Be Ready To Sell

by Darrin DeRoches September 11 - 17, 2014

When selling your property you must have “real expectations”.  The biggest mistake is to list your property at a price that you believe you need rather than the price that is right.  A real estate agent cannot create showings for your property out of thin air; the property has to sell itself. There are tricks to sell properties but tricks can be exactly that — tricks.      You can create urgency or inflate a property’s value but in the end everything you do to sell your home will have to answer to someone.  If you overprice your home and someone actually pays the exuberant price one would believe they will be laughing all the way to the bank but the bank may be laughing at you.  In today’s market banks are requesting more and more appraisals because the property may sell to some over eager buyer but the bank will not lend the money just because the buyer was “tricked” into the price.  Banks are approving a mortgage but when it comes time to hand out the money they are asking for appraisals to insure the numbers add up.  If they don’t the bank will require the buyer to come up with more money or they will outright refuse to provide the mortgage.  The mortgage clause use to be all about the buyer being approved but it is leaning more towards the property being approved. There was a time banks would not lend in certain postal codes but now they will not lend in certain price ranges in certain areas.     Another real expectation is that it still takes on average about 45ish days to sell a property. That is an average so your property could be on the market for months if you are not realistic.  Everyone reads about how hot the market is but that does not mean your overpriced, bad location, beat up house will sell in days.  Sellers like to blame their agents when no one calls about their house but maybe it has to do with price and location.  You have to be realistic and work with your agent to get your house sold.  Instead of complaining about the progress, make some changes and create some momentum.      Be realistic about your property and listen to your agent.  It is easy to just keep dropping your price to get a property sold but it does not always work. You hired an agent to sell your property so maybe you should listen to them and follow their lead and experience.  Timing has a lot to do with it.  The last three weeks have been a little slow due to school, work etc. but the market is still strong and will be moving fast in the next month or so.  Be ready to sell now or you will find your property sitting on the market while everyone else is on the move!  V     Darrin DeRoches is a local real estate and mortgage broker. He can be reached to answer questions, comments or stories about real estate experiences through this weekly column at sold@uniquerealty.ca