The business of real estate is a long-term game. Rushing and impatience can cause you to lose a couple grand on your closing costs because you didn’t wait for the perfect buyer.
However, your life isn’t going to wait for your house to get sold. If you’ve found a new once-in-a-lifetime opportunity across the country, keeping your investment property in your current location could end up costing you more money and heartache than if you had just taken the price cut and sold it as quickly as you could.
Here are some ingenious ways to sell a piece of investment property as quickly as possible, without taking too much of a dive in price.
Undercut Your Price Confidently
So your home has been on the market for a while. You’ve had some nibbles but so far no buyers have gone all the way. You think about lowering the price a few thousand dollars again to drum up more interest. But did you know that incremental price drops may have the opposite effect? Lowering the price of your home in small amounts causes buyers to become leery of it. Cutting $3,000 off of a $400,000 home isn’t even noticeable.
The right way to lower the price of a home is to slash off a large amount of the price that looks good (say $10,000 or a little more) and be patient. If you lower your prices in larger chunks instead of smaller increments your house will be fresher in buyer’s minds and it makes you look less desperate.
Chopping 1-5% off of your house’s total value sounds like a lot, but think about it. Isn’t it better to decisively cut that amount off of the value and have someone buy it, than to cut a similar or larger amount over several months with minimal interest? We’ve all seen the houses that start out at $350,000 and end up at $280,000 in a year.
Use Everything You Can To Spread the Word
Trulia and Zillow are great. But if you want that house to go as quickly as possible, you need to put postings up on Craigslist, social networks, and EBay (yes EBay). EBay specifically allows homes to be posted on their site for a fairly modest fee, and they are noncommittal which means that you can remove the posting at any time.
But the internet shouldn’t be the only tool in your arsenal. A billboard marketing strategy is also worth considering. It’s much cheaper than you’d think. A paper billboard is only $50 to $100 depending on the size of it!
You can also be more proactive and work together with your competition. If there are a large amount of home sellers nearby, try to organize a neighborhood-wide open house. You can have a refreshment cart, some flyers, and an organized tour group if you have a good turnout!
You might be thinking that this directly benefits your competition, and in truth it does. But if your house is priced competitively it shouldn’t matter. Besides, your prospective buyers were definitely going to see the other homes in the area anyway.
