How to catch a home buyer's eye
If you're selling a home, you may need to go beyond curb appeal to get the property sold. Credit: AP, 2010
Making a home sale has never been a lot of fun but in this economy, it's even worse.
If you've followed the usual chestnuts about boosting curb appeal and staging your living room properly, but still aren't getting any bites, there are other ways to help catch a buyer's eye.
It gives you a realistic target price that can be factored in with recent comparable sales. It also gives you an idea of what sort of home loan a buyer can get.
"It takes a lot of the guesswork out of the price," says Naomi Brodbar, an agent with Weichert Realtors in Princeton Junction, N.J. "You can take any figures in the market and make them work to your advantage. With this, you know if you're in the right ballpark."
You'll likely pay $300 to $400 for the report.
Of course, the buyer is going to hire his or her own inspector -- but this helps convince the buyer that the home has been kept up well. It also prevents the buyer from issuing a laundry list of demanded fixes, which some buyers do in an effort to further lower the sales price after their offer is accepted.
As the seller, you'll also reap some of the benefits, as many plans provide additional coverage for when your house is on the market. This can be particularly beneficial when you go through the inspection process after you've accepted an offer.
Plans generally cost between $300 and $450, with extra charges for some appliances (such as your washer or dryer) and a pool or hot tub.
Acknowledging this upfront and offering a cash incentive to pay for those improvements could make your house stand out from the competition.
It also gives you the upper hand. Because you're setting the amount of the incentive -- say, $1,000 or so -- you can work that into your house's asking price to recoup the outlay.
In the long run, an extra $1,000 (or even $3,000) is a drop in the bucket -- and it's not worth fighting over, even if it's below your floor price. But what about an offer that's $5,000 or even $10,000 below what you were hoping to get?
"Buyers don't care what your minimum price is," says Leslie Nichols, a broker for Nichols & Associates Real Estate in Houston. "Price is the most important thing. ... Price will overcome location. Price will overcome condition. Price will overcome everything else."
