Selling Your Home - Why Should Buyers Choose Yours?

November 20, 2008

Assuming certain factors are the same - such as location, amenities, approximate price range, features - what would entice a buyer to put an offer on your house instead of another in your subdivision?

It’s been my experience that most buyers lack imagination when it comes to looking at properties. They are effected by your decorating, your taste and how your home makes them feel. Only about 20% can detach themselves from your decorations and imagine their home in its place.

So how do you appeal to the 80% of buyers who want to walk into your house and feel at home?

The first step is to de-clutter your home. Any clutter translates into a read-between-the-lines detractor of “not enough storage space”. If you truly don’t have enough storage space for all of your possessions, treasured though they may be, then rent a small storage space. Go through your home and remove everything except the most flattering and visually appealing items. Your home does not want to look bare, but it needs to give the impressions of elegance and space.

The next step is to take care of any maintenance issues before you put the home on the market. You may be temped to say, “I’ll fix anything their home inspector finds”, but in my experience, your initial offer will be lower (or even non-existent) if the impression the buyers get is that you have not taken care of the home. So replace rotten wood, fix and paint damaged or grubby walls, replace torn or damaged flooring, service HVAC units before you call your real estate agent.

The final step is to thoroughly clean the home. Hire someone to help you do a deep spring cleaning - clean baseboards, polish mirrors, shampoo carpets. Make your home sparkle. Buyers will notice on a subconscious level that the home is clean. Why do you think new homes are so attractive to buyers? It’s because no-one’s dirt is there - it’s virgin and pristine.

Once you have listed the home, keep it clean and tidy. Make beds and put away dishes before you leave in the morning. So often I’ve tried to make appointments to show a home, and the seller has said that we’ll have to come back another day because they left the home in a mess that day. Normally there is no “another day”. So if there is a day you’ve had to run out in a hurry, take a deep breath and let it be shown anyway and hope that the buyers are the 20% that can imagine the dishes in their right place!

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Local Information for Buffalo, NY

Latitude: 42.904657 -- Longitude: -78.849405

Other Area Cities: West Seneca Amherst Buffalo Clarence Hamburg Tonawanda Orchard Park Kenmore Lancaster Niagara Falls

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Buffalo is an American city in western New York State. With a population of 279,745 as of the United States Census Bureau's 2005 estimate [1], it is the state's second-largest city, after New York City, and is the county seat of Erie County.GR6 The Buffalo-Niagara metropolitan area has a diverse population of 1.1 million. Buffalo's thriving arts, cultural, and nightlife scenes are considered the hub of the greater bi-national region in New York and Ontario. Buffalo lies at the eastern end of Lake Erie near the head of the Niagara River, which connects to Lake Ontario. European-Americans first settled there in the late-18th century. Growth was slow until the city became the western terminus of the Erie Canal some forty years later. By the turn of the next century, Buffalo was one of the country's leading cities, and by far its largest inland port. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

New York 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Buffalo	New York	United States
Population	292,648	18,976,457	281,421,906
Median age	33.6	35.9	35.3
Median age for Male	31.6	34.5	34
Median age for Female	35.3	37.2	36.5
Households	122,720	7,056,860	105,480,101
Household population	281,522	18,395,996	273,643,273
Average household size	2.29	2.61	2.59
Families	67,053	4,639,387	71,787,347
Average family size	3.07	3.22	3.14
Housing units	145,574	7,679,307	115,904,641
Occupied units	122,720	7,056,860	105,480,101
Vacant units	22,854	622,447	10,424,540

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