NEW YORK, Aug. 25, 2006
Selling In Slowing Housing Market
Expert Offers Uncommon Tips To Help
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Play CBS Video Video The Key To Selling Your House In "House Poor," Wall Street Journal reporter June Fletcher provides advice on how to sell your house in the cooling housing market. She shares some tips with Rene Syler.
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Interactive Eye On The Economy In-depth features on U.S. markets, taxes, employment and the Federal Reserve.
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What is a "memory point"? Fletcher calls it "that special detail that is memorable and sets your house apart from the others. It makes your house memorable. Everyone has granite counters these days. So, you might want to install a concrete one for a fraction of the price. And, it will be distinctive.
"I worked with someone who bought a house because of a beautiful little stained glass window on the third floor. He always told people he bought a beautiful window with a house attached."
Fletcher adds: "If you're going to sell your house you're going to want to make it attractive."
She doesn't necessarily advise completely redecorating your home, saying, "You don't want to be known as 'the house with the ugly wallpaper,' but you also don't want to depersonalize a home too much. You can use some of the tricks used by new home builders when they build their models. One thing they do is furnish the home with scaled down furniture — smaller furniture. It makes the rooms look larger. You do want to take out anything that makes the place look crowded. We all have a fantasy of buying a place with more space."
USE UNUSUAL ADVERTISING MARKETS
Fletcher says: "Most people place ads in the real estate sections of their local papers and magazines. They end up being in with hundreds of other ads. I really like places where your ad will stand out, places that are out of the ordinary. Think of publications that don't usually have real estate ads, such as alumni magazines, hobby magazines, train magazines, places you wouldn't usually think about, but where your ad will really stand out."
ADVERTISE ABROAD
"We're living in a global market," Fletcher says. "No matter what happens in our economy, our homes are still a bargain to people in other parts of the world like Germany and Japan. Learn to think globally. One Florida realtor places all his ads on the exit ramp at the Lufthansa Airlines terminal so, when visitors from Germany arrive, the first thing they see are his ads."
To read excerpts of "House Poor," click here.
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