Real Talk # 310 How to sell my house for more money

How to sell my house for more money is a question on a lot of peoples minds. Barry Mathis and Missy discuss what it takes and even give you an example of a site for one of Barry’s houses.

Barry: All right Sacramento, that’s me that’s my cue we’re back. We’re talking about marketing your properties and speaking of marketing properties let’s do a little bit of marketing for one of our properties. We have an incredible property out in Citrus Heights, it’s not going to be like anything else you find out there.
This property has been totally remodelled with massive granite countertops, all new stainless steel appliances, French doors, counter depth refrigerator, flat surface oven range, brand new dishwasher, matching stainless steel microwave, new lights, new fans, new carpet, new bathrooms, new kitchen, everything is new in there.
Custom fit 42 bottle wine chiller that’s actually my favorite part of the whole house. It’s got this little blue light inside of it. It just really tops off the market. If you want to see how your property should look when you’re marketing them, check out this website http://6037whitecloud.com.
Go out and check that out and we’d love to sell that property to you. It just took a reduction in the price, the owner of that property is wanting to move it he does not want to hold it through the holidays.
If you’re out there and you’ve got a house on the market you’d better be doing the same thing. There’s nothing wrong with your house, you don’t have a psychological connection with a house where if I don’t over price it, it means I don’t like the house. No there’s nothing wrong with your house, you just need to sell it.
And guess what, the way to sell it is you drop the price until it sells as long as you have great marketing in place. So that’s the mantra that you hear all the time from agents is, drop the price until it sells.
As a matter of fact I just went to a conference and you know what they say when they’re in darkrooms by themselves or big rooms by themselves? What they say is only price sells houses, it’s all about price. That’s what they say.
Missy: Oh my goodness.
Barry: They say, only price sells houses and I agree that if you overprice a house here’s what the truth is. If you overprice a house no amount of proper marketing will sell that house. But to tell me that only price sells houses is absolutely false and if that was the case Nordstrom’s wouldn’t be in business. It wouldn’t be there.
Missy: That’s true and different coloured tile, and carpet, and paint, and pictures that you have in the house it’s not just based on square footage. It’s not, it’s very much emotion and honestly when you go into a home and you feel what you want to feel when you buy a new house that’s going to help sell the house.
Barry: You hit the nail on the head right now. Emotions sell houses, feelings sell houses. And my job is an agent is forget the word agent, very little of what I do as an agent has little to do with having a real estate licence. I think a lot of people get this idea 14,000 agents have a license in our local area.
Only 9,000 of them sold a house at all last year. And out of the 9,000 that sold a house, very few of them I think I believe the number is somewhere around 75% of the houses were sold by 20% of the agents. It’s not quite the 80/20 Pareto principle. But 70% of all the houses were sold by the top 20%.
That means 70% of those houses were sold by the top 1,800 guys. That’s just crazy. let me get beyond that though, the reason that you’re hearing this idea that only price sells houses is because the agents aren’t marketers.
The agents are just doing their agent thing. I segued into two different thoughts there.
Missy: Yes you did, I’m with you. I am tracking you.
Barry: I can see that look on your face. Okay what I was saying is I’m a marketer, having a license.
Missy: And your side job is agent.
Barry: Yeah exactly. Having a license and doing the real estate transaction and protecting people legally that’s a part of what I do. I’m very good at that, I have loyalty as a backbone I love doing that. That’s one of my core values is protecting my clients.
It gets me in trouble sometimes with other agents but that’s one of my core values. However that’s actually not the majority of my job. The majority of my job is to position that house so that it sells for top dollar.
Missy: For your clients and here’s the thing with marketing. You’re trying to marketing a message, a feeling, an emotion about a home. Every single home is different so your marketing plan for each home could be a little bit different but your main goal is to communicate how wonderful that home will be to the new potential buyer right.
Barry: Absolutely and you hit another part of it on the head right there.
Missy: I’m hitting heads all over the place.
Barry: We don’t rehearse it at home we just talk. You’re hitting it because it’s about a plan. Do you even have a marketing plan? Did you have a written marketing plan or did you just list your house with somebody that said I have a license.

Hello this is Barry Mathis, the voice of real estate in Sacramento for over a decade. If you’ve been waiting to sell your home until the time was right you may find that that time has come. With the recent rise in local home prices your home may be worth much more than you think, online pricing sites such as Zillow or Trulia simply fail to provide an accurate picture of your home’s true market price.
To receive a true value report from a real live professional, simply call me Barry Mathis at 916-225-7777 or visit our website www.truevaluereport.com.