Eight Tips for Selling Your Home in a Changing Market, Part 3

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Welcome to the answers for elders radio show. meet the trusted experts who will give you straight answers and I will help guide you on the path of later life care. Now here’s your host, founder, caregiver and CEO, Susanne Newman, and welcome back everyone. During this hour with Rebecca Bowman, the CEO of sash senior living. And for those of you that are listening, you might be a senior thinking about you know, how do I downsize my house? Maybe I missed the market, maybe it’s not a good time now, maybe there’s all kinds of changes. I’m hearing some things and we’re here with Rebecca because she is in the trenches. She knows what’s going on in our real estate market here in the Pacific northwest and beyond. I know that you, Rebecca. You shared many statistics with us. That will wrap up later in this hour about that, but I really want to talk to you. Um, we’re talking about the tips on what is important in selling your home. So where are we at, Rebecca? Well, you know, we we’ve been blazing through these tips and we’ve got three more in this segment. So I’m excited to jump in and these are all the things that sellers should expect in a changing market in order to have a successful sale. And so the next one is it’s okay to expect buyers to ask for concessions. So people say what are concessions? Well, it’s basically things that a buyer asks for from the seller to help with the sale and closing costs or things exactly. And so during the hot seller’s market that we’ve had the last two years, buyers were waiting everything. They were not asking anything of the seller. In fact, they were offering things to the seller to entice them to take their offer. Now things have shifted. You’re not getting quite as many offers and so the buyers have few more rights and we’re glad for that because they should be able to ask for things and do inspections. So let’s go over a couple of examples of things that buyers could ask for. One is they do an inspection of the home and then they asked for a few repairs after the inspection that they would like done before closing. These are usually safety and health issues. They’re not saying change the color of the living room. It’s mostly safety and health. This is normal and you can negotiate it and they’re usually pretty small. You mentioned another one, closing costs. With the interest rates going up, buyers Um are trying to buy down their interest rate, they’re trying to lock in a lower interest rate and they’re asking the seller to help them with those costs and or just regular closing costs, and so that could be a percentage of the sale price or a dollar amount. Another concession that might come during the sale is what we call appraisal work orders. So the lender sends the appraiser out to make sure the home has the value that it’s being sold for and the appraiser might walk around and say, yeah, I think we need to touch up some paint, or this electrical panel is outdated or the roof looks a little old, and they don’t want to fund the loan until those work orders are done. We didn’t have hardly any work orders the last couple of years. Now we’re starting to see him again. No worries, it’s all normal Um and it’s just part of the closing process. The last one that sellers could expect is extra extra closing time for the buyer to sell their own home first. Well, this is called a contingent sale, and all the contingent sales were at the bottom of the pile during the seller’s market. Nobody wanted a contingent offer. Well, those are coming back as well, and it might be the only offer as seller gets. So they should work with the buyer and, you know, give them the opportunity to sell their own home so they can buy the sellers. So these are all normal no one should take also, what’s going to come back more is the least option. Yes, mm HMM, Yep, because that’s a whole other thing. Um, that’s a possibility. Yep. And and just you know, outside the box stuff. And no sellers should take offense when the buyer asks for concessions. This is normal. It’s a normal part. Okay, let’s get to the next tip. Yes, usually the best offer comes during the first week. Don’t wait for a better one. So this the temptation is. You know, it was easy when you got ten offers in the first week, because then you have you can just choose among them. If you only get one offer in the first week, you’re kind of scratching your head, going well, if we got a full price offer on day six, maybe we’ll get an over asking offer on Day ten, orn day fourteen. Nope, the best offers come in during the first week. So I say don’t. Don’t scare away the only buyer you’ve got waiting for one that hasn’t appeared yet. Um, and you can still counter back and forth when the buyer comes in with their offer. You don’t have to accept whatever they’re offering. You can counter Um, but encourage more than one offer so they can be competing. The other reason why I want to mention that the best offer usually comes in during the first week is sometimes sellers are attempted to go well, we’ll just go ahead and list it and then we’ll finish packing next week, or we’ll just go ahead and list it and then we’ll finish the painting on week two or week three. Absolutely have your very best impression to the market on the first day because you’re going to get the most traffic during those first few days of that week and there’s a good possibility hardly anyone will look at it during your second week when you finished packing the pain down. Yes, I just saw a listing Suzanne, made my jaw drop. It was about a one point three million dollar listing and they were terrible photos from like five years ago and the broker, the listing broker, said new photos have been ordered, and so she went ahead and listed a one point three million dollar house with terrible old photos and somehow leaving a little note that new photos are going to be ordered. Is supposed to well, we can’t use our imagination, we don’t know what the House looks like with beautiful photography, and so all of the people that look at that one point three million dollar listing in this first week are are going to be let down and she has no way to get them all back. So you just want to hit it hard from the get go. Um, okay, what’s up? That’s a good yes, uh, come out with your best face and and be ready for the traffic to come during the first week. Last tip, and this is really really important, when there’s a lot of buyers that are interested in your home, you kind of feel like you can swat them away. No, I don’t like you, I’m not interested in this, I could live without you. Now, if you only get one buyer or two potential buyers, you gotta take good care of those buyers. You gotta be nice to them. You need to be collaborative and work with the buyer through all the hoops to close it. UH, the most effective way to get to closing is tackle every obstacle in the closing process with a collaborative mindset. Your buyer is not your opponent. There your team member. You have the same goal. You’re both wanting to close the sale. A lender might be a pain or the appraiser might be a pain, but your buyer is not the bad guy. So you don’t want to work against your buyer, you want to work with them. Be Flexible, be friendly, be accommodating. Let them come in and take measurements for their furniture, let them come back and do something else. They might be the only one you’ve got, so you’ve got to you’ve got to take good care of them. Absolutely. The days of swatting buyers aside because you have so many to choose from are behind us. So maybe they need to extend the closing date for a few days. Maybe they asked if you’d be willing to leave the patio furniture. Maybe electrical work needs to be done before their lender will fund alone. I always tell my sellers, my my senior clients and all the folks I present. It’s better to expect obstacles on the way to closing. It’s not if there’s gonna be obstacles, it’s what obstacles? What are they going to be exactly? And then you’re gonna navigate through them and if you have a good broker, they’re gonna guide you and assist you through all of those poops and those obstacles that are put up on the way to closing and being friendly and collaborative with the other party is just gonna serve your interests really well. You didn’t have to six months ago, you definitely need to now. You know, it’s interesting because I remember when we closed, or you know, when my mom as we sold my mother’s house. Um, there was a window downstairs in the basement that was no dual pain and it’d gotten Um, you know, like I feel broke. Yeah, and those they asked us to replace that and I remember we did. It was those were just things that we did and normally you know that those were little things, but they were things that the buyer asked us to do and we did. And I think there was a couple of other things. They wanted the door painted right. Yeah, they’re little things. Keep the big picture in mind, which is I’m going to sell my home. There’s these people that want my home enough to put a lot of money down for it, to pay me this price for it. Um. And so, even when people on the other side of the transaction get a little cantinkerous or ask for things that you might not want to do, being friendly and cooperative is going to serve your interests, because what if you lost that buyer in the middle of closing and you have all the way back to the beginning and start over again? It’s much better to keep everyone working together and being collaborative. So we’ve gone over a few tips for being successful in a changing market, things that me be sellers didn’t have to do in the last couple of years but they should think about now. Yeah, and it all comes down to Um, and we’re gonna wrap up in the next part, but it all comes down to really having a good broker represent you as well. Yeah, and and that’s the thing. I think that is really the message is. You know, it’s okay to say to a realtor it’s not about just because my nephew is a real real estate agent. It’s they’re not. They don’t. They’re they’re not the same. And No, no, realtors, you you have a right to ask what are you gonna do for me and how are you going to represent me? And what are the things that you know that you’ll go through and find out on your own of what’s available to to you in services, because I think a lot of seniors they haven’t maybe been living in their home for fifty years and they don’t necessarily know that there’s aerial photos that you can take now. They don’t necessarily know that there’s virtual tours out there now where you can see where people are paying you an actual, you know, home tour. So Um, get online and look and we’re very excited. So, Rebecca, how do we reach you? SASH SERVICES DOT COM OR SASH REALTY DOT COM and Tripoli, four hundred s a s h. wonderful, Rebecca, and we are going to be back right after this with a summary of how to have a successful home sale. And Rebecca and I will be with you right after this. We at answers for elders. Thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care? So visit our website and discover our decision guides that will help you also navigate decision making. Find US AT ANSWERS FOR ELDERS DOT COM.