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question about selling a house

Superfly

Salty, defiant, and completely non-compliant.
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From Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah
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If a house is in a good location, and offered at a good price, how many showings per week is normal?

I feel I am not getting anywhere with my realtor. We have been listed 3 weeks, and have had 3 showings.

Is that normal?

I really like her - she's great, and I want to think she's doing a good job, but I just don't know, and everybody knows everybody else here, so I can't really call a realtor and ask them if she's doing everything she can.

Every other house in my neighborhood has sold for $100 per square foot, up to $126 per square foot. I am asking under $100 and am getting nowhere.
 

It could have to do with the school district. That is a biggie here in California.
 

As we don't know where you live, it's impossible to advise. HOWEVER, where I live that would be pathetic. IF you are on a multi-listing service (as most are) even if your agent is sitting on her ass, other agents ought to be using the lockbox and showing their clients the house. Did you have at least one open house? Did she have a broker's tour?

And while the chances are remote, do you have any reason to suspect she is attempting to keep away buyers so she or a buddy can buy (and resell) it? Happened to my wife.

Don't hesitate to change agents if you smell a rat.
 
Ask a lot of questions and set expectations. Agree, don't hesitate to move on.
Have you looked thoroughly at staging and curb appeal?
Has your realtor done a caravan?

Good luck. My first house was a pita to sell and I hung in there for way too long with my first realtor, so I know what it's like to have a house not move.
 

I'm kind of surprised people even still use realtors to sell their house at this point. Is your house on Zillow? Is your house on Realtor.com? Facebook marketplace? Craigslist? A realtor can really only show your house to people who come to them. In the past, before the internet, it was more common for people to just go to a realtor looking for houses, but in today's world people just google that ****.

The only thing a realtor is going to maybe do is help you with the sales pitch for people who do see the house, help you decide what to list it for, and maybe help you negotiate the best possible price. She's not really doing a lot of marketing.
 
If you want to sell your house in a hurry, lower your asking price.

Are you moving up or downsizing? Relocating? Moving in with family?

Does your realtor have open houses Sunday afternoons?

So many questions: type of heat, city sewer/water vs. well & septic system, age of house, age of roof (shingles)? One or 2 car garage, if any? Taxes? Acreage?
 

You need to pick your realtor agent on the volume they sell. There's a huge difference between an agent that sells 6 houses a year and one whom sell 50+. The one who sells a lot of volume will be bring potential buyers with them, not just looking for a buyer. I would also check to see how long it took to sell the houses in your neighborhood. The other thing is how has the weather been? Bad weather slows up sales of pretty much everything housing not excepted. Good luck and hope your get more than your asking price.
 

It is not the best time of year...yet! April, May and June, are coming soon.
People like to move over summer, and so look for Houses just before summer.
Before lowering the price, consider staging the house, and moving most of the stuff into storage.
Another option might be to offer an additional $1000 bonus to the selling agent,
this would move the commission the selling agent would receive into a higher bracket,
and perhaps generate more traffic.
 

Is your house on Zillow?
 

Every location varies. How active is the current market in your area? Are mortgage applications up or down? Easy to find out, they are published weekly by many RE trackers and banking institutions. Winter is usually slower than other seasons, regardless of temperate climates. Is your house on an MLS listing? Makes a difference.

I found when selling at below mean pricing, buyers assumed something was wrong. The opposite of your logic. Raise the price.

I'm currently partnering with two youngsters in the family. They find houses to rehab, do the work, sell the finished product directly, no brokers. I demand Cadillac work and materials from them, top dollar sales. I put up the money. They are selling at least one house per week in a slow market, both seasonally and generally. If they could find more product, they would sell more. None of their competitors are coming close to their level of activity. Most of the established brokers I know are waiting for the phone to ring. Lucky if they are transacting a few rentals per month. Yet, a new luxury condo nearby, 40 units, starting at $1.2 mil sold out in 36 hours from opening of the sales office.
 

Here is my thought, Superfly. I would recommend doing a little research of homes in your area, and how long they generally stay on the market before selling. You may live in a lovely neighborhood, but it may not necessarily be the neighborhood that people are climbing over each other to get into. Another thing to consider is that we are just barely edging into Spring. Since you are on the East Coast and you folks have far more miserable winters than we do, it may have just been a bad run of luck.

For my part, I have seen extraordinarily lazy realtors who barely did any work to hustle and find buyers for their clients. A lack of simple basic work ethic is far more common than you think (at least among agents in my area), as though putting a "For Sale" sign with their name and number on it was the most Herculean task they were capable of accomplishing. They basically treated finding purchasers and showing real estate as though they were doing some kind of favor for their clients.

On the other hand, like maxparrish said, I have seen have been unethical self-dealing realtors who kept their clients in the dark about offers in order to discourage them into selling their properties for below-market-value to friends and relatives for investment. I do not want to impugn the character of your real estate agent or broker, and suggest that she is either lazy, incompetent or unethical, but it is always something to keep in the back of your mind.
 
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I'd give it a bit. The winter is usually not a great time to go on the market.

Are you living in the house? The last house we sold we had renters in prior. We spent the money and dealt with paint/floors and then paid about 2K to have it staged. It sold in 8 days, and we had another solid offer 2 days later that pushed the price 5K above asking. We had been prepared to drop the price 10K. That was in late Nov. 2016, so not a good time, but the location was good.

If you haven't yet, use Zillow, Realtor, etc. to ind out how long other recent sales took there.
 
Keep in mind that the listing agent is almost never the one who finds the buyer, the selling agents is who brings the buyers,
the listing agent represents the seller, while the selling agent would represent the buyer, one person should not do both.
 
We interviewed two real estate agents before listing our house. We compared the sales for both in our area as well as read reviews of other clients. We listed our home on a Friday afternoon, had three showings scheduled for Saturday and one for Sunday. Received two offers the following week. One suggest I would make as far as the sale of your home is to stage it. I was lucky enough to have a friend who stages homes and she came in and helped me pack up the clutter, rearrange the entire house as well as suggested I purchase a few small priced items to perk the house up. I truly believe it made a huge difference.
 

That's what I thought! This is an extremely large house, selling for far less than many other houses are in this area. We are a great house, brand new, almost 2,400 sf, new paint, new carpet, very good school district, gated community, large yard, etc. For what we are asking, compared to other houses in this area, people should be lining up at the door. We deliberately priced it lower to move it fast.

And no, she hasn't scheduled a single open house.
 

The curb appeal is good - we have a landscaper who keeps everything neat and tidy.

She told me that everything is staged well. We have already packed up a great deal of things, because we were told that an empty house sells better than a full one, because people can imagine their own belongings there, instead of ours.

What's a caravan?
 

Yes on Zillow, Realtor.com, FB marketplace, Craigslist (although I did the last two myself). When she put the info into MLS, it fed into all the sites like Zillow, Trulia, etc. It's out there, plus she said she's doing paid boosts on FB to get it out there, plus it's in Homes & Land.
 

Yes, I want to sell in a hurry, and I am willing to drop the price, help pay closing, I'm offering a home warranty. I am doing everything I should be doing to move it. It's just not moving, and that's what makes me think it's her.

Electric heat, city sewer/water, 7 years old (we built it new), same with roof (shingles), 2 car garage, 1/3rd of an acre (we are in a subdivision) and the taxes I believe are around $1,200 a year. We don't pay taxes because my husband is disabled with the military.
 

Thanks. I had 4 agents come in and I picked her because she was the most outgoing. I picked the one that I would have purchased from. She was our first, the 2nd openly flirted with my husband while I was sitting beside her, the 3rd I don't even remember, and the 4th came in $30,000 less on asking than everybody else.

In the neighborhood, houses usually sell in 30 to 45 days.
 

I like that idea about the bonus. I have been wracking my brain trying to think of different incentives to offer.

And most everything is already in storage. The bonus room is empty, the guest room is empty, the dining room is empty. We have our bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, my daughter's bedroom and the office. Everything else is packed and in the garage.
 

Realtor caravan is like an open house for agents.
 
Superfly said:
The school district in this area is very well sought-after. People buy in this area just to be in this school district.
Click to expand...

Things I have done in the past - speak silently to the wife. If the carpet shows wear, offer a "carpet credit", same if the yard is a mess. It's a way of acknowledging the problems without trying to pretend they don't exist yet offering no positive solution. Since you aren't getting offers. this is a way to sneak a discount in there. The carpet credit is a good one for families with kids worried about "my kids playing in someone else's DNA."

Kids' rooms. Look for damage that must be repaired. Hole in a door, wall, etc. Shabby paint, $20 can fix that, plus cover odors. If the appliances are new or nearly new, put it out there. Even a sticky note "Bought new in 2015". IOW, no breakdowns in the near future. Husband likes to know that.

Also, see if you can find your listing easy yourself as if you were a shopper, and pay attention to the pictures posted. No refrigerator magnets, things on kitchen counters that are "dropped off". No personal care items visible in the bathroom. Toilet lid down. Shower tidy, new shower curtain if you have one.

And be tough with the agent. They hate to spend money on local advertising because it's an up front cost, and if you bail and get another agent it's a dead loss to them.

Lastly, be patient.
 
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Not sure about mortgage applications. Would have to look into that. And the agent already told me she thinks I am asking too much. She was like, "The other house for sale in your neighborhood is only $175,000. Yours is much higher." I said, "Yeah, but mine is also 1,000 sf bigger." Most houses in my area, at my square footage, are running $250+, so I think my price is reasonable.
 
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