains, the rate of construction and the level of permits requested remain roughly half the pace considered healthy. But the increase, along with rising builder confidence and stronger job growth, is a hopeful sign that the home market may finally be starting to recover nearly five years after the housing bubble burst.
“We continue to believe that the bottom has been put in for housing … and while improvement will not be vicious nor rapid, improvement it still will be,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at BTIG, an institutional brokerage.
Builders have grown more confident since last fall, in part because more people have expressed interest in buying a home. In May, builder optimism rose to the highest level in five years, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index.
Homebuilders reported improving sales and higher traffic from prospective buyers, the survey showed. A gauge measuring confidence in sales over the next six months also increased.
Recent job gains have likely made it easier for more Americans to purchase a home. Employers have added 1 million jobs in the past five months. And unemployment has dropped a full percentage point since August, from 9.1 percent to 8.1 percent in April.
Mortgage rates, meanwhile, have fallen to record lows, making home-buying more affordable. Still, many would-be buyers are having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can’t afford larger down payments required by banks.
Though new homes represent just 20 percent of the overall home market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
There are some hurdles to a smooth recovery: Builders are struggling to compete with deeply discounted foreclosures and short sales – when lenders allow homes to be sold for less than what’s owed on the mortgage.
Another reason sales have fallen is that previously occupied homes have become a better deal than new homes. The median price of a new home is about 30 percent higher than the median price for a re-sale. That’s nearly twice the markup typical in a healthy housing market.
Posted on May 16, 2012
Color Palettes Made Easy
Need a pleasing color palette for your home decor? Just look around you! From works of art to stylish scarves, gorgeous color combinations are everywhere. Choose a colorful piece by an artist or designer, and the work is done for you.
Posted on May 14, 2012
TOWN MEETING TONIGHT! 7:00 PM. Please vote to accept Haymeadow Lane and Old Farm Way as town roads so we can continue the school bus service and get the proper maintenance of the road (snow plowing, street sweeping, drain cleaning, etc.)
Posted on May 12, 2012
Our cute little swimming spot, Sandy Pond, has swimming lessons available for town residents starting at $55 per session.
Interested? Click here for more information!
