Two Listings Bring Multiple Offers Within 24 Hours

Two Listings Bring Multiple Offers Within 24 Hours 

The Mary Ellen Vanaken Team of Keller Williams Realty North Atlanta recently listed two homes in the North Atlanta area and within hours received multiple offers on the homes. Ever wonder how homes sell so quickly? It's finding the right agent who will utilizes the latest technologies, market research and business strategies to exceed your expectations. These quick sales are located in Duluth and Woodstock, Georgia.

2741 Old Coach Road, Duluth Georgia

Southern charm with over a half acre in Duluth, Georgia. Large covered front porch overlooks blooming shrubs. Light colored hardwood floors in the foyer continue into the bright kitchen complete with white cabinets and walls of windows overlooking the backyard. Home provides new carpet, paint and kitchen stove/oven. 4 bedrooms upstairs with 2 full baths and 1 half bath on main level. In-law or teen suite with full kitchen in the finished basement just waits for your personal decor.

401 Patton Court, Woodstock Georgia 

Hard to find family home with over a half acre in Woodstock, Georgia. Relax in your private backyard filled with shade trees. Fantastic kitchen displays granite countertops, tile backsplash, stainless steel appliances and cherry cabinets. Light cherry colored hardwood floors flow through living area. Convenient bedroom on main level. New double pane Pella windows, A/C unit and hot water heater. Unfinished basement just waiting to become the entertainment central area of the home. 

Getting your home sold quickly takes more than just putting a sign in the yard. It takes marketing and advertising as well as preparing your house to look less like home and more like what the buyer wants to see. This is called staging and staging is not decorating it's depersonalizing. Below are some tips to stage your home for a quick sale. 

Top 5 Tips for Effective Home Staging 

According to home stager, Karly Howell, staging a home is one of the most important steps in a quick sale. With the abundance of design shows on TV today, many sellers think that staging only includes furniture and that it costs a lot of money, but neither is true. Here are 5 easy, low-cost tips to help prepare your home for sale.    

1)    DECLUTTER!

You think your cookie jar collection and prized comic book memorabilia are great, but your potential buyer doesn’t necessarily share the same opinion. The focus needs to be on your house and not on the objects inside or around it. Too much clutter is distracting, and potential buyers may miss the special features of the home with all the visual periphery. Two ideas to help cut down clutter are 1) rent a short term storage unit in which to place all the extras or 2) start packing early and place unneeded items away in a basement or closet.

2)    Clean-up

The house should shine both inside and out and look newly cleaned. Pay special attention to wood trim, ceiling fans, and windows. Again, you want to highlight the selling features of the house. If it’s noticeably dirty or there a foul odor coming from the pantry, buyers won’t stay long. Make it feel welcoming and fresh - think about your last experience in a nicer hotel. You’ll want to create the same experience in your home. Avoid using any heavy scented sprays that could be bothersome to your potential buyers.  

3)    Depersonalize

Take the time to remove family photos, monograms, or name decorations. Potential buyers want to imagine their family in the home and where their pictures and items will be placed. Help to create this experience by tucking away all personal things. Also, depersonalize to protect your privacy since strangers will be in your home.  In addition, objects that are considered controversial or offensive need to be removed too. Items that fall into this category are taxidermy, provocative images, and symbols associated with notorious groups/ideas.  

4)    Appropriate furniture

Furniture is a great benefit in staging a home because it helps potential home owners plan for their own furniture in a room. A few rules to follow: make sure the scale of the furniture is appropriate for the room size. A small kitchen table is not suitable in an oversized dining room. On the flip side, avoid placing oversized furniture, like a large sectional sofa in a small living room. It can make the space feel more confined and less functional. Too much furniture can become an obstacle to. It’s better to have nothing in the room then to have the wrong size pieces. It’s also important to make sure the furniture is appropriate for the location it’s placed in. Don’t place beds in living spaces, offices in dining rooms etc.

5)    Highlight special features

This seems obvious but sometimes is a missed opportunity. Special features can include anything that is visually appealing, helpful, cost effective, or just plain cool.  

Draw attention to these elements by showcasing them. If you have built-ins or architectural niches, place attractive, decorative items there and keep it neat. If there’s an uninviting concrete slab patio, show it’s functionality by creating a small seating area with potted plants and decorative accents. Work with what you have and draw out the positive attributes.

For professional staging advice, contact Karly Howell Design for a complimentary home consultation.  karlyhowelldesign@gmail.com

Let's list your home today! Your North Atlanta realestate experts are ready to assist you - The Mary Ellen Vanaken Team of Keller Williams Realty North Atlanta. 5780 Windward Parkway, Suite 100, Alpharetta, GA 30005 www.northatlantaluxury.com 678.929.6529

Two Listings Bring Multiple Offers Within 24 Hours

5 Steps Smart Sellers Take to Generate Multiple Offers in Alpharetta, GA

5 Steps Smart Sellers Take to Generate Multiple Offers in Alpharetta, GA

The Mary Ellen Vanaken Team
www.mevhomes.com
678.929.6529

Home sales (and values) have been on a strong uptick nationwide thanks to low interest rates, freer lending standards and a drop in the foreclosure rate. Sellers everywhere are breathing a giant, collective sigh of relief! But for all of the buyer activity, it seems like most houses sit on one end of two extremes: they either get snatched up the moment they hit the market (with multiple offers and an above-asking sale price) or seem to languish on the market without an offer in sight.

All sellers aspire to be on the multiple-offer end of the spectrum. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to make that happen. Here are 5 steps smart sellers take to generate multiple offers in Alpharetta, GA.

1. Price it aggressively. Homes that get multiple offers are often sold in an “auction” atmosphere. If you think back to the last auction you saw on TV or participated in online, you’ll remember this basic element of Auctions 101: the starting price is lower – sometimes quite a bit lower – than the final sale price.

In fact, it’s the low list or starting price that gets people excited about the possibility of scoring a great value, whether they’re bidding on an antique Chinese pug figurine on eBay or on your home. And when it comes to your home, it’s that same, low-price-seeking excitement that will cause many more buyers to show up and view your home than would have come at a higher price point.

In real estate, more showings are an inescapable prerequisite to more offers.

This doesn’t mean you have to give away the farm, just that sellers who get multiple offers price their properties from a retailer’s or auctioneer’s perspective. Work with your agent through the comparable sales data – as recent and as comparable as possible – and then do your best to list your home as a slight discount, not at a slight premium, compared to the recent neighborhood sales. That will get buyers’ attention.

2. Give buyers and brokers ample access. Put yourself in your target buyer’s shoes. Say there are 40 homes on the market which meet their specifications, in terms of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, price range and location. And 25 of those top the list. But they only have time to see 8 today. If the buyer’s broker can’t get into your house today, because you have so many restrictions around showing it, your home could very well miss out on a showing with this qualified, motivated buyer.

It might seem overly simple, but if you want multiple offers, it behooves you to make sure your home is available to be shown today. Every day that it is on the market. A challenge to keep the place clean at all times? Assuredly. But consider your priorities and what is at stake. If getting top dollar for your home is at the top of your priority list, then you have to be ready and willing to deal with the inconvenience involved in churning up multiple offers and getting your home sold.

3. Make it beautiful. Really, really beautiful. The homes that get multiple offers are those with look, feel and function that can be described in one word: covetable. You’re not trying to create a situation in which your home barely edges out the listing down the street in the hearts and minds of your target buyer. If you want multiple offers, you need multiple buyers to fall deeply in love with your home – enough to bid above the listing price, and enough to compete with others for it.

To generate multiple offers in Alpharetta, GA, prepare your home by ensuring it is:
immaculately cleaned from the inside out – closets, basements, garages and crawl spaces included
decluttered and staged to the nines – this includes fresh paint, carpet and other things that need replacing in perfect working order – make sure things like doors, windows and systems buyers test (e.g., stoves, faucets, heating and air conditioning) are not creaky, wonky, leaky or otherwise dysfunctional.

If you’ve done any major home improvements or replaced any appliances or systems lately, market that! Show off how immaculate, adorable and move-in ready your home is now – and tout it’s great working condition for the long run.

4. Expose it to the market. An offer the very first day your home goes on the market may sound like a dream come true. But it might also incur opportunity costs. See, many buyers can’t get out to see homes that quickly – some are unable to house hunt except on the weekends. Listing agents who get multiple offers often plan from the start to expose the home to the market long enough for target buyers to see it and get their offers on the table.

Some agents expressly include open house and offer review dates in the timeline of the listing. It’s not uncommon to see a listing come on the market with a calendar of 1-2 Open Houses and an offer date sometime early in the week following the second one. Ask your agent to brief you on the standard practices for market exposure in your local area.

Setting – and publishing – a timeline for market exposure and offers lets buyers know that they will be able to get to the property and get their offers considered, while still creating a sense of urgency.

5. Be ready to course correct. Is your home one of the houses that has been sitting on the market for months without any action? Do not fret – there might still be hope. In real estate, there’s something insiders call the Sweet Spot Phenomenon, where an overpriced home sits on the market for months with no bites, sometimes even through multiple price reductions. Finally, the seller lowers the price to the ‘sweet spot,’ and it generates multiple offers and sells for more than the final list price.

Yes – there are listings whose sellers net more than they expected because they were willing to revise the list price downward in response to market feedback (i.e., no showings, no offers or lowball offers).

If your home has been lagging on the market, talk with your listing agent about what sort of price reduction strategy is likely to maximize your net sale price. Hint: many more buyers are attracted by chunky reductions or reductions below a common online search price point limit than by tiny, incremental reductions.

For example, you might draw more buyers, and ultimately more money, with a price reduction from $499,000 to $474,000 than with a series of small reductions from $499,000 to $479,000, because there is a set of buyers who may be cutting their search off at $475,000 – so a price cut below that point will expose your home to a whole new group of prospects.

For more steps smart sellers take to generate multiple offers in Alpharetta, GA, contact The Mary Ellen Vanaken Team today at 678.929.6529 and/or visit the team at www.mevhomes.com


5 Steps Smart Sellers Take to Generate Multiple Offers in Alpharetta, GA