Tips for Selling a Home in a Buyer’s Market

Has it been a while since you sold a house?

Things may have changed since you last did.

Angela Stamoulos, an education manager for Coldwell Banker in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, trains real estate agents to educate sellers about the changed market.

The trick in these trying days of buying and selling, she says, is to make sure you distinguish your property from the large number of similar homes in the same price bracket.

“These wallflowers are the big problem right now, from the point of view of sellers and real estate agents,” she tells MSN Money.

Her tips for selling in a buyer’s market:

1. Don’t let your property languish while new inventory is building up. Price it right initially to give buyers a sense they are getting a value for their money and to avoid numerous, incremental listing price reductions that reek of desperation.

2. If you get a lot of activity, don’t respond instantly to an offer. Tell buyers you’ll allow a couple of days to give adequate time for multiple hunters to view the home. Even in a difficult market, well-priced properties are bid up over the asking price.

3. A mortgage loan in California is different than one in Texas. The point is, educate yourself about your local market. Ask real estate agents for these statistics, including comparisons from last year:

• Inventory. The number of homes currently on the market.
• Days on the market. The length of time properties are staying on the market.
• Average sale price. This is helpful information, but it can be skewed by, for example, numerous high-end properties sold. The average price in your market may still be $350,000, just as it was last year, but in today’s slower housing market, that same sum may buy a lot more house.
• Median price. This is the price at which half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less.
• List-to-sell ratios. This ratio, expressing the list price of homes over the selling price, will reveal drops in prices. Ratios are given for periods of time, showing the effect of price reductions on time on the market.

4. Find the agent who can expose your property to the most buyers:

• Ask whether the company is part of a larger company or network. How many agents does the company employ to promote your property to buyers?
• Will the potential buyers be pre-approved by a mortgage company? This can be critical in securing financing.
• Use Alexa Internet to compare agencies’ website traffic. Be sure to compare local - not national - websites when checking local offices of companies.
• Learn about the agency’s overall marketing strategy. Do they use newspaper ads? E-mail? Their own site? What’s their marketing plan for your property?
• To screen agents, interview several, asking each for their market data and their interpretation of local trends.