You can’t win a beauty contest without conversation skills. Having the most beautiful home on the block isn’t enough to sell your it. Having the best home for sale in your whole town may not be enough to sell it. Someone has to talk about it, write about it, and spread the word so that real buyers will know it is there and that it is worth taking the time to look at.
We all know that there is usually a good and a bad way to present anything.
Professor Paul Anglin recently published a study about the affect the words used to market a home have on the market time and sale price. The study points out that some of our assumptions are wrong… the words you thought would help you sell your home are actually costing you time on the market, or worse – $money$ in your pocket.
In essence, the study found that buyers are smart enough to know that when you tell them about ‘new paint’ in a home it’s because there’s nothing better to talk about. Things like an attractive yard have meaning to buyers, while the fact that fancy screws were used to build it do not.
“The dogs only bark in the afternoon”
Bringing up that your area is quiet seems to make people wonder about noise – as counter-intuitive as that seems. Telling buyers you are motivated makes them steer clear and added 30% to the time a home was on the market.
| Term | Effect on time until sale | Effect on list price | Effect on selling price |
| Beautiful | -15% | +5% | +5% |
| Move-in condition | -12% | Insignificant | Insignificant |
| Good value | -5% | -6% | -5% |
| Must see | Insignificant | +4% | Insignificant |
| Starter home | -9% | -10% | -10% |
| Vacant | Insignificant | -5% | -8% |
| Rental property | +60% | -7% | -9% |
| Handyman special | -50% | -30% | -30% |
| Moving | Insignificant | -1% | -1% |
| Motivated | +30% | -6% | -8% |
| Landscaping | -20% | +5% | +6% |
| Source: “House Prices and Time-till-sale in Windsor,” Professor Paul Anglin, University of Guelph, Ontario*The study examined roughly 20,000 listings in Windsor and Essex counties, Ontario, from between 1997 and early 2000. The effects shown are averages; wide variations appeared within categories. | |||
Ultimately this info has to be customized to your local market, and what buyers are responding to there.
There is no magic that will make an overpriced home sell, but using the right advertising in conjunction with a good asking price should get you great results! The report is for an area in Ontario, Canada – with info pulled from the MLS in addition to other data sources. Many of the concepts apply to a larger group of sellers, but some of the details are going to be useful only to people local in that area.
Here is a link to more information:
Professor Anglin was kind enough to send me the Full Report.
Click here if you’d like to read it
An article from the University of Guelph:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/atguelph/06-05-17/featuresrealestate.shtml
Professor Anglin’s faculty page:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/consumerstudies/anglin.html