InvestorLoft Real Estate Investing Blog

Here is the second part to How to Get Your Listings Noticed – Part 1 – more strategies to assist the real estate investor with setting their properties apart from the crowd and encourage a quicker sale.

3. Use Creative Financing: One of the best ways to offer the home improvements after the sale mentioned in #2 is through an FHA 203K Rehab loan or a USDA Rural Housing Rehab loan. Buyer can finance anywhere from $5,000 to $35,000 on top of the loan amount to pay for improvements. For energy improvement-type repairs, FHA offers an Energy Efficiency program for these repairs too. A good loan officer who knows the ins-and-outs of these programs can help you strategize listing offers that will appeal to buyers.

4. Sell the Payment – Not the Price: Again, your loan officer can be invaluable to you here. Buyers get intimidated by prices of homes. $150,000 sounds like a whole lot of money, whereas $1200 a month can seem much more manageable. Check out the temporary or permanent rate buy-down options available to you. “Seller will reduce your first year’s payment to only $1050 a month AND pay all your closing costs too!”

In your “call for more details” disclaimer – direct them to your loan officer with the questions and REQUIRE that the financing be done by him/her to get the special deal. As soon as you say “pay all your closing costs” and you allow ANY loan officer to do the loan – figure the costs will probably double or triple. If they want the special deal, they can use your loan officer (again, builders do this all the time) and you can retain control of the transaction.

Do These 4 Strategies Work?

It depends on what you mean by “Do they work?” If you try these strategies and the home doesn’t sell right away, does that mean the strategy failed? Not necessarily. Yes, it would be nice if the free bottle of wine or the offer to throw in a new fence was able to close the deal from the get-go, but that is not what the strategy is intended to do.

These four strategies can only help you get the home noticed by potential buyers. They cannot sell the home for you. Nobody is going to buy the home because you give them a bottle of wine or free tickets to a hot concert. But it’s possible that someone who likes wine or concerts will become interested in buying your home – and they maybe wouldn’t have ever considered your home unless you had offered the giveaway.

If you try using these strategies, the measure of its success or failure is: Did more people notice the home? If your open house was better attended because you offered free pony rides for the kids – then that was a success. Just because the home didn’t sell doesn’t make it less of a success.

Why Do People Buy?

Someone will buy your home when they believe your home offers them the best value for their money, based on their individual needs. You cannot dictate what their needs are – that is beyond your control. The only things you can control as a seller is making sure your home’s offering is competitive with other offerings in your area AND reaching out to as many potential buyers as possible.

Again, the more potential buyers you can get to consider your home, the better your chances are. And then it will be up to the buyer to determine if your home meets their needs. Your pricing and the condition of your home will play a big role in their decision, but they wouldn’t ever have that decision to make if they had never considered your home in the first place.

Get them to consider it – that’s the ONLY way to have a shot at selling them your home.

Glenn Leach is a mortgage loan officer in Puyallup, Washington. You can read more articles and ideas at www.credittothewise.com.

The content in this blog is not affiliated with nor is it endorsed by InvestorLoft.com and contributors receive no compensation for submitted articles. All articles submitted to InvestorLoft are subject to editorial review. Please seek the advice of qualified real estate, tax and financial professionals before investing in any project or opportunity. InvestorLoft does not provide tax or legal advice and any and all content herein is provided for informational and educational purposes only.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on strategies for getting your investment property listings and other home listings noticed – check back on Thursday of this week for Part 2.

Many investors acquired their non-owner homes using yesterday’s rules with a focus towards shorter-term lending solutions. Perhaps you’re one of them. You planned on keeping the home for a few years and then selling it for a profit, right? And you were attracted to low introductory rate ARMs because they helped with cash flow until the home went up in value and you made the big profit on the other side. Remember that plan?

And then the rules changed…

Those shorter-term loans that you were so sure you’d be out of by now are starting to convert to long-term problems. Your ARM interest rates are skyrocketing or you can’t refinance into today’s great interest rates because you have too many properties. You realize you need to sell some of your investment properties before they put you in an awkward position. But selling for a reasonable price while competing against bank-owned foreclosures and short sales isn’t easy in today’s market.

I’d like to offer you some ideas for getting your investment properties sold as quickly as possible AND for the best price possible.

To start, it is important for you to know that whether real estate markets are good for sellers – with buyers everywhere – or real estate markets are unfavorable for sellers (like right now), there is one constant that you can count on:

The more potential buyers you can get to notice your listing, the greater your chances are of selling it sooner AND at a better price.

All selling strategies need to be filtered through that undeniable truth. If the strategy will help get the home noticed by more potential buyers, it is a good strategy. If it limits the number of potential buyers who might be interested in checking things out, it is a bad strategy.

Following are two strategies (to be followed by an additional two in Part 2 of tios blog) to help get your investment property noticed:

1. Listing Gimmicks and Give-Aways: At the time of this writing, real estate values are declining in many parts of the country, loan programs have become restricted preventing many potential buyers from obtaining the necessary financing to buy, and many buyers are afraid of the uncertainty presented by a shaky economy – so sellers are having to resort to unusual measures to get their listings noticed.

Freebies and incentives are increasing – in value and in creativity. “Buy this home and we’ll throw in a new Porsche!” “Free yard maintenance for a year!” “Tour our home and get a free bottle of fine wine!” These are just a few of the listing gimmicks you can find out there.

2. Home Improvements AFTER the Sale: Would the home sell better if it had a new roof? How about new floor coverings? New appliances and granite countertops? If so, then go ahead and offer the home for sale that way. Builders do this all the time – and so can you. If you have a favorite contractor, have him/her put together some bids for various improvements, use photos of the new appliances, leave carpet samples or countertop pieces out. “Price includes new…” Laws vary from state to state on how to pay for the repairs – but there is usually a way to work it out within the deal.

Tune in Thursday for part 2 of this entry!

Special thanks to Glenn Leach, author of this post. Learn more about Glenn at www.credittothewise.com.

The content in this blog is not affiliated with nor is it endorsed by InvestorLoft.com and contributors receive no compensation for submitted articles. All articles submitted to InvestorLoft are subject to editorial review. Please seek the advice of qualified real estate, tax and financial professionals before investing in any project or opportunity. InvestorLoft does not provide tax or legal advice and any and all content herein is provided for informational and educational purposes only.