Trends: Show Me the money!
(Published in Inland Empire magazine — March 2007)
Want to sell your house? You’ll need to think creatively to attract the right buyer. With homes flooding the market, buyers are in a commanding position — and they know it. They’re looking for incentives.
But some incentives work better than others. Forget about installing new tile, or paneling the closet in cedar. Your taste, after all, may be very different from your buyer’s. Clean up the house, fix what’s broken, and make any obvious improvements that aren’t expensive. Then you can concentrate on your buyer’s real concern: money.
That doesn’t just mean the price. Today’s buyer is often cash-strapped, so paying her closing costs is a nice way to ease the initial pain of a transaction. Most closing costs are based on the purchase price, so they increase with the value of the house. In almost all cases, they run to several thousand dollars. Even if your buyer has money available, she may prefer to use it for furnishings or other expenses. She’ll appreciate your putting cash in her pocket more than reducing the price — which may only lower her monthly payment by a few dollars.
Covering these costs allows the official price to remain high, which protects neighborhood home values. And for you, it can mean the difference between a successful sale and wishful thinking.
Most buyers actually prefer this strategy. In a recent poll conducted by HouseHunt.com, respondents were asked to pick their “number-one incentive” in buying a home. Only two percent were interested in free trips or vacations. Who has time for a cruise when they’ve just bought a house? Other miscellaneous giveaways brought a similar yawn. Free appliances or home inspections? Not attractive enough to turn heads. Closing costs, on the other hand, got the attention of 77 percent.
In other words, buyers recognize what’s in their interest. And they can count.
# # #
(909) 228–6333