Top 3 Reasons Your Home Is Not Selling

1. Price – the reason we all want to ignore

We’ve sold thousands of homes through our platform, so our analytics are top notch. When we hear from a client with concerns about being on the market too long, we can almost always point to price as the culprit.

Aaron Jistel – CoFounder

No one wants to give their home away! However, I am here to give you the cold hard truth. If you are priced too high for your area, you will sit on the market longer than the houses around you selling for market value. People that are looking to buy in your area know what the houses are worth. They most likely have an agent of their own to help steer them clear of overpriced homes.

An overpriced home will also not be included in your target buyers home search on the internet. For instance, say your market dictates a $350k-$375k price point, but you are set on $25k over and set your price to $400k. Well, buyers looking in your area will set their Zillow or Realtor.com searches to a price limit of $375. This means your home isn’t even going to pop up in the search. Meanwhile, buyers with a 400k-500k search will see your home, but instantly realize it’s in an area that they can buy a similar home for cheaper.

  At ListingSpark, we make sure to provide you an in depth market analysis before you hit the market to make sure we align with your interests. Some people don’t mind staying on the market for month over the typical days on market for their area. Our agents have more experience than most agents. Since we deal in volume, they have thousands of homes under their belt per year, where a normal agent would only have a few per year. Even if you don’t use our service, get a home value analysis on us at no charge!

2. Photos – sorry your iphone pics wont cut it!

Long gone are the days of driving around town looking for for sale signs. Everyone is looking on the internet for the homes that they want to tour next. This puts the emphasis on photography when marketing on property search websites.

The ListingSpark platform has seen a giant increase in engagement on websites like Zillow or Realtor.com when professional photography is used. The reason is simple. When buyers are searching for their next home, the nicer it looks, the more likely they are to bite. I don’t know how many dimly lit iphone photos we’ve seen with laundry baskets and video game controllers strewn about. No one wants to go see a house with dirty socks everywhere! Please please please do us a favor: clean up, and let ListingSpark send a professional out to shoot the home.

3. Buyer’s Agent Commission

Almost 90% of homes that sell, sell on the MLS (multiple listing service). The MLS is a marketplace for buyer’s agents to find listings from listing agents. A run of the mill buyer has no incentive to go search without an agent. They can get themselves into a situation where they buy a lemon, and the way they see it, they are not paying for they agent. The seller seems to be. So why wouldn’t they hire someone to protect them in the transaction.

However, some sellers think that putting 1% buyer’s agent commission won’t affect the home sale. Even though the “6%” commission model is finally being taken to court there are still unscrupulous buyer’s agents that will steer their clients away from homes not offering a hefty commission. It’s sad, but true! We always recommend taking a look at your commission if both the above strategies are solid. It may be because you aren’t incentivising agents to show your home.

As I mentioned above, we are always happy to help as much as we can even if you don’t use our service. Feel free to drop us a line at [email protected] or shoot us a call at 512-827-0895.