How to Prepare for Selling Your Home - Fall 2022 - Houses to Homes Podcast

Is it hard to sell a home now? No, but it is a more level playing field and you have to know what to expect and how to play that field for maximum success. Danny Clausen and Kristi Roberts discuss setting up plans and expectations for selling up front and knowing what potential options lie down the road.

Transcript:

Buyers are intelligent and we can't just have these wild dreams of I think my house is more amazing than my neighbors because I live in it. You know?

Let's talk a little bit about that. So what kind of expectations or conversations are you having with your sellers to prepare them for the market today?

I think the biggest thing right now is to almost walk them through the buyer's perspective and say, look, this is what's going on for the buyers and this is what they're seeing and talking them through how to position themselves well so that the buyer will choose their house as they are, you know, as they're looking around, because there are I mean, there's options out there. There's always options. But I mean, you know, you're trying to position your seller so that they receive the most money possible.

Right.

And I tell both sides of my clients, both buyers and sellers, that we have to remember sellers want to get as much as they can for their property and buyers want to pay as little as they can for the property…

And they want the best quality property for that amount.

And I get both sides. I mean, I've been on both sides. And so I can't fault the seller for wanting as much as they can get. And I can't fault the buyer for not wanting to pull more money out of their pocket. And so I think it's important to price. I think pricing is big right now. I think because the information age is obviously upon us, alive, well and thriving, you know, buyers are savvy. They've got a lot of information at their fingertips. As agents, we can supply even more information to them. And, you know, buyers are intelligent and we can't just have these wild dreams of, “I think my house is more amazing than my neighbor’s because I live in it.” You know?

Exactly. Gone are the days where you can list a house, ‘Oh, this one sold for $400k, I'm going to list mine for $410k.

Yeah. No, that's not, it's…

Yeah.

Correct. I 100% agree.

And I think um sellers are having to take a little bit more time preparing their homes for sale. I think in addition to pricing, it’s setting the expectations for a seller to prepare their home a little bit more, you know, do the extra cleaning, maybe do some pre-maintenance to the house or do like a pre-listing inspection and taking care of a lot of the little things. That's something that they didn't really necessarily have to do in last year's market or even the beginning of the year's market.

And I think it's important to do the right things, you know, and that's a whole - that could be a whole nother conversation.

Yeah, for sure.

On which things are important and which ones are not. But, you know, guiding your sellers through, like you said, preparing their home to make it look as good as possible, getting it priced correctly, and then just kind of guiding them on how to be most advantageous with that.

Right.

And also, I think that it's important to have the conversation of, you know, if we don't collect that offer in a certain amount of time, you know, what is our strategy?

Having a back up.

You know, and I prefer to have those conversations at the beginning. Because that's easier than, you know, if the seller gets frustrated. ‘Well, my house didn't sell, you know, in the first two days.’ Okay. Well, you know, we've already had the conversation of “if we don't have an offer by X, Y, Z day, what is our plan?”

And having that conversation with your seller I think would actually empower them because, you know, they're trusting you to sell their most valuable asset and now you're giving them multiple options and paths to get you to that final destination, which is really good.

Yeah. I think having the conversations about all the options at the beginning so people understand, I think is one of the things that really makes the process easier for people. I know that's a little bit of a sidestep, but as far as you know, getting your seller ready, how to deal with the market, is having the conversations of, you know, situations that may come. This transaction may take us down road A, road B or road C. Here's what comes down those roads. So if one of those roads is the ones we're down, we already kind of know what we're going to do.

You have a map.

Yeah.

A map to the destination.

Yeah.

With lots of detours. Yeah, that's all right. That's what we're here for.

Each each side of the transaction, the buyer and the seller are going to have some advantages and some disadvantages with the market.

Sure.

And I think that you can say that on wherever the market is at, really, unless it's so lopsided, you know, but as soon as you start to get at least some semblance of balance, yeah, there's going to be pros and cons for each one. I think right now the pro for the sellers is that inventory is still limited. And I'm really seeing, you know, the houses that are prepared, the best and priced correctly are still moving very quickly.

Yes, absolutely.

Most of them are selling still within two weeks.

Yeah. And if the seller is being conscientious about that and we can price it correctly, then it's still going to sell. If, you know, the pricing gets out of whack and you can see it, you know, if the pricing gets out of whack, you see price decreases. And, you know, we have an increase in price decreases because those houses that are overpriced or are not prepared correctly… or maybe it's something that even with all the preparation that the seller and the agent can do, maybe there's just something about the property, you know, maybe it is I don't know. We'll just pick on something. Maybe it backs up to a railroad track, and then there's a waste station across from it. And so it smells and it's noisy and there's just like nothing I can do about it. I mean, I have the best staged house, and it's priced the best, and it's just like… but there's some other factors that the property has.

That you can’t control.

Yeah. And it's just the way it is. So that's for the sellers and then for the buyers, I think that it's, you know, they're having to deal with the interest rate, but they've got more options now.

Yeah.

And I think I had one more thing to add about the interest rate, but I can't remember what it is. Oh, I did, this is what I wanted to say about interest rates: they've been going up. And… it, I mean, again, can't predict the future… all indications at the moment are that they're probably going to keep going up. That's the signs we have at the moment.

Yeah, my personal opinion - opinion, not fact, but opinion: I think they're going to stabilize at about 7 to 7.5 percent. And probably stay between, float between 6 to 7.5 percent. I think we're going to go back to “normal” interest rates.

Well, and that makes 6 look pretty good right now.

Right.

So and that's where I would be saying to my buyers, and I am: yeah, 6%’s up for sure, like we talked about. But you know, if you can get that locked in now and you can get in the house that you want, if they creep up to eight, you're sitting in a pretty good position. If they drop to five, refinance,

Yeah.

Get into that five. There's nothing that stops you from refinancing. Take advantage of it. You know, that's the thing. You get locked in now to a rate, you're in it, but if it goes down, you can change that situation and take advantage of that better rate.

And it's usually better than renting, which you get absolutely nothing in return.

Oh yeah, for sure. Don't get me started on that.

Danny is not only a real estate agent, he's an investor. He's a very smart guy. Don't get him started on rentals.

Yeah. Buy.

Buy. And buy rentals.

Yes, buy rentals. Be the landlord.

Yeah. Always. Always be the landlord.

Well, thank you for sharing your insight with me today. As always, you are a wealth of knowledge.

I'm just happy to be here. It's a good day to be smiling.