Flat Fee MLS Blog

The first thing buyer’s ask is “How much is your asking price?”   If the price is too high, the buyer will quickly lose interest.  If the price is too low, you will quickly lose money.

In order to price a home correctly, you must understand your local real estate market and your competition.   The goal is to set an asking price that successfully competes with homes that are comparable to yours.   Setting the correct price is easy to do, if you follow these 6 simple steps.

Step 1.   Get to Know Your Competition:  Drive through your neighborhood, and other area’s that compete with yours.  Identify the homes on the market that are similar to the one you are selling, with approximately the same size and age as yours, with the same number of bedrooms, baths and lot size.   Visit local real estate websites, infotube.net, realtor.com, zillow and trulia to verify property details, square footages, asking prices, etc.  These website can also help you find a complete listing of all homes that you may not have found on your drive by search.

Step 2:   Tour Open Houses:  Visit as many open houses as you can to see for yourself how your home compares.  Learn as much as you can about the condition of these homes, such as upgrades done to the kitchens, baths and bedrooms.

Step 3:   Find Recently Sold Properties:   To correctly price your home, you need to know what others like it have actually sold for.   To find out this information, you can visit your local tax assessors office, as housing data is public information.  The internet can also cut down on your homework.  Many tax assessor offices provide housing data online.  You can also educate yourself by reviewing the “Recently Sold” feature at Zillow and Trulia.  While these technology websites don’t have data for every location, they do cover most of the country.

Step 4:  Add and Subtract:  You now have information about property currently on the market and data for recently sold homes.   Evaluate the asking and sales prices, property details, neighborhood ammenities and ask yourself how your home measures up?

Step 5:  Be Honest and Impartial:   This is the hardest step for anyone attempting to value their own property.   Even Realtors, who price homes for a living, are notorious for overpricing their own homes.  Forget about what houses sold for in the past.  In most area’s, prices have decreased 15-20 percent in the past year alone.   Price your property inline with your competition or it will simply sit on the market.   Only competitively priced homes are selling in this market and buyers will only purchase what they perceive to be a good deal.

Step 6:  Set Your Price:   You have a complete picture of all the homes that compete with yours in the marketplace.   Price your property aggressively from Day One on the Market.   Pay attention to the effect subliminal pricing has on buyers and play to it.  If your competition is priced at $250,000, price your home at $249,000, for example.   Use your knowledge to to set a price that buyer’s can’t afford to pass up.

Congratulate yourself on a job well done!!!  Not only have you determined an asking price for your property, you’ve become an experienced expert in your local scene.  With your knowledge and sense of the competition, you will be able to honestly communicate about your homes’ advantages and disadvantages, when comparing it to other houses in the area.

Thank you for visiting Why 6 Percent.   Please feel free to comment or post a question about the sale of your home.

InfoTube.net  is now providing a Free Featured Home listing with video tours and 20 photo slideshow to all Why 6 Percent MLS customers.

The InfoTube.net homes for sale website, combined with a flat fee MLS listing places your property in front of millions of home shoppers each month.    But, in a difficult housing market with far to few buyers and far too many sellers, there is another way to reach millions of new buyers per month…Video.

Making a Video about the benefits of living in your home is easy and fun to do.   Dust off that digital camera you don’t often use, and put it to work selling your home to a whole new audience.

Tips for Shooting a Good Video Home Tour without Editing:

1. Plan Your Tour and Your Shots:   Decide what property features are important and how you will highlight them visually.   Make sure you clean and stage the area’s that will be on video so your house looks its best.   Plan the order of the shot in the same sequence as someone would tour the home.  Start with the front walk up, entry, etc. to make your video easy for the viewer to follow.
2. Get familiar with your camera. The on-off switch, zoom and record buttons.   You can pause between scenes by touching the “shoot” button and resume filming by touching it again.  (Practice a little to see how the camera works inside your home.)
3. Use the video camera like a still camera.  You can walk with a camera, but the video will be shaky. Keep the camera as still as possible.  A tripod is an excellant tool used to steady the shot.
4. Shoot 3 Basic Shots of each Feature:  Start with a Wide Shot to establish the location.  Zoom slightly to use a Medium Shot to follow action or frame a view or scene.  Use a Close Up shot to show off a detail or something special.
5. Watch how much you zoom.  The camera registers better if you move closer to the subject, versus just zooming in.  Also, avoid using the zoom if you are hand holding the camera.   You won’t be able to keep a steady shot.
6. Try to shoot at least 10 seconds for each shot.   If you are panning the scene, 10 seconds will produce a nice flow and the viewer won’t get sick trying to watch while the room spins.
7. Lighting is a must.   Do not shoot toward a bright window.  Lower the blinds and turn on all the lights, if you can’t get another angle.  Lamps or drop lights aimed at the subject and positioned behind the camera are an ideal way to light your space.  If shooting outdoors, try a cloudy day, early morning or late afternoon when harsh sun won’t wash out color and details.  Also when shooting outdoors, make sure the subject is facing the sun.
8. Plan to bring emotion and life into your presentation.   Include historical facts, neighborhood shots, nearby attractions, special views, street scene’s, neighborhood schools and parks, splashing hot tubs and roaring fires.   Add fresh flowers in the kitchen and dining room.  Set the dining room table.  Place candles around tubs and fireplaces.  Add color outdoors with inexpensive hanging baskets or pots of flowers.   You don’t need to plant them unless you want to.  You can hide the pots in the dirt or behind shorter plants.
9. Time the Video.   The majority of viewers will not sit through a video longer than 3 minutes, unless it is really compelling.
10. If can have a lot of fun Editing, if you have a newer computer.  Movie Maker is Free on Microsoft software.  IMovie is free on Apple.  While you don’t have to edit to make a great video, editing is great for adding captions, music or voice overs, or selecting the best scene.  We will discuss editing and special effects later next week.

Video’s don’t sell a home all by themselves, but they certainly attract serious buyers.  Do yourself a huge favor and upload your home video tour to InfoTube.net today…we will put it on Youtube for you.

Thank you for visiting why6percent.com.  Please feel free to post questions or comments anonymously by clicking the “comment” link below this article.

                                                                     Let the light of day brighten up your night! Powered by a built-in photocell, solar night-lights require no wiring and no electricity, and they turn on automatically at night. Now you can harness the sun to illuminate your driveway, paths, steps and decks with easy to install solar lights that recharge (for free) during the day. Your curb appeal is also enhanced for night time viewing by potential home buyers while you are marketing your home.

Designed to look great whether you like traditional or modern, these energy-savers are available both in-store and online. There is a vast array of holiday night lights available online, including Christmas and Halloween. They are becoming increasingly popular, particularly since they are so much easier to install than traditional wired systems. If you decide you don’t like where you put them, or simply want to expand or mix things up, they are also much easier to move than wired units.

By harnessing the sun for your night time lighting projects, you are saving money, saving energy, and enhancing your home’s curb appeal-this is an easy way to go green.

thanks for visiting why6percent.com

                                                                                                         If you put your pooch’s waste in a plastic bag, it takes up to 100 years to decompose. So, when it comes time to pick up after your beloved doggy, choose a biodegradable bag instead of regular plastic. Otherwise, you are wrapping one of nature’s quickest degrading substances in something that takes decades to break down, according to expert Brian Howard.

The typical dog produces 274 pounds of waste each year, according to the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. For sanitary reasons, most towns require owners to pick up after their pets, but what to do with it?

Use biodegradable bags that several companies offer. For example, BioBags-the corn based product -are certified to break down in a matter of days. They work very well in communities that have aerobic landfills that are churned up. Biodegradable products don’t work near as well in closed anaerobic landfills, but they certainly won’t hurt.

This is one easy thing that you can do in your own backyard. Adding curb appeal to your property doesn’t hurt either, whether you’re marketing your home to buyers or just going green.

thanks for visiting why6percent.com

Yes, you heard right…according to expert Brian Clark Howard, the latest announcement from Sam’s Club (the big box retailer of modern consumerism) is that they are poised to market solar panels at nine Southern California Clubs: Corona, Murrieta, Glendora, Ontario, La Habra, Chino, Long Beach, Fountain Valley and Torrance. These locations  have Home Effieciency Centers that have been created to showcase green products and appliances.

Sam’s Club is working with Borrego Solar Systems and BP Solar, and buyers can expect to save in the neighborhood of $500. Consumers can expect to see kiosks in participating stores that tout the benefits of solar energy.  The company is also ramping up offerings of Energy Star appliances, low-flow fixtures, DFLs, LEDs and other green building products.

The news from Sam’s Club echoes recent reports that IKEA is investing $77 million into its GreenTech energy fund, with the goal of producing and selling solar panels, efficiency meters, and energy efficient lighting. The green trend is finding its way into home marketing, as a selling tool and to educate homebuyers and sellers regarding energy efficiency that saves them money.

That Sam’s Club and IKEA are making forays into home renewable energy is big news. This will make a real dent in our current energy crisis and pave the way for a cleaner future. Alternative technologies available in stores across the Heartland will make this possible.

thanks for visiting why6percent.com 

                                                                                                            If you really want to sell your home, you need to expand your pool of buyers to include those people who want to buy a home but can’t qualify for a standard mortgage at this time. This pool is actually much, much larger than the pool of buyers who can get a mortgage right now according to real estate expert Wendy Patton.

If you’re ready to get creative about financing to entice buyers, here are three major options:

1. See if your lender will allow a mortgage assumption.

2. Help a buyer build a down payment through a lease-to-own deal.

3. If you’ve got the equity, offer financing yourself.

If stressed-out sellers and hard-to-qualify buyers could just join forces they could both achieve their goals. The answer may lie in “creative financing.”

Here are 10 Unique Selling Tactics:

1. Hold an open house party

2. Take home staging to the extreme

3. Help serious buyers with financing

4. Have a little faith

5. Throw in some extravagant extras

6. Make your home a grand prize

7. Get Web savvy

8. Let your house do the talking

9. Put your house on the auction block

10. Let buyers sleep on it

thanks for visiting www.why6percent.com

                                                                                                           If you are selling your home FSBO or listing on the MLS, you are likely to have some close encounters with first-time homebuyers while marketing your home. There are a number of terms that are unfamiliar to first-time homebuyers and the more informed and knowledgeable you are as a seller, the more helpful you are to your buyer.

Here are some terms that both buyers and sellers should be familiar with:

Closing costs: The expenses that buyers and sellers normally incur in a real estate transaction. Closing costs are in addition to the price of the house and usually add up to between 5% and 6% of the mortgage amount.

Conventional Loan: A mortgage that is not insured by the Federal Housing Administration or guaranteed by Veteran Affairs.

Origination Fee: The fee charged by a lender to prepare all documents associated with your mortgage.

Escrow: A special third-party account that is set up by the lender until all conditions of the purchase contract have been met.

Title Search: An examiniation of public records to ensure that you are purchasing the property from its legal owner and that there are no liens, overdue assessments or other claims that would affect the value or marketability of the property.

Deed: A legal document by which the ownership of property is transferred from one owner to another.

thanks for visiting www.why6percent.com

         Whether you are selling your home yourself “fsbo“ or you are advertising your home on the MLS, sometimes you need to attract a different breed of buyer. For a home that might sit on the market for a while, you might want to take the time to highlight the pet-friendly aspects of your house.  Marketing to pet owners can make your house sell more quickly. It’s a real selling tool if you can show your home is good for pets.

Here are some inexpensive tips you can use to appeal to pet lovers:

1. Hang a couple of leashes on a coat rack by the back door.

2. In the kitchen, place a large jar of doggy treats on the countertop.

3. In the master bedroom or family room, set out a stylish dog bed, don’t forget the dog or cat magazine on the nearly table.

4. Let the agents know that pet owners are welcome to bring their dogs along to the property to scope it out. Don’t forget to set out a water bowl for the visitors.

5. Pet owners will get a kick out of viewing your personal photos of your pets, so post a few on the fridge for them.

The best pricier option is to install an electric, invisible fence around your property and the newest thing is to put a pet bath in the laundry room or garage. A sure fire attention-getter is a custom-built doghouse that is a replica of the main house.

Don’t forget the clean-up area, the lawn should be immaculate when you show the house. If you can’t clean-up the area yourself, hire a pooper-scooper company to do it for you.

thanks for visiting www.why6percent.com