How long was your home on the market before it sold?

[tcherjen]

Going to be listing our home in a couple of months. I know area plays a big role in how long the house sits. What kind of marketing did your agent do? We will be moving in May 2017 and want to hopefully have our house sold by this December.

 

[Dentam]

Mine went under contract two days after the open house. I got two offers from the open house and asked them to both come back with their best offers. Ended up with full asking price. This was last spring. Good luck!

 

[tvguy]

When we sold my MIL's house, it was on the market 2 hours. That was in 1999.
When we sold my mom's house 2 1/2 years ago, it was on the market 17 days.
We used different real estate agents, but both said open houses are a waste of time....other than to gain new clients for the realtors. They favored lock boxes. I know in the case of my mom's house, we had 60 realtor business cards left the first week.
With my mom's house, it was a smaller 1750 square foot, original house that was 53 years old on a large lot in an area where those type houses get bull dozed and a new 4-5,000 square foot house is built.
The marketing consisted of a flyer with professionally done photos mailed to everyone in the immediate area. I questioned that, but the realtor we went with really knew her trade. I wondered why some one who already lived there would care. We sold to investors who remodeled a 1960 house to 2013 standards...and they....ultimately sold it to the daughter of a family that lived on the same street, a block away.

 

[tcherjen]

Glad to hear some encouraging stories. We are hoping it will sell fairly quickly.

 

[tvguy]

Glad to hear some encouraging stories. We are hoping it will sell fairly quickly.

Yeah, I sold quickly. However, the investors, who redid it, had it on the market ...empty....for a year after they finished the remodel. I was over visiting some of my mom's old neighbors yesterday, and they figure those investors lost close to $100,000. They sold it for $175,000 more than they paid me, but did about $150,000 in remodeling, plus paid all my closing costs, plus $6,000 in property taxes, plus $43,000 in real estate commissions when they finally did sell it.

 

[Dentam]

Well, just from my own experience, I would say that an open house is the way to go!

 

[tcherjen]

Well, just from my own experience, I would say that an open house is the way to go!

I like the idea of open houses, probably not happening where I live currently. Did you guys ask the realtor any questions? I have never sold a house before. We have lived in ours for 17 almost 18 years now.

 

[Dentam]

I asked a ton of questions being a first time home seller. I was probably considered high maintenance, lol. Plus I was living half way across the country and doing it all long distance. Fun times.

 

[tvguy]

Well, just from my own experience, I would say that an open house is the way to go!

Like I said, open houses aren't the big thing here anymore. What is big is every Wednesday realtors jump in their cars and look at that week's new listings, when a new listing goes up, the first Wednesday after it is like a swarm at that house. Then the realtors bring back any of their clients they think may be interested.

 

[usnuzuloose]

In 08 we did a short sale it sold within 3 months. There were ready to close even before the bank approved it for sale. They even got over what they said it was worth.

 

[Dentam]

The average days on the market is about a week for my area. You can check your own area online using sites like trulia. My realtor was also able to send that info to me along with a list of comps.

 

[Dentam]

Like I said, open houses aren't the big thing here anymore. What is big is every Wednesday realtors jump in their cars and look at that week's new listings, when a new listing goes up, the first Wednesday after it is like a swarm at that house. Then the realtors bring back any of their clients they think may be interested.

I guess it will differ based on where you are. My house was in NC and both of my offers came directly from people who attended the open house. Only one couple even had a realtor.

 

[barkley]

Going to be listing our home in a couple of months. I know area plays a big role in how long the house sits. What kind of marketing did your agent do? We will be moving in May 2017 and want to hopefully have our house sold by this December.

I would be hesitant to base a home selling time frame based on other people's situations. so much depends on what the market is like in your area/neighborhood AND what kind of buyers (read-selling price for your home) you will attract.

I could give you examples of our prior sales but they were 18 and 10 years ago-both in VERY different housing markets, different price ranges so our time on the market varied greatly.

in our current area the housing market has not suffered as much as so many others (like where we lived 10 years ago and the home we owned sold in 2006 for a profit of over 200% of what we paid 7 years earlier but subsequently resold a couple of years later for about 40% of our original purchase price/less than 15% of what we sold it for).

sales in our area seem to be greatly impacted by the market of buyers that individual homes attract. there are homes in our area that despite being spot on or underpriced (per their value on Zillow and other sites) are going unsold for MONTHS. talking to our neighbor sellers this appears to be b/c they are entry/mid level homes that largely attract first time buyers whose lenders are VERY particular on the condition of the homes/costs associated w/hoa's and such. on the other hand-more expensive homes that attract buyers who likely have more financing options are selling much more quickly than sellers would even like (I've known more than one seller who listed based on average area sales w/the plan to move 6 or so months later only to get multiple offers w/FAST escrows such that they are left scrambling to fine interim housing).

I would rely on what competent realtors and the reported home sales data for your area reports.


as far as marketing concepts-I know for a FACT that our prior home sold b/c of a marketing concept we INSISTED our agent do as a condition of our contract w/him (despite his very well reasoned reluctance). dh and I were commuters for our jobs to a MUCH higher priced housing market w/ MUCH less desirable schools. our co-workers would roll their eyes and talk of how they would NEVER consider commuting to where we lived, UNTIL the first time they came to our home for a social event and realized it was far a very short addition to their commute time. what they thought was a horrendous commute was only 20 minutes more from where they lived, provided much better schools AND 2-3 times the home they could purchase dollar wise. we made our realtor agree to include in his marketing campaign for our home realtors in the region in and between our home and where we were employed.

worked like a charm-our home sold at full asking to a couple who was looking at the identical home (same developer) 10 miles down the road for tens of thousands more.

 

[tzolkin]

I would be hesitant to base a home selling time frame based on other people's situations. so much depends on what the market is like in your area/neighborhood AND what kind of buyers (read-selling price for your home) you will attract.

This is exactly what I was going to say.

I wish you luck in selling your home quickly, but it really just depends.

We had offers on our home in about 6 weeks. (All the offers were from the open house) Where we live now (NC) that would be a long time (some houses here sell in days), but I was shocked that we sold that quickly. We fully expected that the house might sit there empty for a year and had already gone ahead with our plans to buy our new home and move without selling.

The house next door still has not sold (over 4 years!) and my parents have had their place (same school district) on the market since last April.

We were prepared if the house sold relatively quickly, but we did not want to go into the process with unrealistic expectations.

 

[lovin'fl]

Sold 4 homes. In NC in 1999, it took a couple months...wasn't bad and we moved to PA. In PA in 2002, house sold to the first folks who looked at it for almost list price...awesome, so back to NC! In NC in 2005, neighbor and good friend was looking for bigger home in cul-de-sac (which we had) and we found dream home about 5 miles away so we sold to neighbor as for sale by owner...easy peasy (and lucky). In 2007, we moved to MD, selling dream home in NC. It took 5-6 months and we had to drop price quite a bit. We are also selling soon, in order to move back to NC in June 2017. Probably won't put house on market until February 2017. Oh, and, open houses never did anything for us in selling our homes.

 

[morgan98]

We sold our home last year in three days and ended up having two other back-up full price offers. I really think the key is finding an agent with an excellent reputation and who is very knowledgeable about comps. We went with a very, very high profile realtor with an excellent reputation. The thing to remember is your house is worth what someone will pay you for it. Our agent told us that you would not believe the number of people who choose to list the house above (sometimes significantly above) what she would recommend and then be very angry when it did not sell. She also used a professional photographer and the quality of the pictures was excellent.

Interestingly enough, another family in our old neighborhood tried to sell a few months after us. However, they got greedy when they saw how quickly ours sold and listed for a decent amount more money. After five months, they took it off the market.

Another house was for sale when ours was and had been on the market for 7 months before ours. Our realtor showed us the comps and nothing in the area was selling for what they were pricing it for. Our sold. They eventually had to lower the price and do some work and they sold five months after we did.

We were ruthless when it came to hiring a realtor. My husband interviewed 4-5 and we went with the one who knew the business the best. We were actually surprised at how little some of the realtors knew about the area and comps. One basically asked us what price we wanted to list at. Ummm, that is why we are hiring you....

 

[Praying Colonel]

We were fortunate--3 days. We had an open house on a Sunday, the house officially was listed the next day, we had an offer (from the open house) on Thursday.

It was a different time (2009, when the 1st-time homebuyer credit was being offered), we priced the house to move and we'd worked on the house for over 3 months to get it ready, so YMMV.

We never could've done it without our realtor. She rode us like a $5 mule on what to replace, what to fix, how to declutter, etc. Then she networked like crazy for the open house and helped us stage, etc. She was absolutely fabulous and earned every penny of her commission.

 

[FINFAN]

I live in Naperville, Il ~ considered pretty desireable especially for the school district. This time of year realtors really start mailing out post cards showing recent sales, overall sales etc. Based on their info , the average time frame is about 4 months give or take, for within 10-15% of list price. I agree with barkley on the move up buyer issue. I have seen homes go on the market (usually May after the last kid has graduated) and sit all summer and fall. These are the "average home" not a starter, not a McMansion. Upgrades have usually been done to the kitchen/baths, and the price is usually around $425. A starter in our area (if you can find one) would be more like $285-325, the monster homes are $900 to 2+ million~ So you have a big gap in home types. The McMansions seems to sell faster. I guess if they have the $ buyers here want it all, not just "some " updates. These same monster homes also go back up for sale 2-3 years later, lol. Banks are getting really tough on qualifying terms. appraisers are tough on their assessment, if you need to sell for a certain price, I would say 6 months is a safe time frame to be prepared for, maybe even 8. If it sells before that? Take the money and run! Good Luck and my advice? If you can afford it, plan for a 2 week vacation to time with the listing date. Those first 2 weeks are key, IMO, and not being home having to clean, act like no one lives there , being away from the stress? Worth it.

 

[Gigi22]

Totally different market, but we sold our house for asking price in a month. We reduced the price by $10K during that period. Our house was 60 years old with a lot of updates. We didn't have any open houses, as advised by our realtor, who was a specialist in that part of town. We had the realtor's photographer take pictures of the house which were posted on the local MLS website. The purchaser already owned a larger house close by that she was going to rent out, and she was moving to our house, which was on a quieter street.

 

[barkley]

I like the idea of open houses, probably not happening where I live currently. Did you guys ask the realtor any questions? I have never sold a house before. We have lived in ours for 17 almost 18 years now.

we interviewed multiple realtors b/c we wanted to find the right person to market/sell our home w/the least issues for us. granted, this was back when the housing market was hot and home owners were getting constant solicitations from realtors. one of the reason though that I contacted the realtor we ended going with was because he hadn't hammered us with solicitations-unlike the ones that were out roving neighborhoods and approaching anyone that was outside their home with 'are you interested in selling?' our realtor just did mass mailings to everyone quarterly that showed his sales and what the currently sales trends were (i figured anyone that had enough time to be roving neighborhoods wasn't spending that time showing/selling homes).

we had prospective realtors preview our home about 3 months before we were interested in listing to see what they might suggest-we were impressed that the one we went with was very familiar w/the builder of our neighborhood and knew EXACTLY where potential issues with prior sales of our model might be so we could address them before listing (reduced a potential buyers ability to haggle down after inspection). we also greatly appreciated his agreement to certain showing conditions during the hours we/our kids would be home (i needed at least 30 minutes advance notice to get stuff picked up/kids and i into car and out of the home). our realtor was very experienced and knowledgeable which carried allot of weight w/us b/c at the time there were lots of newbie realtors in our area who could waste allot of time having to research answers (our buyer's agent was like this-our agent should have gotten a larger cut of the commission b/c he basically held her hand and walked her through the entire process).

Like I said, open houses aren't the big thing here anymore. What is big is every Wednesday realtors jump in their cars and look at that week's new listings, when a new listing goes up, the first Wednesday after it is like a swarm at that house. Then the realtors bring back any of their clients they think may be interested.

that was the deal where we lived too (but it was kind of in your neck of the woods tvguy)-not sure if they do those much up here.

I guess it will differ based on where you are. My house was in NC and both of my offers came directly from people who attended the open house. Only one couple even had a realtor.

few sales came from open houses where we used to live-they were more frequently visited by either neighboring home owners or buyers w/homes already in escrow-both wanted to see how identical models to their own homes had been decorated or renovated (free ideas).



i think looking at a potential realtor's current on-line listings can provide some good insight. on-line is the big way to get to a short list of potential homes for buyers these days-and good photos make them and break them. we've seen some neighbor's home show terribly on-line b/c of lousy photos, some were honestly lousy houses but b/c of great photos they attracted showings. some of the best photos a neighbor had were a combo of the professional ones through the realtor combined w/photos the neighbor had taken in other seasons over the years-that was a big help to them b/c when they listed it was still early spring so their stunning plant beds weren't blooming yet (but they were in photos they had).