Let’s talk about the ten steps to transform a stale donut into a mouthwatering, fresh-baked pastry folks are dying to get their hands on.
Step#1: Kill the Listing
Sellers are often afraid to remove the listing because they think their ideal buyer is “coming any minute.” The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If your home has been listed for 385 days, the current strategy has not worked. You have to change it up. In order to do that, you’re going to have to go home, start from scratch and completely re-evaluate the situation.
Step#2: Move Out
Generally, if your home has been sitting for a long time the reason is one of two major offenders: priced too high or presented poorly. It may also be a combination of: vacant, empty and not showing well bare; priced too high; occupied and just looks like hell; or terrible staging. Start with the vacating property and getting out of there. Pack up your stuff, relocate, go to an Airbnb, find a rental apartment, move into the vacation house that you have at the beach, go to the ADU that's in the backyard, get out of that house. You are stopping the sale. Clearing out of the space gives you the opportunity to really prep the house for the next buyer.
Pack with two different colors of tape – one to label boxes for storage and another color to label boxes going to your temporary apartment. Store the stuff you're not going to use on a daily basis like sentimental or decorative items. Items like enough sets of dishes for your family to eat one meal per day, a TV, a couch, beds and other basic needs, you’ll bring with you to your temporary housing. The home you are listing is going to be prepared correctly which means it’s going to sell really fast which means you're going to be moving into your next house before you know it.
Step #3: Consult a Home Stager
It can be scary to have a home stager come to your house. It might seem invasive to have someone you don’t know knock on your door to evaluate your personal space. They are also going to be the first one to be honest with you about your home because they're the first ones as a service professional to give you honest feedback. Home stagers know how to sell homes and they are coming to judge yours. This is actually their greatest value. A home stager is going to be the first one to say, "Look, you have to repaint the bathroom, you have to get rid of that brown sponge-paint." You'll be like, "Why?" And the stager will say, "Well, it’s a huge turn off to the next buyer and makes this space look darker." The blunt honesty of telling you what will and will not appeal to the future buyer is no reflection of the home you LOVED, only the home you are trying to sell to another family.
You should not pay a home stager for a consultation. It’s their job to tell you how to get that house ready for market. They're going to give you a lot of fantastic advice but you will not need to confirm a “yes or no” during that meeting. All you're going to do is take notes of that advice.
Once the home stager is gone, then you're going to take that list and assign three values to them: time, money, and energy. Once you have those three values assigned you can make a decision if you're going to do each one of those things or not. Take a breather after the stager leaves, assign reasonable numbers to each task and make a logical decision not an emotional one.
Step #4: Execute the Scope of Work
Now you have that precious to-do list. That might mean you hire contractors, or DIY it, do some landscaping, painting, etc. Depending on the condition of the house, there may be a lot of moving parts. Coordinate with your partner or family, create a timeline for these tasks and get organized. Figure out which you can do yourself and which you need to hire out.
Step #5: Stage It
Finally, all the basics of the home are set and well-prepared for the next family. Now it’s time to SHOW OFF the features and functionality of the home so your ideal buyer will know from first glance what their life will look and feel like. This is when you're going to hire a home stager. They have the expertise in selling homes, skill in design and all the furniture ready to create a drop-dead gorgeous listing. Your professional home stager will cost you anywhere from one to two percent of your final sales price, but they're going to bring you 10% more money at closing time.
Your home stager is going to create a design using furniture, color and art in your house that is not reflective of your personal style choices. In fact, of all the people in the world who might buy this house, you are not one of them. Your home stager is going to design for the 90th percentile of people that are looking at your house so they can garner the most offers in the least amount of time. This is not about your taste, this is about visual merchandising for a product that you have to sell, and that's it.
Bad staging can do more harm than good. Seriously reconsider that budget stager and if they would be more of a hindrance than a help. When it comes to cheap staging versus a professional, it's like having K-Mart compete against Nordstrom.
Step #6 Re-Document the Home
Your house is now perfect and ready for visitors – so let’s show it off with a show-stopping listing. This will include fresh photos, and possibly video or 3D walkthrough.
Use these new photos, and potential videos and 3D walkthroughs to create a single property website. If you have a stale donut, having a single property website is going to be huge because all of the listing services like Zillow and Redfin are going to have those old, tired photos of your last listing. While it will cost a little bit more, it is worth it. A professional real estate photographer will work wonders for that fresh listing.
Step #7 Create a New Listing
Create a new MLS number so you can re-assign that to this fresh listing and no longer associate it with the old listing. You may be welcoming back home shoppers that had previously seen the home. Ideally, we want them thinking this is a whole new property.
Step #8 Change the Price
Again, it’s usually one of two reasons why houses don't sell. The home is either overpriced or it’s not prepared correctly. If you are not prepared to drop your price a single dime, then raise the price by $10,000 dollars, or by $5,000 dollars, or by something, by anything. The way that people search for properties today is that they go to a listing website and they put in their price range. $400,000 to $500,000. And if your number comes up in that same exact range, you're only hitting those people that are looking for $400,000 to $500,000. Give them a slightly different searching number so they’ll get a slightly different demographic of people looking for this space.
Step #9 Throw a Party
It’s a celebration! Time to have a calm, home-focused event to invite folks over. If you have great views, it might be during the night time. Maybe it's a breakfast event. Whatever the theme or time of day, you want to get that invitation out to every single real estate agent you can possibly find. Reach them any way you can, it might be postcards, it might be emailed, it might be phone calls, get them to your house, give them a drink, and give them food. Any way that you can get people to come to your house, start a buzz around your property. You have a stale donut on your hands and it's toxic. The second you can change the narrative around that project, the faster you will sell that house.
Step #10: Sell the House
Which brings us to step number ten: sell the freaking house. After the party, organize your showings, have your open houses and start watching those bids come in. Good luck!
