Quote:
Originally Posted by newts
I've actually had some good success with most of my listings in this market. A house that is right priced and shows well does have good potential to sell. But there's really no room for error in this type of market:
a) Your house needs to show perfectly in every aspect. You can't expect someone to walk through your house and love it if you're not willing to put the work and discipline in to make it perfect. Furthermore, you see a lot of listings out there with bad photo's and bad descriptions on the listings. I can only imagine how badly they show as well. Actually, I know, because I've walked through a bunch of them.
b) Your price needs to be competitive vs. what else is in your trading area. It's really important to get a grasp on the other houses that your potential buyers are walking through, and price accordingly. In this type of market, if my sellers are willing, I make it a regular practise to actually physically visit with them the 4 or 5 closest comparables in the trading area to get a first hand look. In addition to really analyzing on paper all the comparables in the area, this exercise can be a bit of a wake-up call and add extra motivation in terms of getting what needs to be done to prepare a house for selling.
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Newts:
These are great points, and ones that I thought we had learnt. We weren't the prototypical 'just throw it on the marketplace' people, but didn't do a lot to dress the place up...we were wrong.
So, we spent thousands on carpet upstairs, refreshed where the paint upstairs was not great, staged the pace with furniture and pictures, bought window coverings...and lowered the price, after not just looking at local listing online, but going and seeing them,and realizing that for some people an amenity such as granite counters in more important than and extra couple hundred square feet.
We also went and had different pictures taken of the place as we didn't like the ones the Realtor did, for that internet curb appeal.
Where I'm frustrated is that we did all that,have had a couple dozen people come through in the past few weeks, and finally got an offer, which we accepted, and got hooped by CMHC's refusal on the post tension cable issue.
We are far from 'underwater' on this, but the whole two mortgages and condo fees/taxes/Enmax thing is really starting to get to me. As I said, thanks for the insights on what you are seeing as what makes things move in this market. Any other insights from any of the learned minds on this fine board are more than welcome. (And of course if you want to see what I'm talking about feel free to PM me...you might find it a heck of a good property at a bit of a deal!)
