How Long Does It Take To Sell Your Nashville Home?

selling yoy nashville tn home in todays real estate market means you have to be aware of all the market forces and especially pricing your home correctly

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How Long Does It Take To Sell Your Nashville Home?

Posted by Gary Ashton on Friday, November 2nd, 2018 at 1:29pm.

tips and tricks to sell quicklyThe housing market is taking off. But even as the market comes to life, there are some houses that will sit for months at a time without selling, while others get snapped up immediately. If you are considering selling your home, here are a few tips to help you on your way to getting a quick sale.

Working with an experienced real estate agent will help a seller set a fair market price from the beginning. An agent will look at a number of factors in recommending a list price, include the home's age, condition, and amenities. Most important in the recommendation will be factoring in the comps. Comps are nearby homes of comparable age, size, and condition that have recently sold. This informs the real estate agent of what prices the local market is willing to bear. A price in-line with the local market will generate more interest than one that has priced itself out of contention.

If you look around online, you'll probably find all kinds of tips and tricks out there for buying your first home. But what if you've already went down that road and are now ready to sell your first home? If this sounds like the situation you're in and want to take advantage of such a prime sellers market, here are a few things we recommend to help make the selling process easier and more effective for anybody who's never sold a home before:

Evaluate Your Home's Visual Profile

So now you really have to decide what your home can offer to a new buyer. You will be competing with similar homes so if you try and overstate your homes appeal, you will just disappoint the potential buyer, as you have raised their expectations, and created a disappointing experience. For example, if you market your slightly sloping lot as being a level lot, when the buyer arrives to view your home the first thing they are going to complain about is being attracted to the home under false pretenses. This then changes the buyers state of mind from being open and receptive to one of being wary and suspicious and looking out for other faults. You can see that you have to appeal to a buyer that is going to appreciate your home for what it is and not for what you want it to be.

Be Ruthless When De Cluttering

Sellers should be extremely aggressive when de-cluttering their home before listing. Many people sell their homes because they have outgrown it, but when a new buyer comes for a showing they are looking for a home that is spacious. If it is not something essential to your daily life, either donate it, recycle it, sell it, or store it somewhere else. Packing up kids' toys, off-season clothing, and extra furniture will help make a later move easier, and storing it all off-site will open up appealing space in the home to attract buyers.

Update the Exterior

The old saying about never getting a second chance to make a first impression is especially true when it comes to home sales. The exterior of the home, no matter the season, must be appealing. Update faded house numbers, paint the front door, plant colorful seasonal flowers, spread a new layer of mulch, and clean all the cobwebs from the front porch. In a single afternoon, a seller can vastly improve a home's curb appeal and usher new buyers to the front door.

Stage the Home Appropriately

The first thing you should do when preparing your home to sell is to spruce up your home and make it move-in ready. Fix leaky faucets, update your landscaping and make basic cosmetic repairs to make your home look as appealing as possible.

When touring a home, a buyer is trying to imagine how their lives could unfold in the space. To help them along, sellers must be sure that each space has a clearly defined use. Even if the seller only uses the dining room table as their home office, it should be staged as a dining room only. The kitchen counter may be where you do your best work, but a cluttered counter takes away from the kitchen's true purpose. Move the laptop, the bills, and the to-do list from the kitchen island and replace them with a decorative bowl of lemons.

A good real estate agent, like one of our own, will also likely urge you to be flexible with showings. If prospective buyers have to wait too long to get inside for a peek they may be less likely to stay interested.

Make Your Home Easy to Visit

Selling a home can be a stressful time, but every seller must be ready and willing to accept the inconvenience of showing the home. Buyers will not make an offer on a home they haven't seen, so making it easy to get them through the door is a critical step to getting an offer. Making the home available for showings in the evening and the weekends will go a long way toward getting a qualified buyer to step over the threshold.

The Best Value For Money

So now that you know you can't try and make your home something that it's not, the idea is to put your best foot forward and make sure that your home is in the best condition that it can be. This means that when the buyer comes to visit your home, they see a home that matches their search profile, but will rise to the top of all their choices because the condition of the home sets the standard amongst the comparable homes. This means that your house represents the best value for money for the buyer as now they are comparing homes with all the same features but hopefully pick your home as it has less work to do after moving in.

Choose a Qualified Real Estate Agent

There are a lot of factors that go into the buying and selling of a home, and they can be difficult to navigate for those who do not have professional real estate training. Sellers who want to have their homes sold quickly and effectively should seek out a qualified real estate agent who can employ the best marketing strategies for their home.

Find a qualified real-estate agent. You can always ask friends and family for referrals but it may be more important to find someone experienced with selling and buying homes in your neighborhood.

Make Certain the Price Is Right

Sometimes sellers believe that setting their price high will give them a chance to negotiate once an offer comes in. After all, they reason, it can always be lowered later if an offer doesn't come. The problem with this strategy is that a home listing sees the most activity in the first 30 days after listing. A price set too high for the local market can cause the listing to be ignored by qualified buyers and become stagnant.

Your agent can help you price your home correctly from the beginning. An overpriced home keeps a home on the market longer and deters potential buyers.

Pricing Your Nashville Home

At the end of the day pricing your home correctly is what is going to minimize the number of days that your home stays on the market. If you have the house priced right then this means that you are appealing to home buyers who can afford your home and it will have all the features and quality that they are expecting. if you can have the condition of the home in such a good state so that you remove any potential objections when the buyers see the home.

Basically you want to make sure that your home is priced at a point that will attract the buyers that will appreciate your home and see it as the best in that price range. Adding to the list price to try and get more money from the buyer that will just love your home unconditionally is a very ill advised route to take and ultimately results in the seller having to reduce the list price to come into line with all the other similar properties.

Pricing Right and Saving Money

if your home is over priced you have to realize that you are setting the expectations of the buyers in this price range to find features and a quality of construction that they will find in other homes in this price range. Once you realize that people do not just look at one house, and that they actually become very aware very quickly, what they can get for their money. As soon as they see that your home doesn't quite measure up to other homes in the same price range, they will immediately start looking for other negatives and then move on.

The down side to over pricing your home is that it will sit on the market for an extended time until you reduce the price to make it more comparable with the other homes that have the same profile as your home. Those extra weeks on the market can equate to to one or two months wasted marketing and in real financial terms means two extra mortgage payments as well as missing out on any good opportunities for homes that you could have bought!

Plan For Negotiations

Finally, plan ahead for possible negotiation points. From closing costs to the closing date and the price, there are all kinds of things that come up during negotiations and you need to know from the start what is most important to you, the seller.

Maximizing Your Nashville Homes Exposure

Now that you have decided to sell your home you have to put your self in the shoes of a buyer. How will they find your home? Which website will maximize the exposure of your home to the online buyer? How many existing buyers does the realtor have? How will the market your home to their database of past and current clients. Ask us how we can guarantee you exclusive exposure on www.Nashville.com and the only dedicated FaceBook application covering the Nashville real estate market.

Selling a home in todays market means that you should be taking every advantage of all the new marketing channels that are now available. Here are a few other places your home can be marketed to sell faster:

Real Estate Magazines

In the past, realtors would list their personal listings in the local real estate magazines, and potential buyers would pick up the magazine, and use this as their reference material for searching for their next home. Usually where there was one magazine there were several. That meant that the buyer would pick up all the magazines and look through them all. It also became clear that the most popular magazines were the ones with the color pages and pictures.

Searching Online

These magazines are still available for buyers but recent statistics have shown that 94% of buyers start their search for property online! The internet has become one of the best and easiest places for a prospective home buyer to start their research in to the availability of homes and property in their desired price range and area.

The introduction of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo made it very simple for buyers to refine their search for real estate in their preferred location and now they can search "virtually" from any place in the world as long as they have internet access and some kind of device to view the web pages on.

For someone moving to Nashville from another state, the internet has proven to be a vital piece of the property search process. Just by searching for 'Nashville Real Estate' they are now presented with websites that offer the buyer the ability to do some research on the homes for sale in Nashville.

Listing with TAREG (The Ashton Real Estate Group) of RE/MAX Elite

TAREG has consistently ranked in the top 3 teams within RE/MAX for all of TN and KY for the past 5 years and is the #1 team with RE/MAX Elite in Nashville. This success has given us the ability to continually strive to promote the team and our business to ensure you home will be seen by as many people as possible.

Getting Your Home Featured

Getting your home featured online is a must. As a home seller, these are the people that you would want to be reaching. Just listing your house in the Middle Tennessee Regional Multiple Listing Service is the starting point. To have your home then featured on our site as a preferred listing gives you the opportunity to have your home seen before all the other homes.

Featured by City and Price

Your home will be featured by city and price on our website. Take a home for sale in Brentwood that is valued at around the $500,000 price point. The buyer would likely be looking at homes just under $500,000 and over $500,000. In the link above you can see that there is a great range of homes available to the buyer. The listings in this site are organised by the most expensive to the least expensive. In this case the most expensive would be $600,000 but if you have a home listed, at say $550,000, you would be featured at the top of the page as a featured listing with TAREG. Now your home is being shown first in an appropriate price range which is giving you the first chance at making an impression on that buyer.

Featured by Subdivision

Also, if your home is located in a subdivision in Brentwood, your home will be featured at the top of the page. For example, if your home is in the Governors Club in Brentwood, then your property would be featured at the top of the page. If your home was the lowest priced, it would still appear as a preferred list and again giving your more exposure than the other homes that are listed in The Governors Club.

The Marketing Advantage

TAREG of RE/MAX Elite does have the marketing advantage of also featuring your property on the home page of Nashville.com. The site is search engine independent, in that many people just type in Nashville.com to be able to do research about the Nashville area before they move here, and find our website.

As they are doing there research, and they come to Nashville.com to find out about the City, the culture, the activities available for all the residnts, they will be subliminally thinking about seeling their home and buying a new home. When they see the real estate section of the site, they will then realise that they will want to know what kind of homes they can afford. Typically people look to buy the same kind of house , or slightly bigger, if they are moving. So with anyone visiting to contemplate a move to Nashville, they will search for a home in the price range and profile that matches their current home.

As one of the top real estate teams in all of Nashville we have 18 agents who all have a data base of clients looking for homes in a wide variety of price ranges and areas. Listing your home with TAREG of RE/MAX Elite will you instant access to a pool of buyers looking to buy homes in the Nashville area.

The end result is that TAREG is capturing buyers who are seriously considering moving to or within the Nashville area. If you are selling a home...then contact us so we can help you put your home in front of all thses buyers, and in our database of existing buyers, and make your home one of the TAREG featured homes!!!

Audit the Realtor's Internet Listings

Carefully read the agent's online listing––no one knows a home like a person currently living in it. Make sure that the listing is not only accurate but truly frames the home in the best light. Pictures should be of the highest quality and plentiful as well. As a buyer clicks through the pictures, they are making decisions about following up. If the pictures of the home do not reflect its true beauty, a seller should not be afraid to ask the real estate agent to take new ones.

Because most home searches begin online, it's incredibly important that the home's Internet listing is on point. Make sure the home is listed on all of the major online portals as well as the agency's social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. The sellers should also share the listing on their own social media to ensure that the listing is seen by as many people as possible.

Free Home Evaluation

To take advantage of the marketing ability of The Ashton Real Estate Group and the experience of our knowledge of the current real estate market in Nashville please feel free to take advantage of our Free Home Evaluation and talk to one of our listing specialists.

Although the Nashville real estate market may be red hot right now, that doesn't mean home sellers still shouldn't take certain measures to ensure they get top dollar for their home. Inventory is low and demand is up, but if your home isn't presented in a way that entices all those active home buyers out there, selling it may still be difficult, regardless of how scorching Nashville real estate is right now.

 

Gary Ashton

The Ashton Real Estate Group of RE/MAX Advantage

The #1 RE/MAX team in the World!

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