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 Ithaca, NY

Latitude: 42.443603 -- Longitude: -76.500093

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The City of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca in Homer's Odyssey) sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York State and is famous for being the location for Cornell University and Ithaca College. The City of Ithaca is the center of the Ithaca metropolitan area (which also contains the legally distinct Town of Ithaca and other towns and villages in Tompkins County) and the county seat of Tompkins County, New York. As of 2000, the city had a population of 29,287, and the metropolitan area had a population of 100,135. 2004 estimates puts the city population at 29,952, an increase of 2.3%. It is the North American seat of his Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

New York 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Ithaca	New York	United States
Population	29,287	18,976,457	281,421,906
Median age	22	35.9	35.3
Median age for Male	21.9	34.5	34
Median age for Female	22.1	37.2	36.5
Households	10,287	7,056,860	105,480,101
Household population	21,870	18,395,996	273,643,273
Average household size	2.13	2.61	2.59
Families	2,958	4,639,387	71,787,347
Average family size	2.81	3.22	3.14
Housing units	10,736	7,679,307	115,904,641
Occupied units	10,287	7,056,860	105,480,101
Vacant units	449	622,447	10,424,540

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