Current Market Information

Selling your Home in 2011: Beyond Curb Appeal!

As I’m sure most of you are aware, we experienced a slowdown in the market this past year. After the homebuyer tax credits expired in April, the rate of sales decreased significantly. In order to compete for a limited number of buyers, sellers had to reduce their prices aggressively.

Fortunately, activity has picked up substantially in the past two months, and we are expecting a busy spring selling season. While this is welcome news for those of you planning on selling your home this year, sellers still need to compete for buyers that have become more finicky and value-conscious.

Always remember this one basic fact: Selling a home is all about the price! While we all value our homes more highly than those of others, buyers see it from their own perspective as they comparison shop with their hard-earned money. Homes priced above their market value are passed over by buyers, who rarely even bother to put in an offer on a home that is more than 10% above the market price.

So what can sellers do to compete? Homes that are in better condition command higher prices, and those in excellent, or “turnkey” condition fetch premium prices. Here I lay out a roadmap for you to improve the value of your home, no matter what your budget, time constraints, and...

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The New Buyer's Market

This time last year, during last fall’s frenzied market, buyers were competing over a limited number of homes for sale. This was driven in part by the availability of the federal tax credit for first-time buyers. Any house that was in decent shape in Berkeley, for example, especially in the flats, had multiple offers and went well above asking. I had one such listing which received 19 offers, some as high as 15% over asking!

While this was great if you were selling, it was very frustrating if you were a buyer, while you went from property to property, overbidding but still being outbid by someone else. Well things have changed a bit now, and the shoe is on the other foot. We have entered a new buyers market.

So what changed? Well the extension of that tax credit ended April 30, and as we all know from news reports, demand dropped by about 25%. The tax credits served to bring forward a lot of purchases, and once it expired, there was the inevitable drop off in demand. At the same time, the economic stimulus that helped gin up the economy in 2009 started to flag, and of course there were the problems in Greece, the stock market, and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Over the summer, sellers began to lower their prices, and we’ve now got...

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