Selling a home "as is"

bulletandpima
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:42:26 +0000

That is very true wis75. One thing you will notice that when the market is cold as in selling time frame, people will stage to the 9s. When it is a hot market you will walk in and have to walk over their dirty laundry on the floor or the present the dog left. YES, I have actually had to walk over dog urine.

Know your market and remember don’t listen to the neighbors who bought 3 yrs ago and how fast their home sold because that was 3 years ago not now. Also don’t listen to the horror stories out there. Think of selling like a pregnancy, not every one is going to have a quick easy birth, some will, but some won’t.



My house is going on the market in July, and I am so doomed! Even the much vaunted Fairfax County has some slummy sections. Our elementary school has 80% on free/reduced price lunch, the middle school has 47%, and the high school has 42%–with 16 serious incidents and 5 weapons violations. Just peachy



You are not doomed, just be honest to yourself and place the price correctly. If you do than you will be fine. One suggestion would be to place it on the market early to mid June because most people want to move in over the summer so kids can get accustom to friends before they go back to school. The fastest market time is mid June, since parents want to also keep the kids in their school until it finishes. Additionally, the military which is a huge pool in Fairfax usually move in June. If you hold off until July many of the buyers will have already purchased and you could land up taking longer to sell.

Also since you are probably with those numbers in Alexandria or RT 1 of Fairfax, I would stress being close to the Metro. Always highlight the positives so on paper you look like the dream come true and foot traffic will be your best buddy.

Don’t worry not everyone looks at the school info that the county releases, many just go on the web and look at the actual school website. The school is not about to announce how many free lunches. Of course their realtor could be like me and tell them to now go back to the county stat site.

Finally since you are Fairfax make sure you demand the following from your agent regarding marketing
www.militarybyowner.com — yes realtors are allowed to place ads on it. Many military members love this site so you don’t want to miss that opportunity.
trulia
redfin
harmonhomes.com
homeandland.com
tourofhomes.com

The more you throw it up on the web the more likely the buyer will keep coming back to look at it. Once you list and it is in the system it will immediately go on realtor.com, homesdatabase.com and if they are with a major company it will go on their website too.

Make sure you also have a virtual tour and ask the realtor to have realtor.com put a banner on it. If you go to realtor.com it is a little red banner going down the side, not every property has one, obviously the red draws the eye and people look for the sake of looking.

Good luck