It’s a Hot Market for Sellers, so Why Bother with professional marketing?
Let’s get this straight: You don’t have to. You can take a couple of cell phone snaps and slap it on the market. Boom. All done.
Unless you want top dollar for your home.
It is true that you have a much better chance of selling when the market is low on inventory and high in buyers. But it does not follow that you will get every dime the property is worth. And not-every-dime does not mean you’ll lose out on a coupla bucks. You could be out thousands.
The sale of real estate, like everything else in life, has changed. At one time, you could get top dollar for a house with a grainy photo in a newspaper ad. But technology made a better display possible and now, buyers are accustomed to seeing well-coiffed properties presented like diamonds on a field of black velvet. Even in a low-inventory market, your house, badly presented, fails to shine next to the eye candy presented by others – and even in a shortage year, there are Others. You will still sell, but fewer buyers will be enchanted and fewer will be drawn; fewer will come to tour and fewer will offer. Fewer offers stops short of the feeding frenzy you need for top dollar.
Offers for badly or even somewhat adequately presented houses come in thousands of dollars – even tens of thousands less than those with all the stops pulled, and every marketing tool used. A tale of two 1300 square foot houses locally – one with full marketing and one without. The difference was $25,000 – $15,000 above the cost of paying the Realtor who provided the professional marketing.
So no, you don’t have to have marketing or a Realtor or anything else to sell your house. But wow, what a pay day if you do!
