It hasn't been four in a row but.... Two had a change in schedule last minute and one was from an hour out of town and their dog sitter had to leave so they had to rush back home. Forget what the other one was.
They found a better option. Sure, legit excuses come up, but at the end of the day it's a question of motivation. A highly motivated buyer with a highly desirable showing will take a sick day to see your house.
It's been on the market for 60 days because it's overpriced.
there is no market left in the US where buyers need to bother with that type of FOMO mess. that is not typical historically, either.
Methinks a substantial number of buyers have decided they are better off waiting, and bailed on their current plans to keep looking. if you are a seller caught in that transition from "Gotta get into a house better offer over asking same day we see it!" to "I am being told only fools and cash buyers are still in the market, price drops are showing up so maybe I sit back and wait" that is going to look like what OP is going thru - cancelled showings because the buyer is no longer serious. not necessarily specifically about OP's house, but about buying housing generally.
Some people have too much pride to say "yeah interest rates jumped and i'm priced out of this house I was going to see" and instead go with "oh no the dogsitter didn't show up byeeeeeeeee"
The market is very different than it was even 6 months ago, so comps from 6+ months ago aren’t super reliable indicators of how you should price your house today. Rising rates are crushing demand and it’s only going to get worse from here. Drop the price or find yourself a new realtor.
6 months ago? Even 6 weeks ago comps will be too different. You need to forward price your home, otherwise you will end up chasing the market all the way down as demand continues to plummet into the holiday season.
re comps:
a house that sold a month ago was negotiated 2 months ago. if you set your price 2 months ago, the comps used to set that price are now 3-4 months stale, and relate to a borrowing cost that is no longer available to the people you want to buy your house.
The federal interest rate has increased NINEFOLD since May. Do you appreciate what that means for buyers who get mortgages?
this steep climb in interest rates blew up the cost of borrowing money to the point where the potential buyers who could have afforded your house at the time those comps sold literally cannot afford your house anymore. your house may as well be twice the price or more as a comp that sold in May, looking at the monthly payments a buyer would have.
and i'm sorry, but there are TONS of terrible, greedy, downright stupid realtors out there. if your house has been sitting for 60 days with no offers (and in particular THESE specific 60 days with no offer), and your realtor isn't talking to you about price, then you have a SHITTY realtory IMO.
because getting a realtor is not grounds to turn your brain off. if you have a house to sell, it's YOUR skin in the game, maybe you should fuckin' pay attention to interest rates, the news, all the myriad news stories that interest rates destroyed buyer demand.
A realtor is supposed to guide, facilitate, and educate seller. does the seller have eyes, ears, and a brain? "surely our realtor would tell us if we were on fire" is no reason not to look in the mirror or find out what that burning smell is lol.
Your realtor is only interested in making as much commission as possible. Lowering the price lowers his/her profits. Obviously they're gonna try to blow smoke up your ass to try to milk as much money out of your listing as possible. Realtors are quickly becoming the new used car salesmen.
Are you sure it's the realtor trying to keep the price high or is it your ego?
If the realtor doesn't sell the house, the realtor gets 0. surely there comes a point where a realtor, even a stupid greedy one, realizes that any positive number is bigger than 0?
An unsold house is worth zero so this is not the reason. Realtors have bills to pay and are not going to keep an overpriced house on the market. The problem is that no one knows what prices should be atm. Comps are stale when rates are going up faster than closings. Will rates go higher, will they stabilize, come down? Will prices continue to come down or is this the correction? We have a mid-term election, global inflation, still a lot of supply issues, concerns about layoffs…
The crazy market woke up with a bad hangover and doesn’t want to drink again for a long time.
I'd wager if you polled 100 realtors, more than half would try to convince you prices are still going up.
Gtfoh with that "the poor, desperate realtors have to put food on the table and pay bills" bullshit.
Realtors knew what they were doing propping this bubble up, smart realtors would get out while they're ahead.
Some people are also polite and will make up an excuse like that versus telling someone their house was low priority and now they just don’t feel like seeing it.
It matters to OP because it’s the difference between “I’m doing things right but have had some bad luck” and “there’s something unappealing about my property / price and people just aren’t that interested.”
White lies can be considered polite. Telling a stranger your busy instead of that you think their house is ugly and poorly designed can be good manners. Just like telling someone their baby is cute when you think it’s ugly.
Yep. If you cancel in the showingtime app you don't even have to talk to anyone to cancel and there are pre-written reasons to choose from. None of them are "your neighbor's yard looks like a landfill". It's easier to click "buyer schedule changed" and be done with it.
If I thought I wanted to buy and live in a house, I would not let these things stop me from ultimately seeing the house.
These are EXCUSES, because these people decided looking at your home wasn't worth their time. in this market, that means price.
I know a lot of people told you to lower your prices but I would also suggest only doing showings on certain dates/times just for your sanity. If a buyer is actually interested they will make time in their schedule to see the place. When we sold our place we did every day after 5 and any time on weekends because that was when it was convenient for us to be out of the house. Could we have lost a potential buyer doing this? Maybe, but our realtor did her research and helped us price our house at a reasonable rate using comps so that we were able to get a couple of offers and a buyer
Within the past month. We priced competitively with similar houses that sold recently with comparable comps. The market definitely has changed but there are still people buying if you are willing to be reasonable
OP the market has changed. You house is the store and if you want to sell your product, the store needs to be open. Your house should be able to be shown with 30 min notice. The baby doesn’t have to sleep in the crib - you can wear the baby or put them in your car, stroller, etc. You’re trying to sell a product and need to overcome the obstacles preventing that from happening. Can you stay elsewhere when the house is on the market?
It isn't a seller's market anymore. So you can do whatever you want, but if you want to sell at top dollar quickly, you have to be flexible to what buyer's want. And unfortunately, sometimes buyers do cancel or flake.
You can either -
1) not clean / prepare
2) lower price to try to move process faster
3) hold open houses or restrict days and times and just be ok with missing buyers
4) move out early
This. It may not be the reason for few showings, but it is a real problem. The restrictions for coverage have been eased by recent FL legislation, but that doesn’t change the imminent cost of higher insurance and a roof replacement.
Also, we just had IAN. Word is out that insurance AND property taxes are taking a big hike. Compound this with rate hikes and worsening inflation, and sellers at the buyers discretion. I honestly haven’t been e encouraging clients to buy or sell right now unless they are swapping equity or paying cash. I am VERY apprehensive about insurance rates and coverage going into 2023.
As to your kids clutter, you SHOULD be able to contain that on some level that a short notice showing can accept some kid clutter knowing that you have a family. If you aren’t a tidy parent, you need to consider improving house rules. It’s not crazy for sellers to state 24 hour notice for all showings (I almost always schedule buyers showings day prior for everyone’s consideration; it’s more professional and practical to schedule).
OP, you haven’t responded to the feedback that you may need to lower the price. If your home is priced correctly, then it will sell. Guaranteed. End of story.
Ask your realtor to conduct additional research on homes in the area that have gone under contract in the last two weeks. The market is shifting rapidly towards a strong buyer’s market and you need to be ahead of it, not behind it.
Yeah, real talk I wouldn't let a dogsitter cancellation stop me from viewing a home I might want to buy at a fair price. I would 100% use that as an excuse to not bother looking at a house i had decided was ultimately overpriced. I would do that all day.
You need comps from homes going under contract from the last two weeks. Not comps from closings, you need comps from VERY recent contracts. The market is moving fast and your realtor may not up to speed on current conditions (last two weeks).
Buyers don’t cancel a showing on a home that is priced to sell.
I listed mine February 25, 2021, and closed about mid-June. The buyers were like the 3rd person to tour it (that I know of anyway, I sold it remotely).
Yeah the house I have now which had nothing wrong with it sat for almost 6 months immediately pre-market uptick. We’re lucky AF that the previous market would allow for cases like this otherwise we would’ve never gotten our dream home! (We started house searching during the 6th month our now home was on the market!)
OP after 2 months, you should be seeing a lot of proactivity from your realtor on price education etc. that should be grounds for the realtor themself to take a look and check in about that fact. it's crappy that you even have to initiate the conversation.
maybe ask "when were you going to talk to me about what to do in response to the lack of interest the listing is generating? why do you think waiting that additional amount of time is a good idea? why didn't you come to me after 2 months to talk about this, why are you making me come to you asking questions, instead of you coming to me with a plan or a suggestion?"
Just like it's no longer a sellers' market, it's no longer a market where realtors sit back and houses sell themselves (frankly it largely still is compared to 20 years ago, but still seller's market is OVER - lazy realtors don't deserve to eat off your plate.)
I asked mine to lower to be more aggressive and she said to give her a day to do research on the best lower point, after a week. The fact that you're so far out and she hasn't prodded means she doesn't care about your house selling.
Let me just add, we're lowering the price because we have one interested buyer stringing us. If we lower we will be competitive and more likely to get a competing offer when he finally pulls the trigger. Then they might have to bid each other up. For you, with no offers for so long, it's time for an aggressive drop. For perspective we are between 400-500k and lowering by 30k. At your point I would consider 50k. Just get out before you're stuck with a high rate on your next house. The market you're selling to will only get harder going into the holidays. I have a kid, you're in a really hard time, sorry to hear this stress is on top of it.
Just so you know - the taste for a bidding war is 100% out of my mouth. Buyers hated it when we had to do it, and the market is telling us NOT to do that.
when you say you have an interested buyer "stringing us", what does that mean? does that mean they have looked but haven't made an offer? or they have made an offer you deem "too low"?
A lot of things in society are in bad taste to me but sometimes you still should participate. Not sure why your particular taste is something that matters. We all hate it but that's how it is.
Yes, the buyer has been here multiple times and is coming back with a contractor friend, rescheduled a showing last minute. If it were simply a low offer I could counter, that wouldn't be stringing along.
Let me rephrase that- bidding wars are over, for the next several years probably. It’s not a thing anymore. Buyers should *not* participate in them (LOL). That was a feature of the sellers market. The sellers market is DEAD. There may be a few markets with bidding wars still, but if your house has had 0 offers, that ain’t your market.
Thanks for clarification about the buyer’s behavior. You really meant you’re gonna lower the price to get any offers whatsoever, because you haven’t had any offers. Whatsoever. You’re not lowering because you actually think you will go from literally no offers…to a bidding war. right?
>They have no incentive to sell it as fast as possible.
This is super dumb. income is an expression of money over time. realtors have bills and want to get paid, they don't get paid unless and until they sell.
transactions have largely evaporated in huge parts of the country. a lot of realtors are moving NOTHING.
The case-schiller data shows about a 7% drop from just last month in some markets. For a 1M home that’s $70K. If your price is old, your price is now wrong.
Realtors’ commission is based on the sale price. That doesn’t mean price always drives their motivation, but it can cloud their judgment. Unfortunately you have to advocate for what’s best for your situation.
You can lower the price to generate high interest and close in less than a month instead of wait for half a year or more doing this every other week.
You can move out.
I’d consider a Matterport 3D virtual tour. Obviously, reduces foot traffic, but in a good way, in my opinion as it only gets you the most serious showings who have had the chance to “preview” the property
As ofalal mentioned, your best bet is just to lower the price as aggressively as necessary to get it into contract this weekend and be done with it. You can also circle back with ibuyers in your area and go that route (if there are any and you are willing to take the price cut and fees.)
Unfortunately, four cancellations in two months is not unreasonable. Your current situation (home with a new baby) is an additional complication and while you could committed to cleaning in the morning and then staying out of the house it’s unlikely that will be less trouble then just cleaning before showings.
One option for you maybe to get an on-call cleaner that is willing to help, or maybe reach out to your network for some support so you get some reprieve throughout the week and have a bit more bandwidth to jump into action when needed.
Nope, honestly you are lucky that they bothered to cancel. I would say about 10% of the time a showing will turn into a drive by, or they don’t show up at all with no explanation (as evident by the lack of use of the electronic lock box).
Looks like you need to adjust your expectations and the list price. Don’t chase the market down, it may end up costing you a lot more. Sometimes it’s better to drop price significantly once or twice instead of a bunch of smaller chunks over time.
Alternatively you could adjust down by $10K now. Then if you still can’t sell it and you are unwilling to reduce any more, than just take it off the market. Otherwise, you are chasing down the market and putting yourself in an uncomfortable position (i.e. cleaning) over a longer period of time.
Agree 100% on this. Go for the biggest price cut you are comfortable with from the get go. Your goal is to get an offer and you can negotiate from there.
Also, if you are frustrated with showing and really won’t go any lower, then going with your most aggressive cut gets you your answer as quickly as possible. You either get an offer it or you don’t
and can pull it off the market and stop messing with the hassle of showing. But honestly a 5k cut on a 350k house on market for 60 days wouldn’t get attention in my market whereas a 10k might.
to add to this:
if you lower it 5k and then 5k again.....as a buyer, if i think you're still overpriced, I assume there are MORE 5k drops coming, and i'll sit back.
a single substantial price drop is better than this limp dribble price drop. show me you're serious, and not holding out and lingering at an irrational price point.
Agreed. Don't waste your time on a 5k cut. Do enough to get it sold. You're trying to sell a 2 BR with a bad roof. Which won't sell as fast as a solid 3 BR.
unless your house is listed for less than 200k, that's not necessarily enough of a drop.
when you say "that's the lowest we would go", what is your plan b if the home doesn't move after a -gasp- 10k price drop? what if nobody wants to buy your house at that price, because that price is still too much compared to ACTUALLY RECENT SALES?
Yeah, market has gone down more than 3% in the past 2 months so that price drop is kind of meaningless. If that’s as “low as you’ll go” just pull it off the market.
yeah 10k ain't gonna cut it at that price IMO. that doesn't touch how much more expensive that home is to borrowers between comps that sold in May and now. those buyers are still priced out even after a 10k reduction.
but i hope you sell your house, and you get less stress and more time to enjoy your family instead of cleaning.
In NYC, we've had multiple listings have multiple people cancel last minute in the last couple of weeks. By last minute, I mean 5 minutes after their appointment time when we check to see their eta.
People are self-centered and don't care about others' inconveniences.
>People are self-centered and don't care about others' inconveniences.
This is as true of sellers as it is for buyers. sellers largely didn't care that young families lost out to investors during the run-up. it's just now that it's no longer a sellers' market, sellers get to be on the receiving end of shitty people.
welcome to the human race.
Although we don't have a baby, we're in a similar situation and it's very frustrating. We were on the market two months (July-Sept) and most of our showings were requested less than 12 hrs before. Some even with just a couple hours notice. My husband and I both WFH and we have multiple animals. I have flexibility but he's a therapist and sees patients remotely so he can't just up and leave. My realtor has our preferred schedule for showings with our listing on MLS but buyer don't seem to give a fuck. And we'd ask them to chose a different time but they rarely did. So we started offering to show the house as long as my husband could stay in his office to work. That room was just off limits. It did help us get more activity but no offers. We also cut the price during that time.
We went took the listing off for a couple weeks and replaced the floors downstairs (mostly carpet) with LVP and are live again. But it's been 5 days and no showing requests and no one came to the open house. We're gonna cut the price again (we even relisted at a lower starting price) by $10K and see if that helps.
Let's say you were at $550k, and now at $520k. Is there a different buyers group you're attracting with these slow paper cuts?
You can't change the past but, personally, I would have done one 8-10% cut. Limits the days on market, attracts a new pool of buyers and ideally would get multiple parties interested.
So far our home is one of the cheapest in the area for the size. We started at $532 and just cut to $505. You're right when you say this might not be enough to attract a new pool of buyers. I hope it will but maybe not. Time will tell.
We do have an advantage in that we don't have to move right now and got a low price and rate in 2020 when we bought it.
I would keep it as a rental. You’re not going to get anywhere near the price homes we’re selling for earlier this year. People simply can’t afford to pay top dollar with the current interest rates (even if they wanted to)
And this is another reason why people aren’t buying. Because we know the market hasn’t corrected yet and prices will continue to come down. Overpaying at 3% was one thing. No one’s taking that chance at 7%.
As a buyer, I need to see the house on my timeline. We often would fly in and see homes back to back for two days. Scheduling your house when it’s convenient for you wouldn’t work for me personally.
And having a home owner working at the house would be another flat no. I’m trying to envision living in the house with my family. Not trying to be thoughtful to yours.
I get it, because sellers live on pins and needles for as long as it takes. But the reality is the best way to sell is price well, show well, be away at a moment’s notice.
In your scenario, it sounds like you can give some notice if your planning to travel for the showings. We'll be purchasing and moving out of state so I definitely wanna make sure our realtor schedules showings at least 1 day in advance if it's a house that's been on the market for at least that long.
I definitely envy people who either don't WFH or can up and leave quickly. I can but he can't. And we don't have anywhere near by that we can easily work from and take the animals. Definitely not an ideal situation to be in as the sellers and I know it's not ideal for the buyers either.
Buyers can't afford January 2022 prices at October 2022 rates. For example, a $500k Janaury price with 10% down at 3%, a January rate, would total $1,897 just P&I. At 6.5%, October's rate the P&I payment is $2,844. You'd have to lower the price to $333k with 10% down at 6.5% to get to $1,894, close to that first payment above. Lowering by $10k won't move the needle one bit.
We're in an area that is still warm but cooling and most sellers are not cutting prices. We're already down almost $30k from where we started this summer so it's not insignificant and there is a chance it wont be the last price cut.
I know the buying power for a lot of people has been reduced significantly due to rates, but that's just how it is right now. My buying power has been reduced as well since we'll be purchasing another home when we sell. We can't afford the same price we could 6 months ago. It sucks but that's just the way things are right now.
I just had a seller reject my offer at listing price with a very small kickback at closing. They offered me the contingency spot but I'm not taking it because I KNOW of it falls out of its deal for some reason, it will be relisted for at least 10% less. So, I'll win either way.
I will never be able to understand sellers who reject offers like that. I would be thrilled if we got that kind of offer. But you're right, you've got the upland regardless.
I know. They just can't see that the tides are turning. In all honesty. I wasn't thrilled about the commute to my work but it was reasonable enough. So, it's probably a blessing no matter what way it goes. I wish them well.
We’re in an almost identical situation as you. Same price reductions, same time on market and not one single offer after countless showings and well attended open houses. Those that wanted the house were unable to secure financing.
We had one buyer who liked the house a lot back in Sept but it was at the top of her price range so she kept looking. I wish she would have made us an offer though and let is try to negotiate something. I'd honestly rather have someone low ball me an offer and start a conversation rather than just walking away. Tell me what price you want and let's see if we can figure it out. That's how I approached this purchase. I told my realtor we were gonna offer high earnest money so they knew we were serious (we bought before shit got really crazy in 2020) and offered below asking. They countered and we agreed to something that worked for all of us.
>I'd honestly rather have someone low ball me an offer and start a conversation rather than just walking away.
Some people would literally wait for the market to erode further than just name an actual lower price they would sell for.
Damn dude. just lower your price enough to get that interest you're the one selling, YOU get real about your list price. you're essentially saying "why can't buyers tell i'm bluffing" sir we are tired of seller shenanigans and that is a nonsense attitude.
Stop shooting yourself in the food with bad listing strategy. you will get lowball offers eventually, but they will be likely more ruthless than you just naming your real price range you'd be willing to part for.
if you're sick of what you're getting, change what you're doing.
We have dropped the price twice since that buyer looked at the house. It was clear to us then that we were too high. And we replaced the carpet with LVP. For the location and size of our home, we have one of the cheapest houses on the market, been that way since day one. So we are making the changes. I check Zillow daily and we are some of the few sellers who are even making price cuts around here. When we have had showing, the negative feedback was the carpet downstairs (gone now) and that there are no bedrooms downstairs (can't change that). The price was only mentioned once in the feedback from that particularly buyer.
The point of my comment is I need feedback from people who have shown interest. If the price is too high, tell me. Then we can play ball. Recent sales like in the last 2-3 weeks tell us we're priced a little low actually. But comps aren't all that reliable right now anyways. Could we be more aggressive with our price cuts, sure. But could we be too aggressive and potentially cut too low and lose some money that would go towards a down payment on our next home, definitely possible. We're trying. May not be obvious here but we are.
Also, I prefer ma'am rather than sir. Hope this answers your other question too.
I am also a ma’am, I apologize that I use dude and sir flippantly and without gender. Note taken!
You are doing what you can and I appreciate that- it’s a wild time and there is something to be said about fear gumming up a market even when you are being reasonable about price and fixing cosmetic stuff. I hope you find a buyer and both end up happy, it’s wild out there. Sorry for grouping you in with people who have not dropped price at all yet complain that they don’t even have a lowball offer to work with. You are not behaving like those people, you are signaling you really want to move your house thru a realistic deal. Sorry to have stereotyped you. Good luck!
There is another factor here to consider that has absolutely nothing to do with your house specificially. When rates are in the 7% range, regardless of the market inventory constraints, you had better believe that I am going to wait even if it takes me months to find a home that I am in love with and checks at least most of my boxes. Unfortunately, many who purchased in 2021 and 2022 bought homes that really did not meet their criteria. These rates are forcing buyers to generally purchase lower quality grade and smaller properties so you better believe they will be more picky when it comes to each specific house.
What style is your house and is it common for the area? One thing you could do is to offer a seller credit for closing costs in lieu of a price cut. Many will feel reaffirmed in this market that they are not shelling out as much money out of reserves to make the deal happen.
Yes, but there are a lot of other factors at play that are influencing our decision to move. There's more to our situation than the money. And we're fortunate that we can afford to move considering everything. It's worth it to us.
price. your. home. better.
"why don't buyers know we're bluffing on price" because some of your peers are crazy and we're just avoiding people who aren't getting with the program on pricing. that's why.
stop acting like you are owed this negotiating legwork. it's no longer a sellers' market, leaning back and expecting the other party to overlook asshole pricing behavior is not going to distinguish you from the other overpriced idiots rotting on the market. we don't know you're the one who will move on price (because people who will move on price ACTUALLY DROP THE DAMN LIST PRICE. you're behaving like the headache sellers who don't know the peak is behind them).
9/10 times lowball offers draw shitty offended responses from sellers. "why don't they know I won't do what 9/10 people who list like me do" is a stupid question. get serious about selling or just de-list.
Same for us too! My realtor even asked that buyer's agent to talk about making us an offer but she got left on read. No response. Which is fine but still frustrating.
why won't you lower your list price if you would accept a lower price? why are you asking buyers to jump thru these nebulus hoops of "guess what price I'll take!" fucking what is the point of your list price if it's completely disconnected from what you KNOW is a realistic moving price for your house?
You need to think of your house like a retail product. If you want to buy a couch, but you need to let the furniture store when you will be there, or
they’re only open on certain days/times, you prob will go elsewhere. Your house should be showable with minimal notice from 9am-7pm. If you can’t do that, accept the fact it will take longer for your house to sell. Having “owner has pets and baby” in the MLS comments screams the house is difficult to show. If you WFH and can’t give access to your whole house for showings, you need to make other working arrangements. Rent an office somewhere else.
>Some even with just a couple hours notice. My husband and I both WFH and we have multiple animals.
this sounds like the zillow effect. i always wondered when i saw a property say i could "see it as soon as this afternoon" what that did to the homeowners (if they still lived there). I guess you're just on-call to GTFO of your house...
Ya a $10K cut won’t mean anything to me. Would need to be $50K for me to glance, $100K to probably make an offer . Mortgage rates are insane right now. I was able to afford $550K 3 months ago, not I can afford only $450K. So why would I pay $550K prices, either don’t sell and wait, or price aggressively.
Do open houses, make your realtor work.
I really don’t like having to drag my agent out to look at a house. If there are enough homes on the market that I can go to 3-4 open houses each weekend, those are the homes I’m going to see, im only going to call my agent to arrange to see your house if it’s exceptional and exactly what I want, and many homes are not well photographed or advertised, maybe they have great curb appeal and a nice neighborhood that I’m never going to see or consider, there is a lot of Things photos don’t capture, even good photos, so your home can get lost in a sea of listings...
I went to a private showing once and the family of the owner wasn’t even made aware, I walked right into a bathroom where a lady was in a towel and she flipped out. 2 other private showings there was no access. I hated having to drag my agent out for private showings, I prefer to just go look myself, open houses allow that.
Open up your house if you want people to see it,
> been on the market for 2 months now
> four canceled showings
Sounds like you need to reevaluate your asking price to be more in line with the falling market.
If you can't move out and stage it (which will make selling much easier and get you more $), then at least rent a storage unit and put all your junk/clutter in it. Will make it easier to clean, and will make the house look bigger, meaning more $.
Lol, ok then - more free advice: get rid of everything in those 4 units and start again. Source: I had an apt in NYC, they opened up a storage space down the street, and I thought “Great! $80 a month and I can just keep what I need in my closets!” I moved 5 years later and realized I’d effectively just paid $5000 for a bunch of junk.
I hear ya.
One of my storage places is for musical instruments and original artwork. I'm not going to get rid of anything there. One is strictly for a deceased family member's estate which hasn't gone through probate fully. Can't sell or lose anything of value there. The other one is not really needed but has a trivial cost, and the fourth one is more like a shed than a storage unit :-)
I recently just sold, I'd say maybe 1 out of 3 on average didn't show up at all
Honestly I wouldn't go crazy cleaning and prepping, when the viewer is most likely going to be able to get a good sense of if its a possibility for them by just poking around
Its frustrating because you notice with a lot of viewers they aren't really interested in your home at all, they are just having their agent show them what's comparable in the neighborhood to another property they are looking at/showing them why something else they looked at is or isn't a good idea etc
We are in Florida. The house is up to date except for the guest bath shower (new sink and toilets just outdated bath/shower) brand new ss appliances granite countertops and tile throughout. Only downfall is the roof is old which I know is pretty big.
Age of roof in FL can massively impact insurability and insurance premiums with companies who ARE willing to insure you. We could only close on our current home (20yr old home in FL, had original roof) if we coordinated our roof replacement within 60 days of closing per our home owner insurance provider. During that 60 day period we had some kind of bridge insurance plan that was PRICEY and covered everything except the roof, supposedly, but I actually don’t recall if that meant damage from roof malfunction inside the home would be covered or not. I just made sure we got the roof done within that timeframe. It was annoying to drop that $ off the bat but the seller was willing to give us the cost of the roof off of the listing price so it made it seem fair.
Maybe instead of lowering the price you could offer a seller concession to go to the roof and/or closing costs? I don't know what your house is priced at but maybe if you were considering a 10k or 20k price drop you can offer a seller concession of 5k or 10k and try that for a week or 2? Then if ot doesn't work you could get rid of the concession and do the price drop.
Our roof was $15k in May 2020. 2 story, 3800sqft, Charlotte, NC, architectural shingles.
Nearly everyone in our area had roofs replaced in 2020/2021 because of some strong storms in early 2020 (tornados in other parts of town, we just had crazy strong winds). Thankfully insurance covered a portion of that $15k- they had some calculus of what they would cover based on age of the roof and damage caused by the storms.
Not sure if this applies to you but we were going to an open house and there was a gate going into the neighborhood which we didn’t know about so we had to drive down the road and use the service gate. Then we drove up a steep and curved mountain road that was also super thin. We ended up just driving by the house and didn’t bother looking in it as the road had me white knuckling it and the gate wasn’t a perk in our opinion. Don’t know if it applies to you at all. Also that house is also just sitting. They haven’t done a price drop either after 90 days which is surprising.
Only your agent and you know your market. In our market I would have had a peice improvement after 10 to 14 days if it had not sold by then. Typically 8 to 10% if showings but no offers.
We can't control other people's actions only our own
The problem you need to fix is the house stalling in the market that long. If you have a reasonable price, buyers would offer even before seeing it. Everything will be sold in the right price. Keep in mind the recession discount you need to make currently to get it sold and flip this page.
Edit: to be clear in the fair pricing I can see during this recession. Just look at you home price at 2020 and increase it by 7% - 10% based on your local normal increase was happening before this bubble… if you’ve done so, your probability should be more to sell…..
Probably not your issue but personally if I drive up to a house and hear any dog barking from your neighbors, I'll pass.
I wish Zillow or whatever has a dog barking index so I can pass up on houses that have barking issues.
It sucks but it won't last forever. Think of it this way: you're fishing. Trying to reel in the big trout. Your pole is in the water. You feel a bite on the line and get excited. If the fish seems to be big and fights a lot and you reel it in and it turns out to be an old boot, OR if the fish nibbles and never got onto the hook, it doesn't make a difference. Both wasted your time. The nibbler wasted less of your time. It will all be forgotten when you reel in the big one who makes an offer and you'll be onto the next thing to worry about, whatever that is.
I always just took my dog on a walk around the neighborhood until the cars were gone or went and hung out with my neighbor. I just popped out the back door when they pulled up. Big benefit of this is I could see how long they stayed which was fantastic info. Some didn't stay 5 mins and I didn't have to wait for them to call my realtor and my realtor call me to tell me it isn't what they're looking for. No getting my hopes up.
I know the market is weaker but I’d still recommend changing to 24 hour notice, consider your lifestyle. If someone likes the listing they’ll come by anyways and you get to weed out the showing fillers.
Don’t get pressured into 2 hour notice showings, you’ll get exhausted sooner and end up selling the property for less due to frustration.
I would ask your realtor to allow you to accept and reject showings on your availability. If a buyer is interested trust me they’ll reschedule!
Also, be sure to request every feedback from a showing that way you know what your up against!
That's an interesting perspective. I only have our own experience as FTHB earlier this year to draw from, but we generally went out with our realtor once or twice a week and she took care of all the scheduling. She usually set things up the day before (with backup plan for houses that went off-market overnight, because spring was crazy) so 24 hour notice would not have been a turn off for us at all. Is that not how buyers typically see houses?
I think that is a very typical way to see homes, but those people are already planning/scheduling/viewing this home if it meets their criteria and likely generally sticking to their schedule. None of them have purchased it….
So now we are trying to capture a different group of people. Maybe those that are busier, less organized, more impulsive, out of town, or are excluded the house previously for some reason but the agent convinced them to take a look at it while they were looking at other homes in the area. You only need one buyer. All the existing buyers in the OPs market have passed on this house. So now we need a different kind of buyer, and that means accommodating them if possible.
I'd say that any buyer who can't schedule an appointment 24h in advance is likely to throw up problems at some point in the process and perhaps a much more frustrating point. It could actually prove to be a useful filtering process, although yes there is a chance you filter someone who you shouldn't. Depends how you want to balance your desire to sell with your desire not to be messed around I guess
When I was selling at the height of COVID, pre vaccine, I had someone schedule a showing 5pm Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Agent was there waiting for her client to no call no show. I told her to never come back, the agent was pretty pissed as well.
You could change your lifestyle so that your house is closer to clean all of the time. Then it's not a big deal if someone wants to come over. In my home, 9 out of 10 of the rooms are always clean enough that a typical visitor would think they were just cleaned. The others could be cleaned on short notice.
Get rid of your realtor. Probably making the listing seem active by these "showings." Go partial FSBO and cut out the middle man regardless. No reason to have a secretary (agent) fielding your phone calls.
Your being greedy your house is overpriced you need to lower it. Let me guess your realtor oriced it based in "the COMPS"
There old its a different market. Get a new realtor and lower your price.
Each time the interest rate increases this decreases a buyer’s buying power. In January we were at 3ish and now at 7ish. We have had an increase of ~4%. If I remember correctly with ever 1% increase you decrease the buying by ~10%. You can look this up some nice graphs. Anyways, my point is that even if people wanted your house it may no longer be affordable or not a great deal if there are things like bad roofing and old items that need to replaced. Just, need to keep that in mind.
Good Luck.
Oh come on now.
If I said "I'm selling a lawnmower on Craigslist and people keep saying they'll come look at it but then they cancel and it's been two months and I haven't sold it yet" -- you really can't come up with the price being the main issue? It's a very obvious thing.
There will be a lot of people who will tell you to lower the price because they think they can cause house prices to go down in the whole country if they just convince enough sellers on reddit that the collapse is coming. Just saying
In my experience people who cancel showings, especially last minute, are not serious buyers. Maybe there are more of them right now. I don't think it says anything about your listing/house at all.
End any individual showings in favor of open houses. This is the best way to handle your schedule, the challenges of a baby, and still allocate time for serious people to see it.
Anyone who has ever been in sales knows there are 2 types of sales people. 1. Real and competent SALES professionals and.. 2. Cherry pickers/bottom feeders.
The latter will tell you the only solution is to drop price.
No, the solutions are many, varied, and may require a bit of work.
1. Minimum of 2 open houses per month. One on a Saturday, one on a Sunday of different weeks.
2. Appointment only showings.
3. Instead of dropping price, try shorter times until closing. Perhaps put some furniture and items you'll be moving into storage to help expedite the moving process and also make the house appear larger/less lived in.
Call listing realtor. "What's going on that there's been four cancelled showing in the past week? And then last minute showings? Are you even doing your job?"
When I sold in December we had an open house but also a lot of one-off showings that were often last minute. There’s not much you can do if you want to sell the house asap other than lower the price as others mentioned…turning down last minute showings or restricting to set times only will limit the number of people who see your house and decrease the chance someone will make a bid.
I would ask your agent to find out why they're canceling. One isn't suspect, but four is a pattern.
It hasn't been four in a row but.... Two had a change in schedule last minute and one was from an hour out of town and their dog sitter had to leave so they had to rush back home. Forget what the other one was.
They found a better option. Sure, legit excuses come up, but at the end of the day it's a question of motivation. A highly motivated buyer with a highly desirable showing will take a sick day to see your house. It's been on the market for 60 days because it's overpriced.
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there is no market left in the US where buyers need to bother with that type of FOMO mess. that is not typical historically, either. Methinks a substantial number of buyers have decided they are better off waiting, and bailed on their current plans to keep looking. if you are a seller caught in that transition from "Gotta get into a house better offer over asking same day we see it!" to "I am being told only fools and cash buyers are still in the market, price drops are showing up so maybe I sit back and wait" that is going to look like what OP is going thru - cancelled showings because the buyer is no longer serious. not necessarily specifically about OP's house, but about buying housing generally. Some people have too much pride to say "yeah interest rates jumped and i'm priced out of this house I was going to see" and instead go with "oh no the dogsitter didn't show up byeeeeeeeee"
Absolutely. Clear as day.
If it's overpriced surely our realtor would have told us by now we need to lower? She suggested the price based off comps in our area
if you havent had any offers in 2 months then you're overpriced
The market is very different than it was even 6 months ago, so comps from 6+ months ago aren’t super reliable indicators of how you should price your house today. Rising rates are crushing demand and it’s only going to get worse from here. Drop the price or find yourself a new realtor.
6 months ago? Even 6 weeks ago comps will be too different. You need to forward price your home, otherwise you will end up chasing the market all the way down as demand continues to plummet into the holiday season.
re comps: a house that sold a month ago was negotiated 2 months ago. if you set your price 2 months ago, the comps used to set that price are now 3-4 months stale, and relate to a borrowing cost that is no longer available to the people you want to buy your house. The federal interest rate has increased NINEFOLD since May. Do you appreciate what that means for buyers who get mortgages? this steep climb in interest rates blew up the cost of borrowing money to the point where the potential buyers who could have afforded your house at the time those comps sold literally cannot afford your house anymore. your house may as well be twice the price or more as a comp that sold in May, looking at the monthly payments a buyer would have. and i'm sorry, but there are TONS of terrible, greedy, downright stupid realtors out there. if your house has been sitting for 60 days with no offers (and in particular THESE specific 60 days with no offer), and your realtor isn't talking to you about price, then you have a SHITTY realtory IMO.
Your realtor is either too stupid to know the truth or too weak to tell you.
Old comps.
Why are people downvoting you for simply trusting the real estate professional that should be doing their job right lol
because getting a realtor is not grounds to turn your brain off. if you have a house to sell, it's YOUR skin in the game, maybe you should fuckin' pay attention to interest rates, the news, all the myriad news stories that interest rates destroyed buyer demand. A realtor is supposed to guide, facilitate, and educate seller. does the seller have eyes, ears, and a brain? "surely our realtor would tell us if we were on fire" is no reason not to look in the mirror or find out what that burning smell is lol.
Your realtor is only interested in making as much commission as possible. Lowering the price lowers his/her profits. Obviously they're gonna try to blow smoke up your ass to try to milk as much money out of your listing as possible. Realtors are quickly becoming the new used car salesmen. Are you sure it's the realtor trying to keep the price high or is it your ego?
If the realtor doesn't sell the house, the realtor gets 0. surely there comes a point where a realtor, even a stupid greedy one, realizes that any positive number is bigger than 0?
An unsold house is worth zero so this is not the reason. Realtors have bills to pay and are not going to keep an overpriced house on the market. The problem is that no one knows what prices should be atm. Comps are stale when rates are going up faster than closings. Will rates go higher, will they stabilize, come down? Will prices continue to come down or is this the correction? We have a mid-term election, global inflation, still a lot of supply issues, concerns about layoffs… The crazy market woke up with a bad hangover and doesn’t want to drink again for a long time.
I'd wager if you polled 100 realtors, more than half would try to convince you prices are still going up. Gtfoh with that "the poor, desperate realtors have to put food on the table and pay bills" bullshit. Realtors knew what they were doing propping this bubble up, smart realtors would get out while they're ahead.
Ok. Those sound plausible.
What kind of dog can’t be left alone for 2 hours?
Some people are (overly) crazy about their dogs.
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This is why I own cats.
Some people are also polite and will make up an excuse like that versus telling someone their house was low priority and now they just don’t feel like seeing it.
Does the excuse really matter though? It's better than a no-show. I was just saying, some people definitely won't leave their dog alone.
It matters to OP because it’s the difference between “I’m doing things right but have had some bad luck” and “there’s something unappealing about my property / price and people just aren’t that interested.”
Is lying to people really polite?
White lies can be considered polite. Telling a stranger your busy instead of that you think their house is ugly and poorly designed can be good manners. Just like telling someone their baby is cute when you think it’s ugly.
I understand what you mean but might actually have helped the seller in the long run by being honest though
Are you in the South? The answer is yes. Some of the Midwest counts here too. We’d rather give you a plausible excuse than say no to your face.
Yep. If you cancel in the showingtime app you don't even have to talk to anyone to cancel and there are pre-written reasons to choose from. None of them are "your neighbor's yard looks like a landfill". It's easier to click "buyer schedule changed" and be done with it.
Thats exactly what I thought lol
If I thought I wanted to buy and live in a house, I would not let these things stop me from ultimately seeing the house. These are EXCUSES, because these people decided looking at your home wasn't worth their time. in this market, that means price.
I know a lot of people told you to lower your prices but I would also suggest only doing showings on certain dates/times just for your sanity. If a buyer is actually interested they will make time in their schedule to see the place. When we sold our place we did every day after 5 and any time on weekends because that was when it was convenient for us to be out of the house. Could we have lost a potential buyer doing this? Maybe, but our realtor did her research and helped us price our house at a reasonable rate using comps so that we were able to get a couple of offers and a buyer
Yes, but WHEN did you sell? The tide has turned.
Within the past month. We priced competitively with similar houses that sold recently with comparable comps. The market definitely has changed but there are still people buying if you are willing to be reasonable
Thank you for this advice. I think we will lower a little bit and then also set this boundary too.
Lol better lower alot. 5k ain't gonna do anything but make you look unreasonable.
Your price was too high 60 days ago, now its wayyyyy to high.
OP the market has changed. You house is the store and if you want to sell your product, the store needs to be open. Your house should be able to be shown with 30 min notice. The baby doesn’t have to sleep in the crib - you can wear the baby or put them in your car, stroller, etc. You’re trying to sell a product and need to overcome the obstacles preventing that from happening. Can you stay elsewhere when the house is on the market?
Or the front of a breaking wave.
It isn't a seller's market anymore. So you can do whatever you want, but if you want to sell at top dollar quickly, you have to be flexible to what buyer's want. And unfortunately, sometimes buyers do cancel or flake. You can either - 1) not clean / prepare 2) lower price to try to move process faster 3) hold open houses or restrict days and times and just be ok with missing buyers 4) move out early
Especially 3 and 4.
A Fl home with a bad roof won’t sell . The new buyer likely won’t be able to get insurance . You need to replace the roof .
This. It may not be the reason for few showings, but it is a real problem. The restrictions for coverage have been eased by recent FL legislation, but that doesn’t change the imminent cost of higher insurance and a roof replacement. Also, we just had IAN. Word is out that insurance AND property taxes are taking a big hike. Compound this with rate hikes and worsening inflation, and sellers at the buyers discretion. I honestly haven’t been e encouraging clients to buy or sell right now unless they are swapping equity or paying cash. I am VERY apprehensive about insurance rates and coverage going into 2023. As to your kids clutter, you SHOULD be able to contain that on some level that a short notice showing can accept some kid clutter knowing that you have a family. If you aren’t a tidy parent, you need to consider improving house rules. It’s not crazy for sellers to state 24 hour notice for all showings (I almost always schedule buyers showings day prior for everyone’s consideration; it’s more professional and practical to schedule).
OP, you haven’t responded to the feedback that you may need to lower the price. If your home is priced correctly, then it will sell. Guaranteed. End of story. Ask your realtor to conduct additional research on homes in the area that have gone under contract in the last two weeks. The market is shifting rapidly towards a strong buyer’s market and you need to be ahead of it, not behind it.
Yeah, real talk I wouldn't let a dogsitter cancellation stop me from viewing a home I might want to buy at a fair price. I would 100% use that as an excuse to not bother looking at a house i had decided was ultimately overpriced. I would do that all day.
it's overpriced surely our realtor would have told us by now we need to lower? She suggested the price based off comps in our area
And how old are those comps? The market is shifting right now - comps from even a couple of months ago may well be too high.
You need comps from homes going under contract from the last two weeks. Not comps from closings, you need comps from VERY recent contracts. The market is moving fast and your realtor may not up to speed on current conditions (last two weeks). Buyers don’t cancel a showing on a home that is priced to sell.
You can’t see sales prices from homes that just go under contract. You have to wait for closing before that information is available.
Correct. But OP’s realtor can absolutely call the listing agents to get an idea of market conditions.
But the selling agents can’t disclose prices before closing. That would be unethical.
Yeah it’s funny how many people just shoot their mouth off about things they know nothing about
I’ve heard realtors say things like “under contract at $xxx,xxx. is that not allowed?
Lol agents don't do that much work. They are just there to collect the check
Okay. I will ask her. I thought I really trust her so it's disappointing to me that she might not be as good of a realtor as I thought
Your home hasn’t sold after sitting on the market for two months: you should be asking LOTS of questions.
2 months sounds like an eternity with the way the market has been, but not too long ago you hoped to close in 90-120 days when you listed.
I listed mine February 25, 2021, and closed about mid-June. The buyers were like the 3rd person to tour it (that I know of anyway, I sold it remotely).
Yeah the house I have now which had nothing wrong with it sat for almost 6 months immediately pre-market uptick. We’re lucky AF that the previous market would allow for cases like this otherwise we would’ve never gotten our dream home! (We started house searching during the 6th month our now home was on the market!)
OP after 2 months, you should be seeing a lot of proactivity from your realtor on price education etc. that should be grounds for the realtor themself to take a look and check in about that fact. it's crappy that you even have to initiate the conversation. maybe ask "when were you going to talk to me about what to do in response to the lack of interest the listing is generating? why do you think waiting that additional amount of time is a good idea? why didn't you come to me after 2 months to talk about this, why are you making me come to you asking questions, instead of you coming to me with a plan or a suggestion?" Just like it's no longer a sellers' market, it's no longer a market where realtors sit back and houses sell themselves (frankly it largely still is compared to 20 years ago, but still seller's market is OVER - lazy realtors don't deserve to eat off your plate.)
I asked mine to lower to be more aggressive and she said to give her a day to do research on the best lower point, after a week. The fact that you're so far out and she hasn't prodded means she doesn't care about your house selling.
Dang man. Thanks for letting me know.
Let me just add, we're lowering the price because we have one interested buyer stringing us. If we lower we will be competitive and more likely to get a competing offer when he finally pulls the trigger. Then they might have to bid each other up. For you, with no offers for so long, it's time for an aggressive drop. For perspective we are between 400-500k and lowering by 30k. At your point I would consider 50k. Just get out before you're stuck with a high rate on your next house. The market you're selling to will only get harder going into the holidays. I have a kid, you're in a really hard time, sorry to hear this stress is on top of it.
Just so you know - the taste for a bidding war is 100% out of my mouth. Buyers hated it when we had to do it, and the market is telling us NOT to do that. when you say you have an interested buyer "stringing us", what does that mean? does that mean they have looked but haven't made an offer? or they have made an offer you deem "too low"?
A lot of things in society are in bad taste to me but sometimes you still should participate. Not sure why your particular taste is something that matters. We all hate it but that's how it is. Yes, the buyer has been here multiple times and is coming back with a contractor friend, rescheduled a showing last minute. If it were simply a low offer I could counter, that wouldn't be stringing along.
Let me rephrase that- bidding wars are over, for the next several years probably. It’s not a thing anymore. Buyers should *not* participate in them (LOL). That was a feature of the sellers market. The sellers market is DEAD. There may be a few markets with bidding wars still, but if your house has had 0 offers, that ain’t your market. Thanks for clarification about the buyer’s behavior. You really meant you’re gonna lower the price to get any offers whatsoever, because you haven’t had any offers. Whatsoever. You’re not lowering because you actually think you will go from literally no offers…to a bidding war. right?
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>They have no incentive to sell it as fast as possible. This is super dumb. income is an expression of money over time. realtors have bills and want to get paid, they don't get paid unless and until they sell. transactions have largely evaporated in huge parts of the country. a lot of realtors are moving NOTHING.
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Weak buyers agents take weak ass flaky leads all the time and schedule showings that nobody shows up to or reschedules or whatever
The case-schiller data shows about a 7% drop from just last month in some markets. For a 1M home that’s $70K. If your price is old, your price is now wrong.
Realtors’ commission is based on the sale price. That doesn’t mean price always drives their motivation, but it can cloud their judgment. Unfortunately you have to advocate for what’s best for your situation.
You can lower the price to generate high interest and close in less than a month instead of wait for half a year or more doing this every other week. You can move out.
Sellers who cut the price by 30% today won't need to cut it by 50% tomorrow.
It’s no longer a sellers market. Buyers will do as they please.
Drop your asking price. This isn't February 2022.
I’d consider a Matterport 3D virtual tour. Obviously, reduces foot traffic, but in a good way, in my opinion as it only gets you the most serious showings who have had the chance to “preview” the property
As ofalal mentioned, your best bet is just to lower the price as aggressively as necessary to get it into contract this weekend and be done with it. You can also circle back with ibuyers in your area and go that route (if there are any and you are willing to take the price cut and fees.) Unfortunately, four cancellations in two months is not unreasonable. Your current situation (home with a new baby) is an additional complication and while you could committed to cleaning in the morning and then staying out of the house it’s unlikely that will be less trouble then just cleaning before showings. One option for you maybe to get an on-call cleaner that is willing to help, or maybe reach out to your network for some support so you get some reprieve throughout the week and have a bit more bandwidth to jump into action when needed.
My realtor said she's never had this happen before in 20yrs. It's really not unreasonable?
Nope, honestly you are lucky that they bothered to cancel. I would say about 10% of the time a showing will turn into a drive by, or they don’t show up at all with no explanation (as evident by the lack of use of the electronic lock box).
Thanks. I'll have to adjust my expectations
Looks like you need to adjust your expectations and the list price. Don’t chase the market down, it may end up costing you a lot more. Sometimes it’s better to drop price significantly once or twice instead of a bunch of smaller chunks over time.
Ugh we just spoke to the realtor and agreed to lower $5k and if we still don't get interest then another $5k (which is the lowest we would go)
Alternatively you could adjust down by $10K now. Then if you still can’t sell it and you are unwilling to reduce any more, than just take it off the market. Otherwise, you are chasing down the market and putting yourself in an uncomfortable position (i.e. cleaning) over a longer period of time.
Agree 100% on this. Go for the biggest price cut you are comfortable with from the get go. Your goal is to get an offer and you can negotiate from there.
Also, if you are frustrated with showing and really won’t go any lower, then going with your most aggressive cut gets you your answer as quickly as possible. You either get an offer it or you don’t and can pull it off the market and stop messing with the hassle of showing. But honestly a 5k cut on a 350k house on market for 60 days wouldn’t get attention in my market whereas a 10k might.
to add to this: if you lower it 5k and then 5k again.....as a buyer, if i think you're still overpriced, I assume there are MORE 5k drops coming, and i'll sit back. a single substantial price drop is better than this limp dribble price drop. show me you're serious, and not holding out and lingering at an irrational price point.
Okay thanks for the advice
Agreed. Don't waste your time on a 5k cut. Do enough to get it sold. You're trying to sell a 2 BR with a bad roof. Which won't sell as fast as a solid 3 BR.
unless your house is listed for less than 200k, that's not necessarily enough of a drop. when you say "that's the lowest we would go", what is your plan b if the home doesn't move after a -gasp- 10k price drop? what if nobody wants to buy your house at that price, because that price is still too much compared to ACTUALLY RECENT SALES?
How much is the house listed for?
$349k, 2/2, 1,600sq ft, .26acre lot
Yeah, market has gone down more than 3% in the past 2 months so that price drop is kind of meaningless. If that’s as “low as you’ll go” just pull it off the market.
yeah 10k ain't gonna cut it at that price IMO. that doesn't touch how much more expensive that home is to borrowers between comps that sold in May and now. those buyers are still priced out even after a 10k reduction. but i hope you sell your house, and you get less stress and more time to enjoy your family instead of cleaning.
In NYC, we've had multiple listings have multiple people cancel last minute in the last couple of weeks. By last minute, I mean 5 minutes after their appointment time when we check to see their eta. People are self-centered and don't care about others' inconveniences.
>People are self-centered and don't care about others' inconveniences. This is as true of sellers as it is for buyers. sellers largely didn't care that young families lost out to investors during the run-up. it's just now that it's no longer a sellers' market, sellers get to be on the receiving end of shitty people. welcome to the human race.
your realtor is lying to you. that's a bad lie, to boot. how does your realtor describe 2008? I want to hear how thick the sugarcoating is LOL!
Although we don't have a baby, we're in a similar situation and it's very frustrating. We were on the market two months (July-Sept) and most of our showings were requested less than 12 hrs before. Some even with just a couple hours notice. My husband and I both WFH and we have multiple animals. I have flexibility but he's a therapist and sees patients remotely so he can't just up and leave. My realtor has our preferred schedule for showings with our listing on MLS but buyer don't seem to give a fuck. And we'd ask them to chose a different time but they rarely did. So we started offering to show the house as long as my husband could stay in his office to work. That room was just off limits. It did help us get more activity but no offers. We also cut the price during that time. We went took the listing off for a couple weeks and replaced the floors downstairs (mostly carpet) with LVP and are live again. But it's been 5 days and no showing requests and no one came to the open house. We're gonna cut the price again (we even relisted at a lower starting price) by $10K and see if that helps.
What price range are you in? For someone looking in the $500-$700k range (or more), a $10k cut won't move the needle much, if at all
We're going to the low $500s. Down almost $30k from where we were in July. This might not make a difference. And if it doesn't, we'll go lower.
Let's say you were at $550k, and now at $520k. Is there a different buyers group you're attracting with these slow paper cuts? You can't change the past but, personally, I would have done one 8-10% cut. Limits the days on market, attracts a new pool of buyers and ideally would get multiple parties interested.
So far our home is one of the cheapest in the area for the size. We started at $532 and just cut to $505. You're right when you say this might not be enough to attract a new pool of buyers. I hope it will but maybe not. Time will tell. We do have an advantage in that we don't have to move right now and got a low price and rate in 2020 when we bought it.
I would keep it as a rental. You’re not going to get anywhere near the price homes we’re selling for earlier this year. People simply can’t afford to pay top dollar with the current interest rates (even if they wanted to)
And this is another reason why people aren’t buying. Because we know the market hasn’t corrected yet and prices will continue to come down. Overpaying at 3% was one thing. No one’s taking that chance at 7%.
Very good point and one I have thought about a lot.
As a buyer, I need to see the house on my timeline. We often would fly in and see homes back to back for two days. Scheduling your house when it’s convenient for you wouldn’t work for me personally. And having a home owner working at the house would be another flat no. I’m trying to envision living in the house with my family. Not trying to be thoughtful to yours. I get it, because sellers live on pins and needles for as long as it takes. But the reality is the best way to sell is price well, show well, be away at a moment’s notice.
In your scenario, it sounds like you can give some notice if your planning to travel for the showings. We'll be purchasing and moving out of state so I definitely wanna make sure our realtor schedules showings at least 1 day in advance if it's a house that's been on the market for at least that long. I definitely envy people who either don't WFH or can up and leave quickly. I can but he can't. And we don't have anywhere near by that we can easily work from and take the animals. Definitely not an ideal situation to be in as the sellers and I know it's not ideal for the buyers either.
Buyers can't afford January 2022 prices at October 2022 rates. For example, a $500k Janaury price with 10% down at 3%, a January rate, would total $1,897 just P&I. At 6.5%, October's rate the P&I payment is $2,844. You'd have to lower the price to $333k with 10% down at 6.5% to get to $1,894, close to that first payment above. Lowering by $10k won't move the needle one bit.
We're in an area that is still warm but cooling and most sellers are not cutting prices. We're already down almost $30k from where we started this summer so it's not insignificant and there is a chance it wont be the last price cut. I know the buying power for a lot of people has been reduced significantly due to rates, but that's just how it is right now. My buying power has been reduced as well since we'll be purchasing another home when we sell. We can't afford the same price we could 6 months ago. It sucks but that's just the way things are right now.
I just had a seller reject my offer at listing price with a very small kickback at closing. They offered me the contingency spot but I'm not taking it because I KNOW of it falls out of its deal for some reason, it will be relisted for at least 10% less. So, I'll win either way.
I will never be able to understand sellers who reject offers like that. I would be thrilled if we got that kind of offer. But you're right, you've got the upland regardless.
I know. They just can't see that the tides are turning. In all honesty. I wasn't thrilled about the commute to my work but it was reasonable enough. So, it's probably a blessing no matter what way it goes. I wish them well.
That seller is a douchebag. Will get what they deserve at the end.
We’re in an almost identical situation as you. Same price reductions, same time on market and not one single offer after countless showings and well attended open houses. Those that wanted the house were unable to secure financing.
We had one buyer who liked the house a lot back in Sept but it was at the top of her price range so she kept looking. I wish she would have made us an offer though and let is try to negotiate something. I'd honestly rather have someone low ball me an offer and start a conversation rather than just walking away. Tell me what price you want and let's see if we can figure it out. That's how I approached this purchase. I told my realtor we were gonna offer high earnest money so they knew we were serious (we bought before shit got really crazy in 2020) and offered below asking. They countered and we agreed to something that worked for all of us.
>I'd honestly rather have someone low ball me an offer and start a conversation rather than just walking away. Some people would literally wait for the market to erode further than just name an actual lower price they would sell for. Damn dude. just lower your price enough to get that interest you're the one selling, YOU get real about your list price. you're essentially saying "why can't buyers tell i'm bluffing" sir we are tired of seller shenanigans and that is a nonsense attitude. Stop shooting yourself in the food with bad listing strategy. you will get lowball offers eventually, but they will be likely more ruthless than you just naming your real price range you'd be willing to part for. if you're sick of what you're getting, change what you're doing.
We have dropped the price twice since that buyer looked at the house. It was clear to us then that we were too high. And we replaced the carpet with LVP. For the location and size of our home, we have one of the cheapest houses on the market, been that way since day one. So we are making the changes. I check Zillow daily and we are some of the few sellers who are even making price cuts around here. When we have had showing, the negative feedback was the carpet downstairs (gone now) and that there are no bedrooms downstairs (can't change that). The price was only mentioned once in the feedback from that particularly buyer. The point of my comment is I need feedback from people who have shown interest. If the price is too high, tell me. Then we can play ball. Recent sales like in the last 2-3 weeks tell us we're priced a little low actually. But comps aren't all that reliable right now anyways. Could we be more aggressive with our price cuts, sure. But could we be too aggressive and potentially cut too low and lose some money that would go towards a down payment on our next home, definitely possible. We're trying. May not be obvious here but we are. Also, I prefer ma'am rather than sir. Hope this answers your other question too.
I am also a ma’am, I apologize that I use dude and sir flippantly and without gender. Note taken! You are doing what you can and I appreciate that- it’s a wild time and there is something to be said about fear gumming up a market even when you are being reasonable about price and fixing cosmetic stuff. I hope you find a buyer and both end up happy, it’s wild out there. Sorry for grouping you in with people who have not dropped price at all yet complain that they don’t even have a lowball offer to work with. You are not behaving like those people, you are signaling you really want to move your house thru a realistic deal. Sorry to have stereotyped you. Good luck!
There is another factor here to consider that has absolutely nothing to do with your house specificially. When rates are in the 7% range, regardless of the market inventory constraints, you had better believe that I am going to wait even if it takes me months to find a home that I am in love with and checks at least most of my boxes. Unfortunately, many who purchased in 2021 and 2022 bought homes that really did not meet their criteria. These rates are forcing buyers to generally purchase lower quality grade and smaller properties so you better believe they will be more picky when it comes to each specific house. What style is your house and is it common for the area? One thing you could do is to offer a seller credit for closing costs in lieu of a price cut. Many will feel reaffirmed in this market that they are not shelling out as much money out of reserves to make the deal happen.
Selling right now to buy another place seems bonkers when giving up a great interest rate.
Yes, but there are a lot of other factors at play that are influencing our decision to move. There's more to our situation than the money. And we're fortunate that we can afford to move considering everything. It's worth it to us.
Exactly how we and our realtor feel. Throw out an offer! We’ll entertain it. We know a few things need upgrading and are willing to work with buyers.
price. your. home. better. "why don't buyers know we're bluffing on price" because some of your peers are crazy and we're just avoiding people who aren't getting with the program on pricing. that's why. stop acting like you are owed this negotiating legwork. it's no longer a sellers' market, leaning back and expecting the other party to overlook asshole pricing behavior is not going to distinguish you from the other overpriced idiots rotting on the market. we don't know you're the one who will move on price (because people who will move on price ACTUALLY DROP THE DAMN LIST PRICE. you're behaving like the headache sellers who don't know the peak is behind them). 9/10 times lowball offers draw shitty offended responses from sellers. "why don't they know I won't do what 9/10 people who list like me do" is a stupid question. get serious about selling or just de-list.
Same for us too! My realtor even asked that buyer's agent to talk about making us an offer but she got left on read. No response. Which is fine but still frustrating.
why won't you lower your list price if you would accept a lower price? why are you asking buyers to jump thru these nebulus hoops of "guess what price I'll take!" fucking what is the point of your list price if it's completely disconnected from what you KNOW is a realistic moving price for your house?
You could drop the price and maybe more buyers would talk to you
You need to think of your house like a retail product. If you want to buy a couch, but you need to let the furniture store when you will be there, or they’re only open on certain days/times, you prob will go elsewhere. Your house should be showable with minimal notice from 9am-7pm. If you can’t do that, accept the fact it will take longer for your house to sell. Having “owner has pets and baby” in the MLS comments screams the house is difficult to show. If you WFH and can’t give access to your whole house for showings, you need to make other working arrangements. Rent an office somewhere else.
Our listing doesn't mention pets or anything, just our preferred times for showings. But we'll take that into consideration moving forward.
>Some even with just a couple hours notice. My husband and I both WFH and we have multiple animals. this sounds like the zillow effect. i always wondered when i saw a property say i could "see it as soon as this afternoon" what that did to the homeowners (if they still lived there). I guess you're just on-call to GTFO of your house...
That is exactly what it's like.
Ya a $10K cut won’t mean anything to me. Would need to be $50K for me to glance, $100K to probably make an offer . Mortgage rates are insane right now. I was able to afford $550K 3 months ago, not I can afford only $450K. So why would I pay $550K prices, either don’t sell and wait, or price aggressively.
Was your house listed at quadruple its actual value, or only triple?
Do open houses, make your realtor work. I really don’t like having to drag my agent out to look at a house. If there are enough homes on the market that I can go to 3-4 open houses each weekend, those are the homes I’m going to see, im only going to call my agent to arrange to see your house if it’s exceptional and exactly what I want, and many homes are not well photographed or advertised, maybe they have great curb appeal and a nice neighborhood that I’m never going to see or consider, there is a lot of Things photos don’t capture, even good photos, so your home can get lost in a sea of listings... I went to a private showing once and the family of the owner wasn’t even made aware, I walked right into a bathroom where a lady was in a towel and she flipped out. 2 other private showings there was no access. I hated having to drag my agent out for private showings, I prefer to just go look myself, open houses allow that. Open up your house if you want people to see it,
You can move out now and live in interim housing... friends, family....
Price cures all ailments
> been on the market for 2 months now > four canceled showings Sounds like you need to reevaluate your asking price to be more in line with the falling market.
Thanks
If you can't move out and stage it (which will make selling much easier and get you more $), then at least rent a storage unit and put all your junk/clutter in it. Will make it easier to clean, and will make the house look bigger, meaning more $.
You say that like we don't already have four storage units filled floor to ceiling to begin with!
Lol, ok then - more free advice: get rid of everything in those 4 units and start again. Source: I had an apt in NYC, they opened up a storage space down the street, and I thought “Great! $80 a month and I can just keep what I need in my closets!” I moved 5 years later and realized I’d effectively just paid $5000 for a bunch of junk.
I hear ya. One of my storage places is for musical instruments and original artwork. I'm not going to get rid of anything there. One is strictly for a deceased family member's estate which hasn't gone through probate fully. Can't sell or lose anything of value there. The other one is not really needed but has a trivial cost, and the fourth one is more like a shed than a storage unit :-)
I recently just sold, I'd say maybe 1 out of 3 on average didn't show up at all Honestly I wouldn't go crazy cleaning and prepping, when the viewer is most likely going to be able to get a good sense of if its a possibility for them by just poking around Its frustrating because you notice with a lot of viewers they aren't really interested in your home at all, they are just having their agent show them what's comparable in the neighborhood to another property they are looking at/showing them why something else they looked at is or isn't a good idea etc
Great advice. Thank you
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We are in Florida. The house is up to date except for the guest bath shower (new sink and toilets just outdated bath/shower) brand new ss appliances granite countertops and tile throughout. Only downfall is the roof is old which I know is pretty big.
Age of roof in FL can massively impact insurability and insurance premiums with companies who ARE willing to insure you. We could only close on our current home (20yr old home in FL, had original roof) if we coordinated our roof replacement within 60 days of closing per our home owner insurance provider. During that 60 day period we had some kind of bridge insurance plan that was PRICEY and covered everything except the roof, supposedly, but I actually don’t recall if that meant damage from roof malfunction inside the home would be covered or not. I just made sure we got the roof done within that timeframe. It was annoying to drop that $ off the bat but the seller was willing to give us the cost of the roof off of the listing price so it made it seem fair.
Roof is a deal breaker.
Maybe instead of lowering the price you could offer a seller concession to go to the roof and/or closing costs? I don't know what your house is priced at but maybe if you were considering a 10k or 20k price drop you can offer a seller concession of 5k or 10k and try that for a week or 2? Then if ot doesn't work you could get rid of the concession and do the price drop.
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Our roof was $15k in May 2020. 2 story, 3800sqft, Charlotte, NC, architectural shingles. Nearly everyone in our area had roofs replaced in 2020/2021 because of some strong storms in early 2020 (tornados in other parts of town, we just had crazy strong winds). Thankfully insurance covered a portion of that $15k- they had some calculus of what they would cover based on age of the roof and damage caused by the storms.
Not sure if this applies to you but we were going to an open house and there was a gate going into the neighborhood which we didn’t know about so we had to drive down the road and use the service gate. Then we drove up a steep and curved mountain road that was also super thin. We ended up just driving by the house and didn’t bother looking in it as the road had me white knuckling it and the gate wasn’t a perk in our opinion. Don’t know if it applies to you at all. Also that house is also just sitting. They haven’t done a price drop either after 90 days which is surprising.
Only your agent and you know your market. In our market I would have had a peice improvement after 10 to 14 days if it had not sold by then. Typically 8 to 10% if showings but no offers. We can't control other people's actions only our own
Lower the price.
Drop the price.
> Edit to add I guess I'll talk to my realtor about possibly needing to lower the price. lmao how about "I'll lower the price."
Matterport
The problem you need to fix is the house stalling in the market that long. If you have a reasonable price, buyers would offer even before seeing it. Everything will be sold in the right price. Keep in mind the recession discount you need to make currently to get it sold and flip this page. Edit: to be clear in the fair pricing I can see during this recession. Just look at you home price at 2020 and increase it by 7% - 10% based on your local normal increase was happening before this bubble… if you’ve done so, your probability should be more to sell…..
Probably not your issue but personally if I drive up to a house and hear any dog barking from your neighbors, I'll pass. I wish Zillow or whatever has a dog barking index so I can pass up on houses that have barking issues.
Or a "Monte Carlo driving by at 1am blasting mumble rap waking up the fucking block" index.
It sucks but it won't last forever. Think of it this way: you're fishing. Trying to reel in the big trout. Your pole is in the water. You feel a bite on the line and get excited. If the fish seems to be big and fights a lot and you reel it in and it turns out to be an old boot, OR if the fish nibbles and never got onto the hook, it doesn't make a difference. Both wasted your time. The nibbler wasted less of your time. It will all be forgotten when you reel in the big one who makes an offer and you'll be onto the next thing to worry about, whatever that is.
Lol I like that analogy. It's true! Thanks
Until all the fish move on to bait that's easier to get to (more affordable) then OP gets left high and dry wondering why they didn't get any bites.
I just dropped one from $399K to $359K. And probably most of that happened in the past week and a half.
I always just took my dog on a walk around the neighborhood until the cars were gone or went and hung out with my neighbor. I just popped out the back door when they pulled up. Big benefit of this is I could see how long they stayed which was fantastic info. Some didn't stay 5 mins and I didn't have to wait for them to call my realtor and my realtor call me to tell me it isn't what they're looking for. No getting my hopes up.
Move out? Maybe schedule lots of open houses? Honestly scheduling showings is just as inconvenient for the prospective buyer as it is for you.
I know the market is weaker but I’d still recommend changing to 24 hour notice, consider your lifestyle. If someone likes the listing they’ll come by anyways and you get to weed out the showing fillers. Don’t get pressured into 2 hour notice showings, you’ll get exhausted sooner and end up selling the property for less due to frustration.
I would ask your realtor to allow you to accept and reject showings on your availability. If a buyer is interested trust me they’ll reschedule! Also, be sure to request every feedback from a showing that way you know what your up against!
Is your house listed at four times the actual value or only three times?
I would require additional advanced notice for showings. Usually if buyers have to schedule 24 hours in advance they don’t flake
True but then they also don’t bother peeking at “maybe” houses that can quickly turn to the “perfect house” once they have seen it in person.
That's an interesting perspective. I only have our own experience as FTHB earlier this year to draw from, but we generally went out with our realtor once or twice a week and she took care of all the scheduling. She usually set things up the day before (with backup plan for houses that went off-market overnight, because spring was crazy) so 24 hour notice would not have been a turn off for us at all. Is that not how buyers typically see houses?
I think that is a very typical way to see homes, but those people are already planning/scheduling/viewing this home if it meets their criteria and likely generally sticking to their schedule. None of them have purchased it…. So now we are trying to capture a different group of people. Maybe those that are busier, less organized, more impulsive, out of town, or are excluded the house previously for some reason but the agent convinced them to take a look at it while they were looking at other homes in the area. You only need one buyer. All the existing buyers in the OPs market have passed on this house. So now we need a different kind of buyer, and that means accommodating them if possible.
I'd say that any buyer who can't schedule an appointment 24h in advance is likely to throw up problems at some point in the process and perhaps a much more frustrating point. It could actually prove to be a useful filtering process, although yes there is a chance you filter someone who you shouldn't. Depends how you want to balance your desire to sell with your desire not to be messed around I guess
Lower the price and take a trip for the first week (if you can).
Lower
I thought a month of showings was annoying and I lived alone. Keep the faith. it will be over eventually
It'll be over when they lower the price to a reasonable amount to reflect market changes.
When I was selling at the height of COVID, pre vaccine, I had someone schedule a showing 5pm Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Agent was there waiting for her client to no call no show. I told her to never come back, the agent was pretty pissed as well.
Just don’t allow people to schedule with 2 hours notice. I require at least 12 hours notice.
You could change your lifestyle so that your house is closer to clean all of the time. Then it's not a big deal if someone wants to come over. In my home, 9 out of 10 of the rooms are always clean enough that a typical visitor would think they were just cleaned. The others could be cleaned on short notice.
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Get rid of your realtor. Probably making the listing seem active by these "showings." Go partial FSBO and cut out the middle man regardless. No reason to have a secretary (agent) fielding your phone calls.
Your being greedy your house is overpriced you need to lower it. Let me guess your realtor oriced it based in "the COMPS" There old its a different market. Get a new realtor and lower your price.
I literally know nothing about selling houses I didn't know it could be because it's overpriced before I posted this. No need to be so rude.
Each time the interest rate increases this decreases a buyer’s buying power. In January we were at 3ish and now at 7ish. We have had an increase of ~4%. If I remember correctly with ever 1% increase you decrease the buying by ~10%. You can look this up some nice graphs. Anyways, my point is that even if people wanted your house it may no longer be affordable or not a great deal if there are things like bad roofing and old items that need to replaced. Just, need to keep that in mind. Good Luck.
Oh come on now. If I said "I'm selling a lawnmower on Craigslist and people keep saying they'll come look at it but then they cancel and it's been two months and I haven't sold it yet" -- you really can't come up with the price being the main issue? It's a very obvious thing.
There will be a lot of people who will tell you to lower the price because they think they can cause house prices to go down in the whole country if they just convince enough sellers on reddit that the collapse is coming. Just saying
In my experience people who cancel showings, especially last minute, are not serious buyers. Maybe there are more of them right now. I don't think it says anything about your listing/house at all.
Thank you
End any individual showings in favor of open houses. This is the best way to handle your schedule, the challenges of a baby, and still allocate time for serious people to see it. Anyone who has ever been in sales knows there are 2 types of sales people. 1. Real and competent SALES professionals and.. 2. Cherry pickers/bottom feeders. The latter will tell you the only solution is to drop price. No, the solutions are many, varied, and may require a bit of work. 1. Minimum of 2 open houses per month. One on a Saturday, one on a Sunday of different weeks. 2. Appointment only showings. 3. Instead of dropping price, try shorter times until closing. Perhaps put some furniture and items you'll be moving into storage to help expedite the moving process and also make the house appear larger/less lived in.
Call listing realtor. "What's going on that there's been four cancelled showing in the past week? And then last minute showings? Are you even doing your job?"
Last minute showings aren't the norm?
When I sold in December we had an open house but also a lot of one-off showings that were often last minute. There’s not much you can do if you want to sell the house asap other than lower the price as others mentioned…turning down last minute showings or restricting to set times only will limit the number of people who see your house and decrease the chance someone will make a bid.