The next step is to gear your marketing to where the buyers will take notice of your home for sale.

A survey was conducted by one leading real estate professional, Roger Butcher to find out how buyer’s found the home of their dreams. Following are the results:

• 40% through Firm or Salesperson brand recognition
• 20% saw the for sale sign
• 18% Responded to advertising but purchased a different home
• 8% met agent at open house, but purchased a different home
• 7% referred by a relocation company
• 3% bought the home advertised
• 1% bought the open house
• 3% Bought for a combination of reasons

Therefore, it is very important to address each of the above areas in your marketing plan. Of course, you will want to place more emphasis on the activities that solicit more buyers.

Advertising has changed with the advent of the Internet. It used to be that you could advertise in the local newspaper and you were done. Now with fewer and fewer people reading the newspaper on a regular basis, you want to insure your home is easily found on the world wide web. Another tactic of the past was to leave out information like the number of bathrooms to elicit a phone call, this is no longer valid as it will cause the buyer to pass over your home in favor of another one, that is easier to find information about. So, be sure to include all the pertinent information and have good quality pictures in all of your advertising.

Most people think about Open house as a way to sell your home. It is an opportunity for the uncommitted buyer to view your home. Plus you can utilize feedback from the open house to market your home more effectively, you will be able to see your home through a buyer’s eye.

Now you and your home are ready to sell, the next step is to price your home to sell.

The first step in this process is to research what homes in Ankeny are selling for. A good place to start is at the Assessor’s office. This is what they call looking for comparable sales. For a sale to be comparable, it needs to be a similar style, age, living space square feet and amenities. The sales are those sold within the last six months and within one mile of your home, this is so the Ankeny home loan can meet with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage guidelines.

Now you have the raw data, you need to analyze it. Take into account current market conditions; are you in a buyer’s or a seller’s market? What is the local Ankeny economy doing, what are the unemployment statistics?

Now you have what homes have sold for, look at what homes are currently on the market. Check out your competition. Where does your home fit in the list? How fast do you want to sell? The lower you price your home on the list, the faster it will sell. This is probably the most difficult step, as a homeowner you are so very proud of your Ankeny home and all you have done to maintain it, so it is important to be as objective as possible.

If this all seems like an overwhelming task, you may want to consider contacting an Ankeny Realtor to perform this for you. This is a CMA or a Completive Market Analysis and most Realtors will do this at no charge. Alternatively, if you wish, you could hire an Appraiser to do a full-blown appraisal value, there would be a charge for that and it varies by market area.

If you are in the Ankeny or Greater Des Moines area, I welcome the opportunity to help you price your home to sell. This is more of an art than an exact science.

With the increased competition of homes for sale in the marketplace you want to do everything possible to position your house at the top of the buyer’s mind.

The way you live in your home is not the same as how you sell your home. Once when our house was on the market and my children were young, I told them the house had to look as if no one lived there. Therefore, that means remove all the excess! You want the buyer to be able to envision themselves and their belongings in the home and too much of anything will get in the way, that means family photos, furniture, clothes in the closets and more. Many resources are available to store your excess while your home is on the market or to just get rid of junk you were holding on to!

Once you have de-cluttered it is time to look at the home itself. Is it ‘showroom’ ready? To be show room ready you need to have the floors clean, carpets need to show minimal wear and be stretched properly ( that means no wrinkles) and the décor needs to be neutral. You may love your wallpaper or the bright green bedroom, but buyers have a tendency to prefer a clean slate to start with. Then look around to see if there is any deferred maintenance items that need to be taken care of. You know, those little quirks that you have learned to live with. Believe it or not I actually showed a home last week where the faucet was missing for the bathtub! That just made the buyer wonder what else had been neglected? Don’t invite the question, give buyers the impression your home is ready to move into!

Over the next week, I will cover topics you will want to consider when deciding to sell your home.

The very first thing to do is to examine your motives for selling. Right now is not the time to “test the waters”; selling your home is hard work at any time and more so right now.

Other factors to take into consideration are what will you do if your home does not sell in the time frame you wish, do you have funds to cover the selling costs and paying off the mortgage if the offer doesn’t?

What are your plans if your home sells right away? Often times when the home is priced right and ready to sell, it will sell much faster than you had envisioned. Do you have a contingency plan in place?

At this time in the market another reason to sell may be that you can not afford the home any longer due to any number of legitimate reasons. This is the time you need to talk to your lender about loan modification.
Or a short sale may be a possibility. I will address short sales later, but if you have a question now feel free to contact me.

After discovering your true motives for selling, the next step will be to prepare your home for sale, which will be my next entry.

I have lived and worked in the community of Ankeny since 1993. When I moved here, I gave it a 5-year commitment, figuring I could live anywhere for that long. It has now been 16 years! Ankeny has so much to offer that I grew roots and stayed!

In my blog, I will address some of the issues that have made this my ‘home town’. Some of the topics will be that Ankeny is big enough to offer whatever you may need it lives like a community that cares about one another. The education opportunities offered through the Ankeny Schools is beyond compare my three boys each graduated from high school with at least one year’s worth of college credit earned while a high school student. Two went on to DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College)  the other went on to Iowa State Universtiy. Then there is the variety of housing available, anything from the starter home to the move up dream home, you can find it here in Ankeny. If you prefer to live on some land, acreage homes are available with a short commute. Location is the final key, between Ames and Des Moines and just off of the free way, you have easy access to wherever you want to go!

In my blog, I will be going over information on what is happening in our local market, give you hints on selling your home for top dollar and how to negotiate your best possible deal when buying a home. It is my goal to become the ‘go to person’ when you have a question about homes in Ankeny and the surrounding areas.

If you have any questions or topics you would like to see addressed, be sure to email me! As a former teacher, I enjoy answering questions and thus furthering your knowledge.