One of the hardest things is getting good feedback after showings.  It’s often difficult for two reasons!

• Sometimes the feedback is negative.  When the feedback is negative, as long as it’s specific you need to look at this as helpful.  This gives you an opportunity to make adjustments before the next buyers walk through your home.
• Vague feedback can drive home owners crazy.  The hardest thing about vague feedback is that it makes it difficult to know what to adjust.

What to do?

If the feedback is vague, work with your Realtor to try to get additional feedback.  Or consider hiring a home stager to walk through your home.  This will really make a huge difference in getting specific feedback.

We work with many different realtors and we find that when it comes to pricing, there are two distinct approaches used by different Realtors. 

Most of the Realtors that we work with are heavily influenced by what price the home owner wants to get.  In fact, they often will agree to list the house for what the home owner suggests.  While the home owner often feels like they are getting a Realtor that is going to do what they want.  However, the goal is to get the house sold.  If the home is not priced correctly, it sits on the market for much longer than desired and then come the dreaded price reductions.

We also work with Realtors that do a great job at getting the buyers to understand why they are recommending the price that they came up with.  This can be double-checked by doing some investigation on the multiple-listing service.

The key to this is for you to work with your Realtor to determine the price.  While you may not like the answer that you come up with, it’s better to price it right to start and have the home move quickly.

We’ve always been told that when you are getting ready to sell your house, you should talk to at least 3 Realtors, even if you are planning on selling your house yourself.  Three is a great number.  This will give you three different sets of:

• feedback on what needs to be done to prepare your house for sale.
• proposals on how your property should be priced
• personalities that you will need to work with

We work with many Realtors.   Feedback, pricing and personalities all need to fit your style in order to make one or the other Realtor a great fit for you.  Here’s three questions to ask your Realtor:

1. Can you provide the initial asking price and the actual sale price for the last three homes that you listed that sold?  This will give you a more realistic idea of how well the Realtor is at gauging the price that the house should sell at.
2. How many homes do you currently have listed and how long have they been on the market?  This will give you an idea of how effective they are at marketing.
3. How can you help me to make my house stand out on the internet?  Since most buyers are looking online, the Realtor should understand the importance of this question and be able to give you great answers.

Depending on how you like their answers, you will know which one to trust.  Understand that it’s been a tough market on them too, and you are not necessarily looking for impressive numbers or timelines.  However, you will get to see how they handle direct questions with tough answers.  If you are not comfortable with these three, pick another three.  Remember, you don’t have to settle.

Happy Staging!
Melissa & Nancy