Every seller hopes for a quick sale, but offers don’t always come in right away. If your home has been sitting on the market with little interest from buyers, you’re probably feeling anxious and disappointed.
Fortunately, there are plenty of changes you can make to generate interest among buyers and increase your chances of receiving an offer. Here are seven potential reasons your home isn’t selling and what you can do to fix them:
1. High Listing Price
Setting an unrealistically high price is one of the most common reasons sellers struggle to get offers on their houses. Sellers sometimes overprice their homes expecting that buyers will negotiate the price down. However, buyers will simply pass over your house in favor of more reasonably priced ones.
In other cases, overpricing happens due to poor strategy. Your agent might not pull the right data when performing a comparable market analysis, or they may not perform one at all.
How to Fix It
If your home has been sitting on the market at too high of a price, your best option is to strategically drop the price. A price reduction of 3% to 5% can attract potential buyers.
You could also lower the price in increments of $25,000 or $50,000 so that your home drops to a different price bracket. This will help your listing appear to buyers who may not have seen it before.
2. Selling in the Slow Season
The real estate market tends to change with the seasons. Spring and summer are the most active times of year for home sales because buyers like house hunting and moving in good weather. Families also prefer to move in the summer because their kids are on school break.
Sometimes, listing a house in the fall or winter can be advantageous because there’s less competition. In many cases, though, it’s the reason a house sits on the market for weeks or months.
How to Fix It
If you’ve listed your home in the slow season, patience and flexibility are your solutions. Expect that your house will take longer to sell, and adjust your plans accordingly if possible.
Dropping the price or offering incentives may be necessary if you have a strict deadline for selling your house. For example, you could pay some of the buyer’s closing costs or leave furniture or appliances that the buyers want.
3. Bad First Impressions
There are plenty of reasons your home might not give a good first impression even if it’s a fantastic property. Here are just a few things that could negatively impact buyers’ first impressions:
Unkempt yard or lack of landscaping
Too much clutter or personal items in the home
Old or poor-quality interior or exterior paint
Lack of lighting
Leaky faucets, old or moldy caulk, and other small fixes
Buyers tend to make snap judgments based on the first photos they see or their first glimpses of the property. Small, fixable issues could turn buyers away and prevent your home from selling.
How to Fix It
Making some small and low-cost improvements to your property can go a long way. Work on your landscaping, make a few repairs around the house, and declutter as much as you possibly can.
Take new listing photos that showcase these changes, and schedule another open house so that buyers get another opportunity to see your home in a better light.
4. Subpar Marketing
The marketing strategy is a vital part of the home selling process. If your listing doesn’t appeal to the right buyers, you’ll have a hard time getting people through the door.
Real estate marketing includes several important components, including the photography, listing description, print ads, and social media. Not only do you need an eye-catching listing, but it also needs to be highly visible to prospective buyers. If you don’t use both traditional and digital marketing strategies, buyers may never even know your home exists.
How to Fix It
Sprucing up the marketing strategy can be fairly easy. Consider hiring a professional photographer to take listing photos and videos. If the listing description is too bland, your agent could rewrite it to draw the eye of more buyers. Your agent should also make sure your home is visible on third-party real estate websites and social media platforms.
5. Unusual Home Features
Selling a unique home will almost always be more challenging than selling a traditional house that blends into the rest of the neighborhood. If your home has an unusual floor plan, unconventional landscaping, or is much older or newer than the surrounding houses, these features can work against you.
How to Fix It
Embracing the quirkiness of your home will usually be more successful than trying to conceal or downplay its unique features. Unusual homes appeal to a smaller pool of buyers, but the right person is out there who will love everything your home has to offer.
Put a positive spin on any unconventional features in your listing description. Help buyers see the unique potential in your house that they won’t be able to find anywhere else.
6. Market Conditions Are Working Against You
No matter how well you stage and market your home, certain factors are out of your control. In some cases, sellers have a hard time getting offers because the market conditions just aren’t favorable.
The real estate market will always go through cycles. High interest rates, increasing unemployment, and other economic challenges can turn buyers away from the market. When fewer buyers are looking, you have to compete with other sellers.
How to Fix It
If you can wait to sell your home, you might consider delaying the sale for a year or two in hopes that the market conditions will improve. However, no one can predict the future, so waiting has its own risks.
Being flexible and open to negotiating is key when battling a tough real estate market. If a buyer is interested, be ready to compromise on the price or offer concessions.
7. Agent Isn’t the Right Fit
The agent you work with can make all the difference in your home selling experience, and there are a number of reasons you and your agent may not click.
For instance, your agent could be unfamiliar with your neighborhood, which can lead to mistakes with pricing and marketing. They might not be available when you need to reach them, or they may take too long to return your messages. Whatever the reason, working with the wrong agent will make the process more stressful and time-consuming.
How to Fix It
Starting over with a new agent can delay your home sale, so you should start by communicating your concerns to your agent and trying to improve the relationship. If you’re certain that your agent isn’t the right person to help you sell your house, check your contract for information about terminating the agreement.
You may be able to end the contract without penalties if the agent isn’t fulfilling their responsibilities. In some situations, though, sellers either have to wait for the contract to end or pay a fee to end the agreement and hire a new agent.
It can be incredibly frustrating to see your home sit on the market without selling. Although some factors are out of your control, there’s always a reason a home doesn’t sell. Exploring the possible barriers to your home selling will help you and your agent adjust your strategy so that the offers start coming in.
