7 Habits of Highly Effective Home Sellers

Effective Habit #1: Be Realistic

What your neighbor sold their home for last year, or even last month, doesn’t matter. What you “lost” because you didn’t sell your home at the peak of the market doesn’t matter. Those fancy granite counter tops you had installed? Yeah, you won’t recover every dollar you spent when you sell your home, and that holds true for any home improvement.
Selling a home ranks WAY up the list of “life’s most stressful moments”. But you have to understand and be realistic about your home’s value, your neighborhood, and the real estate market you in. There are many factors that impact the potential sale of your home. Many you have no control over (market dynamics, economic conditions, the lending environment). But there are things you can control (home condition, cleanliness, curb appeal, availability). Address what you can control, and understand the impact of what your can’t. Realistically.

Effective Habit #2: Be Open to Suggestions

You hired a real estate agent to help you. Listen to what they have to say. You don’t sell a home every day. Your agent sells several homes a year (we’re assuming here you aren’t using your brother’s best friend’s second cousin who is part-time agent part-time barista because you want to “help them out”). If you hired the right agent, then you should listen to their professional advice. Sure, you may not be able to do everything they suggest, but at least listen and consider suggestions your agent may have for the best way to present, market and sell your home.

Effective Habit #3: Be Available

YOU don’t necessarily have to be available to buyers interested in your home. In fact, you shouldn’t be present during showings – it makes buyers uncomfortable and they will rush through the home. But you do need to make your home as readily accessible to potential buyers as possible. In the Lawton real estate market that means letting your agent install an electronic lockbox. It means you need to be able to vacate the premises with reasonable notice – and occasionally with unreasonable notice. Your home cannot be sold if potential buyers can’t view it. “No showings on weekends” or “Showings only between 11:00am and 1:00pm on Thursdays and Fridays” won’t cut it (and no, I’m not making those up. We’ve seen this in listings..)

Effective Habit #4: Be Smart

Understand the local real estate market. Understand the home selling process. Understand the home buying process (you may not be buying, but you want to understand what your potential buyers are dealing with).
Why understand all this?
Knowledge is power.
How do you understand all this? Let your agent help you understand it. That’s what you’re paying them for.

Effective Habit #5: Remember to Balance Emotion with Logic 

Selling your home and all the things involved with the transaction can be very exciting, but many times it is an extremely stressful event.
Homeowners not only have to worry about their home remaining clean and available to unknown Realtors and buyers on a daily basis but they often have other important things that they could be doing to ready themselves for their move. It is also true that most Sellers have a tremendous amount of pride in their home and want to make certain that the marketing and eventual sale price are reflective of that pride.
The moment you list your home for sale with a Realtor, it just becomes a house on a shelf. You may not like what the market tells you but it will never lie to you. If you don’t have showings you will very likely not receive any offers. If you get showings and still don’t get any offers you must be prepared to lower the price. Don’t take it personally.

Effective Habit #6: Be Reasonable

When (not if!) you get an offer on your home, think about all aspects of the offer. Price isn’t the only consideration. The buyer’s ability to qualify for a loan is crucial in today’s real estate and lending environment. When you get a request for repairs, consider everything closely. Do you really want to say, “I won’t fix that leaky faucet!” and risk losing a buyer because you didn’t want to pay $50 for a washer and a 30 minute repair? And if you’re thinking, “No buyer would walk away because of a leaky faucet,” think again. No, I’m not saying to have to bow to every buyer demand. Be reasonable though. And talk it through with your agent.

Effective Habit #7: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions

This is YOUR home you are trying to sell. You need to be comfortable with what is going on. If there is anything you don’t understand, ask your agent for clarification. Don’t be embarrassed that you don’t know what escrow means, or what a title company does. Again, you don’t sell a home every day. These terms aren’t important to you 99.9% of the time. But they are important now, and often agents tend to forget we frequently speak in a foreign language. There are no stupid questions. Ask.

The Bottom Line

These “seven habits” can help you through the home selling process. No, they won’t ensure that your home sells for top dollar, but they will help you get there. And your stress levels may be greatly reduced. To be brutally honest, it will also greatly reduce the stress levels of your agent as well. That’s not a bad thing. Humans don’t like stress so anything that can be done for all parties involved in a stressful situation is a good thing.
As always, your thoughts and comments are appreciated? Anyone have an eighth effective habit for home sellers?

Article written by Jay Thompson

Making an Offer to PURCHASE a house!

When making an offer on a house, it's scary not knowing what it is you don't know!

So how does one figure it all out?  Well, to begin with you will never figure it ALL out but you can take steps to figure out a lot.

#1.  Get the professionals to give you an inspection.  A plumber, an electrician, a HVAC guy (heat and air guy) and a general contractor are usually enough to give you a pretty good idea on what’s going on and if you need to fix or replace anything how much it may cost.

#2.  Talk to the neighbors.  We all like to talk about ourselves and our lives, even if it isn’t pretty!  So get the skinny from your future neighbors.

#3.  Know that you are buying a used product (even brand new houses have imperfections!) and it isn’t going to be perfect.  Life happens at home and the home will usually show it.

#4.  You can use what you find out during an inspection to re-negotiate your contract if need be.  So if you made an offer in good faith regarding the condition of the home and you discover some major issues, use that knowledge, along with the professionals estimate to make it right, and take it to the seller to adjust the sales price or to get the problem fixed.

#5.  Know that the time period for your home inspection, in the state of Oklahoma, is for you to do your due diligence and if during that time period you decide you don’t like something you discover about the house OR you just decide that now is not the time for you to buy, you can back out of your contract and get your earnest money returned to you.

#6.  The appraisal, which is done for your lender so they don’t loan too much  money for a house that isn’t worth it, is another way to get out of the contract if the house doesn’t appraise for the purchase price (the amount you offered to buy the house.)

So really, in the state of Oklahoma, at this moment in time, the Oklahoma Real Estate Commission Purchase Contract is written with a slant to the buyer and there are several ways a buyer is protected from buying a house they don’t want or can’t afford.

Staying Silent: Overcoming the Urge to Defeat Yourself

From early childhood we are taught how to communicate with one another.   The trait of being easy to converse with is praised and highly sought after in both the private and professional worlds.  We learn what is appropriate to say and when it is appropriate to say it and are taught to avoid that awkward situation when no one is saying a word.  In a social setting, someone who can break that silence is a hero, the life of the party, but during negotiations that person often loses.

The silent treatment is one of the most powerful tools in negotiations…why? Because the other party becomes uncomfortable and will sometimes do anything to end that awkward moment, even giving concessions they had not planned on.  I have faced this challenge myself and it has proven difficult to overcome.  Being an extrovert I have never had a problem breaking the silence in a room and I rarely have problems continuing a conversation, even when other may wish it would end.  However, it did not take too many real estate negotiations to realize this is not always a good thing.   I first learned I had to control my big mouth while negotiating for a distressed property I planned to purchase, rehab, and resell.  After one round of negotiations I expected to hear back from the other party.  When I didn’t after several days I called back.  By the end of the conversation I had come up several thousand dollars on my offer without even realizing it.  The next day I received another counter offer, which I promptly countered myself.  When several more days went by again, I picked up the phone. By the end of the conversation I had given up several concessions and upped my offer once again. 

What was going on?  I was being beaten in two ways.  Not only were they silent in opening negotiations, they were silent during negotiations…literally.  On the phone they would say very little, leaving me to do the talking.  In fact, it was similar to a scene out of Fight Club, me fighting my alter ego.   Luckily for me, I became aware of this problem, but only after my business partner pointed out my flaw.  Luckily again, we did not put that property under contract, which was a good thing considering we were beyond our designated “max purchase price”.   Looking back, I realize the power I was giving the seller by appearing desperate.  By constantly initiating conversation and changing my position, I was not winning the negotiation, nor was I making the seller beat me…I was defeating myself.  Knowing when to speak up and when to be silent can be difficult, but overcoming the fear of awkward silence has been the single greatest factor in my growth as a negotiator.

Learning to utilize silence also taught me a much more important lesson, the significance of self-awareness.  Knowing yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and your quirks is essential to increasing your success ceiling.  Once you know, you can make the necessary adjustments and use your traits to your advantage.  As GI Joe says “knowing is half the battle”.

And for those of you wondering, my wife just told me she has not noticed my newly discovered ability to be silent…I did not reply. Winning!

James W. Vermillion III

www.kandvinvesting.com

3 Warren Buffet quotes to follow in your Real Estate Business

Quote 1: “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”

I am a buy and hold investor that looks to secure rental properties that produce monthly cash flow.   I don’t need market appreciation to continue growing our business.  In fact too much appreciation would likely slow our business down as we would have to stop buying because we don’t buy skinny deals; we define a skinny deal as one with under $200 in expected monthly cash flow.

I would love to hold all our properties for 10+ years and let the cash flow increase with inflation.  Someday we will undoubtedly sell the houses we own and 1031 Exchange the profits into apartment buildings, but until then we are happy with all our little houses.

Quote 2: “It’s never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride.”

I love this quote because it goes against all the noise we see on TV and read in the papers.  The financial world is without question going through a hard time right now, but we will come out of this eventually.

By most accounts we have been in this real estate and debt laden cycle for 4+ years now.  The cycle might have 3-6 more years to complete but it will eventually be over and we will be back to growth again.

You can chose to sit on the sidelines and wait for the all-clear sign or you can get in the market and look for deals that are on sale right now.

I chose to invest now because I want to maximize my profit when the market turns.

Quote 3: “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

Over the last two and half years I have purchased dozens of properties at what I consider land value.  I believe the prices are artificially low, but the value has never been higher.  We have purchased multiple properties for under 40K that produce $900 in rental income.

The value of these purchases will only rise with time, inflation and the slow rise to replacement cost.

Picking only 3 Buffett quotes is a tough challenge as he offers countless gems.  I chose the three above because I believe they speak to the current real estate market we are in.

You can chose to sit on the sidelines and wait? Or You can get distracted by price and forget value? Another option is to count on quick flips which can burn you?  I am going to keep buying long term holds at great values and I know that America/Real Estate will be back on top once the cycle turns.