One of the most important tips for selling your home is to first determine whether the market environment of your suburb or LGA is a buyer’s or seller’s market since this can have a huge impact on your overall profit margin, as well as influence things like agent commission rates. But what’s the difference?
Buyer’s Market
A buyer’s market reflects conditions that are favourable to someone looking to buy a property. This can include decreasing prices, low auction clearance rates (60% or less), and homes sitting on the market for several weeks or longer.
Selling during a buyer’s market means you may have to accept a lower figure than you’d hoped in order to sell your property, and that agency commission fees may be higher due to the lack of properties available. You may also need to invest more in marketing your property and staging it in order to set it apart from other similar listings.
Seller’s Market
A seller’s market reflects conditions that are favourable to the vendor (you). Due to the high demand for properties, prices will demonstrate inflation and have increased rapidly over the past ~6 months. Auction clearance rates will be high and most homes will be sold within a couple of weeks either at auction or under a ‘best offers by’ method instead of a general sales listing.
If you’re fortunate enough to sell your property while your area is experiencing a seller’s market, you ought to be able to negotiate a competitive agency commission fee due to the influx of properties available and competition between agencies.
Other house selling tips you should consider include:
Engaging the services of your selling agent early
When you’re preparing to sell a house, choosing an agent to represent you is an essential first step; it’s worth doing a bit of research to find the agent with the right real-estate sales techniques and marketing strategy to suit your goals.
A good practice is to engage two to three agents for conducting a free home valuation on your property. They’ll each have their own ideas for selling a house and what they think your property is worth, and also be able to provide invaluable feedback on the house selling tips and how to get the most money when selling your house. This can include marketing tips to help sell your house and factors such as the best repairs to undertake before selling a house.
Engaging your agent early can also help you understand where the market is currently at, and when to time your property going up for sale.
Picking the best – not necessarily the cheapest – agent
Finding an agent you can communicate with comfortably when selling your property is crucial. A reputable and experienced agent will turn up to the evaluation with a list of properties recently sold in the area so you can easily compare prices. If they do their homework, they’re demonstrating a commitment to you as a customer. Experienced agents will often already have a potential buyer in mind – likely someone they’ve seen at other similar properties recently. They’ll also have an extensive database to whom your property will be directly promoted – something hugely beneficial for generating quick interest.
Investing seriously in marketing
Properly investing in advertising costs when selling a house is perhaps the second most important of our house selling tips. How, where, and when you list your house for sale can have a huge impact on the interest generated in your home and overall profit attained. Marketing when selling your property typically involves a combination of:
- Professional photography and copywriting;
- Styling of the property;
- Online listings through real estate portals, agency websites and social media;
- Signboards; and
- Brochures.
