Top 3 (plus 1) Quick Sale Tactics for SW Florida Homes for Sale, Naples, Ft. Myers, Estero!

 Top 3 (plus 1) Quick Sale Tactics for SW Florida Homes for Sale, Naples, Ft. Myers, Estero! Owners of SW Florida homes for sale each have their own individual goal hierarchy. The bottom line is nearly always at—or close to—the top of the list, like everything people sell. But there can be other considerations that rival fetching the largest amount of cash. Some of the SW Florida homes that are for sale are adjacent to family members—or long-time neighbors who are just like family—so another wish might be to hand off to a new owner who seems likely to keep the place in good order.

More commonly, high among target goals is the wish for a speedy resolution. In fact, for some, personal or professional demands warrant that their homes for sale need to be completed as quickly as possible. Where speed is absolutely the overriding objective, the first tactic is also the one most likely to achieve that goal:

Tactic #1: Price it right—right from the start. An asking price that is at or slightly below other comparable SW Florida homes for sale is all but certain to draw immediate attention, more showings, and garner offers sooner than homes that are pegged at premium price levels. This is true across all price ranges, even at the seven-figure estate level. Those who price their homes for sale at a figure that shows they are ready to move have good reason to assume that the Field of Dreams dictum will hold: “they will come!”

Tactic #2: Update as needed. Where it is prominent, fresh paint, a new fixture or two, and fresh landscaping touches have a good chance of making any home stand out from the pack. If the asking price is reasonable, the object is to be competitive with other SW Florida listings. A home that is desirable from a style and condition standpoint should be among those most likely to get the earliest action.

Tactic #3: Observe the Three “De’s”—Deep Clean, DeClutter, DePersonalize. These are the steps we hear so often from every informed quarter—the steps that make a home “show ready.” True deep cleaning might well involve professional help. We all know how to clean our homes, but a real pro has special tools (and tricks!) that really make a place shine. Decluttering means storing all those items that we usually have around, but which we really don’t need every day. Depersonalizing means stashing the personal artifacts that would otherwise tag a home as emotionally belonging to someone else—anyone other than the wished-for new owner. These three “De’s” can speed any “home for sale” into a “home that’s sold.”

 Top 3 (plus 1) Quick Sale Tactics for SW Florida Homes for Sale, Naples, Ft. Myers, Estero! These three tactics are among others that can come into play, but they are arguably the most important where speed is paramount. And there is one more that is vital, too—one that meshes nicely with all the other marketing initiatives:

Tactic #4: Call me!

5 Ways to Derail Selling a House in SW Florida, Naples, Bonita Springs, Marco Island

5 Ways to Derail Selling a House in SW Florida, Naples, Bonita Springs, Marco Island. When you set about selling your SW Florida house, it’s good to adopt the kind of determined mindset that’s served you well in other pursuits. That’s all well and fine, so long as you keep in mind that when it comes to selling a house, in addition to being a serious business undertaking, it is one that also weighs in with a significant emotional component. Not just for the prospective buyers—but also for you, the seller. And that reality is at the basis of the first of these five major No-Nos that can foul up otherwise flawless efforts toward selling a house in SW Florida:

1. Getting emotionally over-involved. Since almost everyone who is selling a house that they have lived in for years is somewhat tied to the place, you can’t expect to be robotically disconnected from its sale. But when a seller can’t distance him or herself sufficiently from what is in fact a financial transaction, it’s harder to make sound business decisions. Self-check hint: if you feel your blood pressure rising at any mention of a deficiency in your property, you may be falling prey to this one!
2. The odor thing. This No-No is frequently called an Uh-Oh: the odoriferous memories of cigarette smoke, pets, mildew, and the like are sometimes thought to be the most undeniable factor to slam the door on a sale before it even gets started. Extra hint: if the chef in the family is going to experiment with some exotic culinary experiment, best not to conduct it on the night before a showing or open house!
3. Not too much explanation needed. Creepy crawlies need to find other accommodations…and, as summer approaches, keep the fly swatters handy.
4. Being there. The property is yours until the last ‘i’ is dotted and the last ‘t’ crossed, but if you are anywhere in sight during a showing, visitors can’t help but feel that they are just guests in someone else’s home. Since it’s important to help prospects envision themselves as happy owners of your SW Florida house, the less in evidence the current owners are, the better. It’s why you remove family artifacts to prepare for showings. If the object is to allow the visitors to hang around as long as possible to really get a feel for the place, make sure you make plans to return after I’ve sent you the all-clear!
5. That wallpaper. This one is mentioned by many of real estate’s don’t go there pundits, although I find that it is growing rarer as time passes. But if you have secretly come to hate some overly busy wallpaper in a particular room, assume it could take your prospective buyers less time to arrive at the same opinion. It can have a peculiarly off-putting effect on some, giving the whole house a dated feeling. So when in doubt, lose the paper.

5 Ways to Derail Selling a House in SW Florida, Naples, Bonita Springs, Marco Island. These five no-no’s are easy to eliminate if you recognize them as integral parts of selling your SW Florida house. Selling your house is a team effort all the way—and the first step is drawing up the game plan. In other words, giving me a call!

An Answer to When to Put Your SW Florida Home Up for Sale, Naples, Bonita Springs

An Answer to When to Put Your SW Florida Home Up for Sale, Naples, Bonita Springs. While reading a real estate magazine article about “the pros and cons of buying during the peak selling season,” I was fairly certain (as you probably would be) that, one way or another, the cons wouldn’t outweigh the pros. SW Florida’s peak selling season is certainly prime time whenever there are homes for sale, but often there are reasons when other times of year can be opportune.

The article in came up with more pros than cons. No surprise there: we can all bank on the inevitability of that conclusion (that NOW is a good time to buy or sell) whenever we’re hearing from an industry whose business is buying and selling!  

So—how do you actually get the straight scoop on the subject?

The answer may lie in understanding why a true best answer for when to put up SW Florida homes for sale always does tend to be “now.” It’s because of a phenomenon called “The Riddle of the Ultimate Buyer.” The riddle goes like this:

The “Ultimate Buyer” is the prospect who will ultimately wind up buying your SW Florida house. Before you put it on the market, there is no way to accurately forecast very much about who that will be. We can set our marketing outreach to target the haunts of the most likely buyer profiles (in fact, that’s what we do), but as any experienced SW Florida Realtorwill tell you, the Ultimate Buyer could also be anyone—and their identity is often surprisingly unlike what anyone would have predicted. Frequently, their choice of which residence to buy has been shaped by equally unforeseeable motivations.

Not only is the profile of the Ultimate Buyer unknowable, her or his schedule is equally enigmatic. The only thing we do know for certain is that your Ultimate Buyer will be looking, become interested, and make an offer while your SW Florida home is up for sale. If you put off listing for a month or two, those months might have been the only ones during which that prospect was looking to buy in SW Florida. That might have been the only time when that buyer happened to drive past your house (it would have been without my “For Sale” sign out front); might have been the only time he or she was available to take a tour; found suitable financing—any number of factors might have been in play.

The Riddle of the Ultimate Buyer is such a puzzle that we can only rely upon the one thing we know for certain: that buyer can only materialize once the home is up for sale. That’s why now is a better time to list than a month or two from now, when the person who would have been your Ultimate Buyer has already moved into another SW Florida house. They’re someone else’s Ultimate Buyer—and they won’t be back!

An Answer to When to Put Your SW Florida Home Up for Sale, Naples, Bonita Springs. So, while there’s no pat answer to when is absolutely the best time to list a home for sale, logic says it’s more likely to be now rather than later. Especially while we’re wrapping up SW Florida’s peak spring selling season, when there are usually a greater number of potential Ultimate Buyers actively searching, it’s a doubly good time to give me a call!

Painless First Steps for Selling Your Home in SW Florida, Marco Island, Naples, Estero

Painless First Steps for Selling Your Home in SW Florida, Marco Island, Naples, Estero. Selling your SW Florida home is the kind of major undertaking that has so many facets just deciding where to start can delay liftoff. Since there is no actual “right” place to begin, like other mammoth projects, just digging in anywhere will do. The happy truth is that when you’re selling a home, once momentum gets going, the rest of the pieces tend to fall into place.

To get the ball rolling, here is a pre-sale checklist of major activities that selling your SW Florida home will entail. To get started, pick any one:

• Nagging problem elimination. Very few of us attend to every home maintenance problem as they gradually develop. If there were a reliable poll on the subject, I’d guess that 95% of SW Florida homeowners have at least a two or three areas that we’ve learned to live with—but which will need to be attended to before we get very far toward selling our home. Identifying them is a pre-sale first step…then fixing them is the action item that transforms the idea of selling your home into reality.
• First impression inspection. Any time you return from an outing you have the opportunity to get started on what will become your marketing approach. Do this by stopping and seeing what kind of first impression your property makes on someone setting eyes on it for the first time. What seems least fresh and appealing? Is it fencing that could use a quick coat of paint? A planter that needs colorful blossoms? The numerals on the mailbox? Selling your home starts with favorable first impressions.
• Lights! Camera! Action! An essential element to get prospective buyers clamoring for a tour is the photography that highlights your SW Florida listing. To start preparing for that, pick a room—any room—and stage it: clear it of unneeded objects, furniture, etc. This will entail figuring out where to store the objects that you want to keep, but which clutter up the visual appeal…and once you’ve identified where they will be stored, you’re seriously on your way to selling your home.
• Getting down to business. Educating yourself about the competition means taking a look at this summer’s SW Florida listings to get a feel for where the market is. Which comparable homes have just sold, and which haven’t moved for months? Your home may not be ready for market for a while, but the earlier you start familiarizing yourself with today’s SW Florida real estate market, you better the odds that your listing price will be right.
• Exit strategy. (My favorite of all) Be prepared to move! Any action you take in this direction, be it checking out reliable moving companies or beginning the hunt for your next house makes selling your home that much less of a long shot.

Painless First Steps for Selling Your Home in SW Florida, Marco Island, Naples, Estero. Each of these is a step that begins to transform the idea of selling your SW Florida home from a looming cloud of uncertainty into a doable certainty. I didn’t even mention the easiest and surest pre-sale checklist item. It’s one certain to get the ball rolling:

• Call me Today!    

What’s the Best Time to Sell a House in SW Florida? Naples, Ft. Myers, Bonita Springs

What’s the Best Time to Sell a House in SW Florida? Naples, Ft. Myers, Bonita Springs. The Huffington Post (“Huffpo” to its friends) has an entire section devoted to real estate doings. Although the vast majority of those dispatches are tidbits about awesome expensive celebrity condos in Manhattan, sometimes the Huffpo editors’ attention wanders momentarily to other matters. Last month they uncovered a study which delved into a topic of interest to any local homeowner who’s been thinking about when to enter the SW Florida listings.

The best time to sell a house, according to the study, is, specifically, RIGHT NOW!!!!

That is, between May 1 and May 15!

Or maybe not.

The picture for SW Florida was a little less definite than the Big Picture claim that “homes that sold in the first half of May…sold, on average, around 1.5 days faster than homes that weren’t listed in that timeframe.” It turns out that the study, which was put together by Zillow, was wishy-washy when it came to specifying individual areas. The “on average” part of the claim makes the conclusion less conclusive.

Because the sales statistics that were analyzed were collected from all over the country—differences in seasonality was given as the reason why any individual region might not line up with the average. Seasonality was what we think of as weather. And since weather is not the same everywhere…

In other words, the best time to sell a house in SW Florida might not expire at the end of this week, after all. There’s no need to panic if you plan to list your own property but haven’t quite put the place in show condition. The window isn’t going to slam shut on Sunday. The reason for the uncertainty about the best time to sell your house specifically here in SW Florida (in addition to seasonality) has to do with data smoothing and suppression. The study went into how data experts apply those to raw numbers before reaching a conclusion—but since they weren’t going to be able to zero in on the best time to sell a house in SW Florida, let’s skip those details.

It was noted that the entire month of May is a good time to sell your house, in most areas. That’s something everyone can agree with. In fact, the whole spring selling season is universally recognized in those terms—the Huffington Post included.

What’s the Best Time to Sell a House in SW Florida? Naples, Ft. Myers, Bonita Springs. Meantime, we here will be doing our best to continue to make right now a very good time to sell your SW Florida home. That will begin to happen as soon as you give me a call!

Top 5 Reasons SW Florida Homeowners Should Avoid Going FSBO

Top 5 Reasons SW Florida Homeowners Should Avoid Going FSBO. There are Top 10 Lists aplenty that detail just why any SW Florida homeowner should think twice before planting one of those For Sale by Owner signs in their front yard. One of them is that when you sell your home all by yourself, the sheer amount of time you’ll have to devote to mastering processes that are already fully handled by full-time real estate professionals is a true waste of time. It’s one wheel that doesn’t need reinventing.

If you are among those considering how you will sell your own SW Florida property this summer, since your time is important, let’s start saving it now by cutting those top 10 lists down to the Top 5 Reasons to Avoid FSBOs:

1. You’re involved. It may sound like a good idea to be your own salesperson since you are the most intimately acquainted with the product—your SW Florida house—but logic rules against it if for no better reason that buyers will be automatically skeptical of your impartiality. Why? Because you aren’t! You also don’t get the benefit of a professionally trained pair of eyes helping prepare your property to appeal to today’s buyers, nor the benefit of honest feedback that buyers won’t share with a FSBO seller.
2. Legal peril. Throughout this year’s political debate, a frequent refrain from candidates (both local and national) has been the need to cut down on over regulation. Without getting into those weeds, it is certainly the case that federal and state laws require a number of very specific disclosures. If you aren’t a real estate attorney, that lack of familiarity could make a FSBO sale an open door to after-sale litigation. When that happens, there goes any commission dollars saved (and maybe a lot more!).
3. Expense. That’s right, one of the Top 5 Reasons to Avoid FSBOs is that a FSBO can actually amount to an extravagance. It’s logical, too—because most buyers take one look at your asking price, mentally subtract the commission, and proceed from there (wouldn’t you?). The most recent studies bear out the bottom line: only 8% of successful sales were made via FSBO, and on average, they sold for 15% less than the agent-assisted sales.
4. Marketing Oomph. We professionals market SW Florida homes all year long, 24/7. As a result, we know which marketing approaches are currently bringing in results, and which are wasting time and money. We also have open channels with the media companies we deal with regularly—an advantage that FSBO sellers can’t hope to match.
5. Expert Opinion. The open secret is that those who know the most about how to get the best results from a house sale tend to rely on expert help. A good example came in 2014, when Al Bennati, the CEO of the “BuyOwner” dot-com (“the strongest For Sale by Owner marketplace”) decided to sell his own St. Petersburg home. He listed it with a Realtor^®.

           Top 5 Reasons SW Florida Homeowners Should Avoid Going FSBO. There! Time saved already—who needed a Top 10 list when you have these? I bet you agree: these “Top 5 Reasons to Avoid FSBOs” are more than sufficient reason to avoid the FSBO route…and to give me a call instead Today!

Construction Activity Sends Signals to SW Florida Home Sellers

Construction Activity Sends Signals to SW Florida Home Sellers. When we are keeping tabs on SW Florida’s real estate scene, it’s only natural to go directly to the portion of the market we are most connected to. If we are a renter or investor, our eye is drawn to trends affecting that segment. SW Florida home sellers (or potential home sellers) can be counted on to pretty much ignore that information, instead concentrating on the latest single family residential listings, asking prices, and news related thereto.

Yet some trends in one sector can significantly impact the others. That’s the way it is with construction—any kind of construction. Whether it comes in as new building or remodeling, when construction goes up, lots of impacts can find their way to SW Florida —some right away, some after a significant lag.

Last week there were reports and reactions to some recent national readings:

HUD reported that March building permits were 4.6% stronger than in last year during the same period. Permits is one of those lagging indicators—a timelier statistic comes in the form of actual housing starts. Starts are bird in the hand numbers, as opposed the permits, which are birds in the bush. U.S. single-family starts came in at more than a million (1,089,000)—a happiness-inducing number if you are a builder. That’s a full 14.2% stronger than in the previous year, though not as robust as in February.

Investors would be more apt to notice starts for buildings with five or more units. Like the single-family starts, they were down from the month before but stronger than in 2015. Usually, availability of more rentals relieves price pressure on the single-family residential market. But in today’s situation, where listings for starter and trade-up homes has been decreasing for four long years—the overall inventory shortage makes that effect less likely for SW Florida home sellers (at least anytime soon).

In the same way that it’s simple to imagine the builders smiling at the year-over-year building starts statistics, it’s equally easy to picture the bankers as less exuberant. Let’s face it, the nature of the banking industry is to be more restrained. After all, when we put our own money in the bank, we definitely want them to be cautious. Risk-averse. Stingy, even.

The BankersOnline website (“For Bankers/From Bankers”) played into the prototype, concentrating on housing completions rather than will-o’-the-wisps like permits or starts. And although the numbers there were even stronger (a whopping 31.6% gain over the previous year), a word of caution about over-reading the meaning of that leap is in order. A year ago March, residential completions had been unusually dismal.  

Construction Activity Sends Signals to SW Florida Home Sellers. All in all, even The Associated Press—who for some reason framed the same numbers into a gloomier cast than seemed reasonable—couldn’t help reporting what the National Association of Home Builders sentiment index showed: “an overall optimistic outlook for new homes as the industry heads into the all-important spring sales season.” That construction industry assessment might not seem to directly affect what SW Florida home sellers will encounter, but a lively market is good news for each. I hope you will give me a call if this summer’s market is one you are interested in exploring further!

Selling Real Estate in SW Florida Gets a New Sales Alphabet

Selling Real Estate in SW Florida Gets a New Sales Alphabet. Today, selling real estate in SW Florida (or Kalamazoo, for that matter) has been transformed in important ways. In others, it’s remained pretty much as it was 50 years ago. Let’s start with the changes:

• The buyers’ ability to identify properties has undergone a revolution. Fifty years ago, the process of hunting for and comparing available homes was constrained by the availability of information. Selling real estate in SW Florida involved getting the word out, largely through printed media. Newspaper and magazine advertisements drove buyers’ awareness—or else the agent’s Xeroxed listing sheets. That was about it (in addition to driving around, looking for ‘For Sale’ signs).
• Buyer’s ability to readily compare homes has likewise been vastly improved. ‘Vastly improved’ is an understatement: anyone selling SW Florida real estate today knows that their listing will be instantly available online, including a wealth of detail formerly only availableto interested buyers who obtained a copy of the listing sheet. Now it’s all there on their laptop or smart phone screen, side-by-side with every other comparable property’s. When the drill-down data (items like ‘cost per square foot’ ‘projected mortgage payment’) is instantly available for side-by-side comparisons, selling real estate without being able to demonstrate genuine value is an impossibility.
• Today financial visibility—in terms of the viability of a proposed purchase—is no longer anything like the mystery it was in times past. The process of filling out a mortgage application and having to wait interminably for the bankers’ next questions has yielded to the realities of a considerably more competitive arena. Online rate ‘locks’ can actually happen (although the actual verification of same remains a process subject to the more traditional pace).

These fundamental shifts in the buying and selling of SW Florida real estate make the whole process much more efficient for buyers and sellers. By improving the ease and likelihood of making the best match for each, it also builds buyer confidence through transparency.

Of course, there still are elements that remain largely unchanged. One is the need for sellers to document and put forward their property’s selling points above and beyond their listing’s spare mechanical data points…that is, to bring creative marketing experience to the table. Selling real estate, like every other kind of selling, is at its best when it connects with buyers by firing their imaginations in positive and uplifting ways. Another is the continuing need to make sure all the documentation is letter-perfect: i’s dotted and t’s crossed.

Selling Real Estate in SW Florida Gets a New Sales Alphabet. There once was an adage about the ABC’s of selling: “Always Be Closing!” Today, making SW Florida real estate transactions happen isn’t about bringing pressure to bear on anyone! It’s supplying the service of aiding and abetting our newly transparent marketplace. My own “ABC” works out to be more like, “Always Be Contributing!”—a corny way of saying my job is to help SW Florida’s buyers and sellers make the best match reliably and effortlessly. The first step is to give me a call!    

SW Florida Homeowners Study Whether Now is a Good Time to Sell

“Is now a good time to sell?”

SW Florida Homeowners Study Whether Now is a Good Time to Sell. A SW Florida home is never put up for sale on a whim. Although outside events can conspire to control the timing of that kind of major real estate venture, in most cases, the sale or purchase of a home happens on a timetable the SW Florida buyer or seller thoughtfully works out. That can be when a move will least interfere with everything else that’s going on (school and career schedules are often the ruling considerations). Or, it can be when surrounding conditions seem particularly auspicious.

The answer to the “is now a good time to sell” question looked to be a pretty firm ‘yes’ last fall for a number of reasons. The rebound in SW Florida home values had been underway for long enough that in many instances, previous high water marks had been equaled. Many who would have expected low appraisals as few years back could now anticipate friendlier results. The volume of sales seemed mainly limited by the number of homes being offered; and if fewer competing properties were available, all the better. In the background, good economic news began to arrive more frequently…

Also, there was one well-publicized additional factor that made it look as if the “good time to sell” might not last much longer. It was widely anticipated that action by the Federal Reserve Board to finally raise the Fed funds rate would rain on the SW Florida real estate parade, since that would certainly force banks to raise home loan interest rates.

Nationwide, those reasons had the expected result. Per Reuters in last Friday’s New York Times, apparently it had been a very good time to sell. “HOME RESALES RALLIED IN DECEMBER, AND PRICES ROSE AS WELL” was the headline describing last month’s activity. Unseasonably warm weather had helped, but “buyers rushing into the market in anticipation of higher mortgage rates” may have been more of a factor.

Sure enough, the Fed did raise the benchmark Fed funds rate, causing mortgage interest rates to…er…

That’s where the analyses, expectations, predictions, forecasts and conjecture fell to pieces. The banks were supposed to have to raise home loan rates to match, yet by last Friday they had shed another quarter of a percent. As the Times reported, “…rates on 30-year mortgages have dropped below 4%, and many mortgage experts expect them to stay below 4.25% this year.” 

As the SW Florida real estate market prepares for the upcoming spring selling season, that unexpected boost seems to herald a lengthy extension of the extremely favorable borrowing environment. When SW Florida homeowners ask themselves “is now a good time to sell?”—the answer seems to have gone from a “yes” to “yes, indeed!”

SW Florida Homeowners Study Whether Now is a Good Time to Sell. If your response to the buying or selling question is tipping toward a ‘yes,’ now is the time to explore how your plans mesh with today’s SW Florida  market. A good start: give me a call!