Selling Your Home In A Slowing Market

Vera Gibbons Offers Tips That Can Help

(CBS)  If you decide that now is the time to sell your home, you may find that it's more difficult than in recent years.

Signs of a softening real estate market continue to surface. But Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine contributing editor Vera Gibbons says there are steps you can take to make your home more marketable — even if the scales have tipped toward buyers.

She spelled out some of them on The Early Show Monday.

The steps she outlined to co-anchor Harry Smith included having lower expectations in this cooling market; pricing your home right, which may mean lower than you anticipated; staying flexible with your buyer; creating curb appeal by fixing up the outside; getting rid of clutter, inside and out; and bringing in an inspector and a handyman to fix what needs fixing.

Gibbons says the markets that appear most vulnerable are the one that have been most overheated, "particularly on the West Coast, the California market, San Francisco, San Diego, L.A.; and, on the East Coast, New York, Washington, Boston. Sort of the usual suspects."

What's a seller to do?

Gibbons gave details on her main points:

Lower expectations: "Sellers in some markets are finding they have to lower their price, sometimes several times over, to move the property, particularly if you are in a luxury market. If you're reluctant to do so, your house may stay on the market for months and months and months," she says. "Buyers don't like that. They're much more clued into time-spent-on-market than in the past; if it's been sitting there awhile, they're going to walk away. And they can in this environment."