June 06, 2009

What Does It Take to Sell an East Layton Home In Today's Market?

Anyone selling a home in today’s buyers’ market knows that the market can be brutal. Buyers have lots of inventory to choose from and are expecting closing costs to be paid for by the Seller as well. We recently closed a rambler home in East Layton and as I added up all the factors I found it interesting to see what it really takes in today’s market to sell a home.

SELLER UNDERSTANDING OF THE MARKET: In this property the Seller lives in Arizona and has already experienced the housing downturn there so he knew what he would face here in Utah. The home has a great location, good highway access, in very good condition. The Seller replaced the carpet upstairs with a nice grade of carpet to give it a newer home feel. The home was in good condition but had not been fully updated, and the backyard had a great view but dropped into a steep valley leaving very little backyard. The Seller understood the dilemma and priced the home accordingly to compensate for those issues. The home actually sold for 20% less than the original list price hoped for by the Seller and closed in 112 days.

Internet Marketing: With over 90% of the population looking for homes online, a full out marketing campaign began with a full virtual tour that tracked 10,188 views and 2,227 unique visitors to the home by the Internet. We marketed the home on 34 websites with enhancements on Realtor.com that doubled the normal views. Realtor.com is the most used real estate website and we wanted to make the home standout online. Other sites driving traffic to the home were Google, Homedebut, and Zillow. Our local MLS, RELO® Home Search, and our own website were also great contributors, especially for agent to agent marketing. It makes sense that most of the views came from Utah but we also had traffic from California, Florida, Illinois, Hong Kong, Arizona, Arkansas, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and Texas. In total, the Internet market showed 19.88 tours per day. It is not surprising that the buyer found the home on the Internet and then asked their agent to show it to them, resulting in a purchase.

Showing Desk: Our showing desk has 24/7 coverage for any calls coming in from agents or off the Internet and schedules showings and gives feedback from those showings so we know how potential buyers react to the property. We had 14 actually showing at the property with about 20 virtual tours each day.

I can tell you that this was a fun property to market with lots of traffic. For more marketing information please e-mail steve@welchagency.com.

Posted By: Steve Randall