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Douglas Trudeau , Assoc. Broker
Prudential Foothills Real Estate
64 N. Harrison Road, Suite 160
Tucson , AZ 85748
Mobile: 520-954-2209
Contact Me

Tucson Real Estate - Home Selling 106

Now that your home is on the market, what should you expect? If priced right and in a desirable location, you should have buyers wanting to see inside your home. If over priced or in a poor location, all the effort in the world will not work. Within the first week you should know if you were prepared and your home was priced right. If there are no calls to show and no REALTOR® is wanting to preview…the writing is on the wall…pay attention to it.

Availability - Homes that buyers can easily access and see get more viewings. Strict time constraints can force buyers away. This does not mean that buyers need access to your home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Things like, “No showing before noon, No showing on weekends, Can only show between 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, Must notify owner 72 hours in advance” will all reduce the number of potential buyers. Notifications like “Call no answer show, 15 minute courtesy call requested, Call show sell” are all inviting messages that give buyers a reasonable chance to see your home. I don’t like “Show 8-5 Mon-Fri call evenings & weekends” because it is a clear message to criminals when they can remove your furniture and belongings.

Show-ability - We’ve all heard “Dress to impress.” For showing your home “Clean to impress” is the motto. Cleaned, well organized homes with all the lights on show better. Dark dirty dungeons are less attractive. Beds should be made, sinks clean, trash dumped, closets in order, and under the sink in order. I’ll never forget one home where everything was lined up neatly on laundry room cabinets, in the pantry, under the sinks, and in kitchen cabinets. Ready for a military Inspector Generals inspection. My clients were impressed.

Leave The House - Buyers want to wander around freely, look under the sinks, check the vents, sit and imagine how their furniture will look, and experience the back yard. Having an owner around, whether annoyingly following or making buyers feel like they are interrupting the sellers lives, can be a distraction from viewing a home that prevents buyers from seeing the full potential of a home. Take the children and pets with you. Let the buyers imagine that this could be their home.

Small Children - If you have small children who need nap time, let buyers know. Having a set time helps so other homes can be viewed during that time. If its an absolute must, a slight delay in nap time is not devastating. Flexibility may be mandatory in this area depending on the market.

Trapping The Senses - Three senses to capture when buyers are looking at a home. The first is sight. Cleaning, freshening up, arranging, organizing, staging all prepare the home for a lasting visual impression. Does the home look as good or better than it did on the Internet? Second is smell. The most common are freshly baked bread, vanilla, and apple cinnamon. Having freshly baked cookies in the kitchen for buyers to take will help make your home stand out as welcoming and inviting.

Pets - Having a barking dog behind a locked door is a real deterrent to buyers. Pet hair all over the home is another one. Some buyers are allergic to cats. Pets locked out doors prevents buyers from seeing the yard and outside of the home. If at all possible take pets for a walk, check them in at a pet care facility, or see if family can keep them at their home during the week, then take them for walks on the weekends when your home is being showed.

Evenings - Give yourself time to live a little. Allowing late night showings should be the exception. Some buyers work during the day, and can only see in the early evening. How late is too late is a personal choice.

Weekends - Many buyers are off work on weekends, which is the best time to see a home. Plan on being out of the house as much as possible on weekends and make your home readily available to show.

Open Houses - Open houses early on will help to get the word out that your home is on the market. Measure the level of viewing, what days, and what hours. If it smells likes waste of time, tastes like a waste of time, and looks like a waste of time, guess what? If you are getting a lot of attention, guess what? Make sure personal valuables are safely put away. If you are getting a lot of viewers, ask you REALTOR® to have another REALTOR® help out during open houses to make sure he or she is not being distracted by someone casing your home and looking for something to steal.

Self Protection - I always tell my clients to never allow anyone who wants to see their home without a REALTOR®. For your protection that bona-fide, verifiable REALTOR® is their not only to show your home, but, for your protection as well. Most REALTORS® are taught to check out buyers before showing them homes for their own protection. Having a background working with criminal for over 20 years before I retired, my intuition goes off like a sore bunion in the rain. Not everybody has that sixth sense. Play it safe, and don’t take a chance. Insist on the buyer returning with a REALTOR®.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Tucson Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

We have seen a huge increase in the number of motivated sellers in the past few months. With how many homes are on the market right now so many are having a hard time selling their homes, and are going to great lengths to sell their homes. Hopefully the market will turn around next spring as predicted so sellers have an easier time in 2008!

July 25th, 2007 // TSmith

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