The Top 10 Reasons You’re Not Getting Any Offers On Your Fort Lauderdale Real Estate Home
Have you asked yourself why you’re not getting any offers on your Fort Lauderdale real estate home or condo? Well the answer is really pretty simple. Either you as the Seller are not doing what your agent advised you to do, or your agent either does not know what to do in order to get your home sold. I don’t like to mince words. I like the direct route. It may not be popular, but it’s the truth.
Despite what you may have been told and may have heard, homes in Fort Lauderdale and throughout South Florida are indeed selling. Maybe not at the feverish pace of a few years ago and maybe not at the rapidly appreciating prices we enjoyed in that same time frame, but they are most assuredly selling.
So just how do you get into this increasingly exclusive club of successful homeowners who have been able to get their home sold? No one has a crystal ball but if you read the Top 10 Reasons No One Is Making An Offer On Your Fort Lauderdale Real Estate Home Or Condo below and recognize that you or your agent recognize any of the reasons as being applicable, well then you may want to take the steps necessary to remedy these problems.
1. Failure To Recognize That It Is A Buyer’s Market: Have a good cry, throw a tantrum, get it out and click your heels three times with your red ruby shoes. In other words do what ever you need to so that you and your agents come to grips with the fact that you have to understand what kind of market we are in. Make sure your agent understands the absorption rate and can explain it to you and how it impacts your ability to sell your home. (If they don’t know…well you may have to make a decision)
2. Price, Price, Price!: Has your agent performed a regression analysis on your property? Here’s a hint, the CMA they prepared or offered to prepare isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if a comprehensive regression analysis was not included. As many of my regular readers know, the Fort Lauderdale Real Estate Blog produces a lot of Fort Lauderdale Real Estate Market Reports and statistics.
These free reports are a very handy in helping sellers see where the market is and more importantly where it is headed. Often the single biggest reason your home is not getting any showings and not selling is because the home is priced wrong.
If the relative pricing data in the market is not properly used, you as the seller will be left without a chair in the real estate version of musical chairs. Price your home right and it sells. Don’t and it sits. Eventually your agent will keep lowering the price (with your approval) to a price it may eventually sells at.
Months and months later you may get an offer that you decide to take which if you had a comprehensive regression analysis performed you may have been able to price it right at the beginning.
3. Buying Into The Low Ball Offer Myth: Repeat after me. This is a Buyer’s market. I am not in control. All offers should be respected and reviewed. Your asking price is meaningless! Repeat it again! No… I won’t call you useless and weak, but I may suggest you drop and give me 20…if there is anything I despise more than an incompetent real estate agent, it’s the incompetent real estate agent who does not recognize that ALL OFFERS ARE TO BE CONSIDERED AND NEGOTIATED.
Too many agents end up chasing away potential buyers by saying that either they or their seller is “insulted” by the offer. Utterly ridiculous! If you get an offer, any offer, it’s time to review every aspect of it and then roll up your sleeves and begin negotiating. I don’t mean by fax after fax.
If possible set up a meeting with the prospective buyer and why not have everyone get in a room and see if a deal can be hammered out. Most agents will never agree to this because they have no idea as to how to conduct a negotiation meeting. (If they don’t know…well you may have to make a decision)
4. No One Knows Your House Is For Sale: Ever go to a movie? How about go shopping for some new clothes at your local mall? Ever eat at a new restaurant? Of course we all have. How did you know to go there? Easy answer here. They advertised and marketed and let you know they were open for business and wanted your business!
It amazes me that most agents have no idea or budget to market your home. Isn’t that the main reason you hired them and agreed to pay 6% of your hard earned yet rapidly disappearing money? Buyers can only buy what they know is for sale. This sign in the ground…is that marketing? The empty open house?
C’mon, that’s so yesterday. I hate to break it to you but most agents out there get your listing, enter the data on the MLS, put it on a couple free web sites, make a flyer on their home computer and call it a day and wait around to see what happens. Most agents consider their sale done.
They got you to sign on the dotted line. They feel that now having you locked up that it’s money in the bank. If your house sells by some stroke of luck they will get a big payday. If it doesn’t..well it did not cost them anything. Think I am wrong? Email me and I will send you articles, some even from the National Association Of Realtors, telling agents exactly that.
These people are called “listers” and their ONLY job is to get you to list your property with them and then hopefully someone else will sell it. Hey, don’t blame them, it has worked that way for decades. Want to see your agent squirm? Ask them to bring over their marketing campaign for your review. Tell them you want to see how they intend on marketing your property.
5. Foreclosures, Distressed Sales And Bargains: Everyone wants a deal when they buy something…or at least the appearance that they got a great deal. Here’s a scary statistic I bet your agent does not know..well maybe they do now since they have probably been reading the Fort Lauderdale Real Estate Blog…but that stat is that over 40% of the homes being sold are foreclosures or distressed sales of some sort.
Hmmm…with banks and some sellers being truly motivated and ready to aggressively cut deals, how are you going to compete? Don’t think you have to? think again. Remember I mentioned that thing called a regression analysis above? Well here’s a pop quiz for you and your agent. What do you think happens to the perceived and real value of your home as banks and distressed sellers in your neighborhood dump their homes at unbelievably low prices?
Now you know why the flowery CMA does not mean squat. Please tell me you are not falling for that line that some agents are feeding sellers that foreclosures don’t get used as comparables by appraisers. Listen to this if you want some real eye opening, fact based info as to how a home is appraised and looked at by the buyer’s lender.
6. Pictures,Videos, And Virtual Tours: In no other business except maybe modeling does the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” mean so much. In real estate it has been proven that prospective buyers love pictures and lots of them. Many buyers will eliminate from contention those homes that they can not see pictures of online.
Now for the kicker…since we all know this, are you sure your home has been photographed and videotaped so that buyers can preview your home? Don’t just assume it. Call your agent and tell them you need to see them to email you over your listing complete with pictures. You may be surprised at how many agents take no pictures and how many agents take just a few.
You have to be marketing people!! Sales is a marketing business!! Buyers want to see pictures. If you are not doing that which entices buyers then you or your agent are not properly marketing your home for sale.
7. Does Your Real Estate Agent Have A Major Presence On The Internet?: Why is it important to hire an Internet savvy Fort Lauderdale real estate agent? Well Over 85% of all home searches start on the Internet. Homes for sale in Fort Lauderdale need to be marketed online. they must be searchable so that prospective buyers may find them. Somehow you found your way here to the Fort Lauderdale real estate blog.
We show up very high in the search engines. We show up very high for those keywords that buyers will be searching. We show up very high in the neighborhoods where we are marketing. Here’s a big mistake a lot of sellers often make and most real estate agents count on. If they ask a real estate agent if they have a website almost every agent will say yes.
Everyone has a website. Some have two or three or more. The problem is no one goes to their websites. It’s basically a tombstone on the Internet superhighway. Ask them to show you where they show up for google for “insert city name” real estate when searched, how about city name homes, how about city name foreclosures…don’t fall for the trick..here’s my name, I show up for. No one ever searches an agent’s name.
Bottom line you have to have a major presence online and you need to know what you are doing in the online world. Only 1-3% of ALL real estate agents even have a blog…so that really makes it easy for you to weed out the non-savvy (no online presence) real estate agent.
Over 25% of all Home Buyers FIRST saw the home they purchased on the Internet. If your Fort Lauderdale homes are not heavily marketed on the Internet, you are missing thousands of potential buyers.
8. Your Home Isn’t Move-In Ready: Competition in the real estate market is absolutely fierce right now. Buyers have their pick of the litter and can be very picky and demanding. No they don’t want a fixer-upper…investor’s excluded. They want a home that is ready to be their home at closing.
If you are not offering a home that shows to be ready for a new owner and their family then your home may be passed over. Is everything about your home up to code? Are all necessary repairs completed? Do you know if your roof will pass inspection? What is the useful lifespan of your roof and major components like the HVAC unit? Do you have updated electrical service instead of fuses?
These are the questions that will get your home eliminated from contention if not satisfactorily addressed. You need to put yourself in the buyers shoes. Would you buy this house and if so why? Do not leave it up to your agent to find out this information.
Most won’t, it does not benefit them to do so. Demand that they create a comprehensive package about your home that people can download. Accordingly that would also mean that they were marketing your home online…where the buyers are!
9. You’re Home Isn’t Accessible: Remember in # 4 above where I wrote that you have to make sure that people know your home is for sale? Well one of the biggest problems in selling a home is when you are tied up with a real estate agent who does not answer their phone calls or emails or does so in a very untimely fashion.
Many real estate agents have left the business altogether and many who have remained have decided to get other jobs to try and make ends meet. That’s fine but the problem occurs when a prospective buyer of an agent representing a buyer (buyer’s agent), tries to get a hold of somebody for information about the house.
You would be amazed how much business is lost simply because of agents who don’t answer their phone calls or don’t return phone calls. Not to blame everything on your agent, but if you don’t allow a lockbox or restrict showing hours because you may be inconvenienced, then you as the Seller are just as much to blame.
The home must be able to be shown and agents must answer the phone and return calls and emails or your home will be passed over and removed from consideration.
10. No One Cares How Much You Spent To Improve The Property Or What You Paid For The Property: Yeah, I know ..it hurts, get over it, remove emotion and make this business transaction work. If you don’t NEED to sell then don’t. If you do NEED to sell then make sure you do what is necessary to ensure that you have the best chance of selling the property.
In a Buyer’s market, you are not going to convince a buyer to pull the trigger. They have way too many options and so many owners are offering incentives. You have to be better. Save the incentive and do what is necessary to sell the home. If you do all of this and your home still does not sell, then refer to #2 above and make sure that you are priced correct.
Not be the bearer of bad news but in this market, with the amount of inventory that we currently have and with all of the foreclosures impacting value even further, you need to have an aggressive marketing strategy and a sincere commitment to sell your property and to do so without becoming emotion about the realities of today’s market.
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