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 Birmingham, AL

Latitude: 33.524755 -- Longitude: -86.81274

Other Area Cities: Gardendale Bluff Park Center Point Fairfield Homewood Hoover Hueytown Leeds Mountain Brook Trussville Vestavia Hills Pleasant Grove Fultondale Alabaster Bessemer Birmingham Pelham Irondale Pinson Tarrant City McCalla

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Birmingham has a strong-mayor variant mayor-council form of government, lead by a mayor and a nine-member city council. The current system replaced the previous city commission government in 1962 (primarily as a way to remove Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor from power). By Alabama law, an issue before a city council must be approved by a two-thirds majority vote (Act No. 452, Ala. Acts 1955, as supplemented by Act No. 294, Ala. Acts 1965.). Executive powers are held entirely by the mayor's office. The current mayor of Birmingham is Bernard Kincaid, who was voted into office in 1999. The Birmingham area is home to some of America's best schools. In 2005, the Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School in Irondale, an eastern suburb of Birmingham, was rated as the #1 high school in America by Newsweek, a national publication. Mountain Brook High School placed 250 on the list. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Alabama 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Birmingham	Alabama	United States
Population	242,820	4,447,100	281,421,906
Median age	34.3	35.8	35.3
Median age for Male	31.8	34.4	34
Median age for Female	36.2	37.2	36.5
Households	98,782	1,737,080	105,480,101
Household population	233,968	4,332,380	273,643,273
Average household size	2.37	2.49	2.59
Families	59,287	1,215,968	71,787,347
Average family size	3.09	3.01	3.14
Housing units	111,927	1,963,711	115,904,641
Occupied units	98,782	1,737,080	105,480,101
Vacant units	13,145	226,631	10,424,540

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