Why is my home not selling? Five Reasons

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1. Bad pictures.
When NAR (Nation Association of Realtors) surveyed home buyers nationally to find out what was the most important element in their home search, the response was overwhelming. Home buyers picked photos as the most useful element in their home search process (NAR 2014 Home Buyers and Sellers Report), over price, description, and location! Shockingly, the majority of real estate agents are still not paying for professional photographer to sell their listings. They take average or terrible pictures and the poor home owner wonders why their home is not selling.

2. Bad online marketing.
Most real estate agents are not willing to fork over any money to help your home sell. The big real estate websites out there all allow “featuring”. This is option for all real estate agents, if they want they can pay extra so that your home shows up before other like homes. Typically this means your home matches the buyer’s search criteria and shows up on the first page of results, when there could be 5, 10, or even 20+ pages of matching homes. I generate 10X to 100X more views than my competitors, for the simple fact that I’m willing to send money to help my clients home sell. Last year (2014) I sold 54 homes in the Portland area in less than 30 days. See my book on Amazon, “Five Secrets to Selling Your Home in Less than 30 Days.”

3. Bad description.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT SOME REAL ESTATE AGENTS ARE STILL INPUTTING THEIR DESCRIPTIONS IN ALL CAPS LIKE WE ARE STILL IN 1995! I’m shocked beyond belief when I see a luxury home (600K or more in our market) that has a tiny description with no supplementary information, when I know that home is packed with awesome features. I typically use 100% of the available character space in my descriptions, trying to highlight all the features of the home – and if there is still not enough space, we can attached a PDF brochure to RMLS (our local MLS system that all buyer’s agent use) for the buyer’s agents to show to their clients during a showing.

4. Errors in the listing.
I shudder when I’m on RMLS looking for a home and see a fellow real estate agent has market a beautiful single family home as a condo, or a manufactured home, or even has listed it as vacant land! It is crazy but true. Some Portland real estate agents are so bad they are putting listings in the completely wrong category. I can’t help but feel terrible for that homeowner. (When I see it I report it, but sometimes I see it after the fact, as a cancelled listing.) The poor homeowner can’t figure out why their home won’t sell while all their neighbors homes are selling, little did they know someone listed their home as a condo! Watch out especially for limited representation real estate agents who offer to put your home on RMLS for $500 or something like that while providing no services, no liability, and no representation. I’ve found their RMLS listings are quite often full of terrible errors.

5. Bad price.
I listed this last because if any one of the previous four items are wrong, those should be fixed first before the homeowner decides to reduce their price. It is true your home will not sell if you have a price that is not feasible in your local market, but first make sure your real estate agent is doing their job and providing full service representation and excellent marketing. It is common for me to talk with a Portland home owner that can’t figure out why their home is not selling, to eventually take over the listing once their agent is fired or their listing expires, and then sell the same home for the same price in less than 30 days.

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