Converting a potential buyer into an actual closed home sale is definitely a science. For most of us buying a house is the biggest purchase we will make in our lifetime. So getting someone from considering purchasing your house to making an offer is challenging and will require a refined approach. In today’s post we are going to cover 4 strategies you can use to help convert your showings into offers.
4 Ways To Attract Home Buyers in Chicago
1. Declutter Inside and Out
Decluttering your home can seem overwhelming especially if your family has been in the home for years. Things accumulate in the closet, on bookshelves, kitchen counters and spread to the garage and washrooms. Clutter isn’t attractive and makes a home feel smaller.
If you are looking to sell, it means you are looking to move. So take this opportunity to be proactive and started getting rid of things you’re going to toss out or donate anyways. Pack up items you don’t need for the next few months and rent a storage unit if your garage isn’t large enough to store it without seeming cluttered.
Once everything is cleared, you can then give the home a good solid deep clean. With counters, bookshelves, and floors cleared, sweep mop and disinfect anything and everything you can. This helps give the home that open flow potential buyers want.
2. Make Necessary Repairs
Most sellers underestimate the level of detail buyers will go through when walking through a house. Remember this is likely the largest purchase they are going to make in their lifetime so they are going to be paying attention to the details.
If a buyer spots several repairs unfinished during their walk then they will most likely move on to the next house for sale. Keep in mind that you are required by IL law to disclose any known repairs required to the buyer before they make an offer as well. There will likely be many repairs needed that you aren’t even aware of as well but will certainly find out and be responsible after the buyer completes their home inspection. Be ready with a good contractor because you will most likely be performing numerous repairs throughout the process.
3. Stage the Property
Real estate agents get push back on staging from clients every day. Unless they have a multi-million dollar home, most clients don’t see the need for the additional expense of staging.
Keep in mind that staging doesn’t always mean moving everything you have out and renting all new furnishings. It can simply mean working with a skilled eye to rearrange existing furniture, remove odd family photos, heirlooms, and art.
All that decluttering was a good start. Now is the time to make the home look like the home everyone can visualize themselves living in. That maximizes the number of people who will make an offer on the home.
4. Set a Market Price Just Under Expected Fair Market Value
This might seem counterintuitive: set a lower price than what the market says you can get for your house.
When potential buyers are looking at homes, they are looking for specifics on size, location, condition, and price. When the first three qualifiers are equal, then the buyers will look at the price as the primary sorting factor. In markets where there are a lot of buyers looking for homes, a lower price gets more people walking through.
A good agent then holds open houses where droves of people “ooh and ahh” over your home because it is clean, clutterless and staged. These situations often get multiple offers giving you the seller the ability to bid up the offers to what would be the fair market price, often higher than what you would have listed for if you didn’t list it at a lower than normal price.