Even in the best markets where homes are selling in just days or hours, some homes just don't sell.  Much to the dismay of home sellers, the market has slowed in many regions across the country over the past few years.  Buyers, who were bidding on homes to get in before rising prices made these homes unaffordable are now sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the best deals.  Some areas are experiencing a real estate marketplace where a small percentage of homes on the market are selling during their initial listing period.  Homeowners are resorting to "Staging Companies", price reductions and some are even burying statues of Saint Joseph in their yard to improve their odds of selling.

Any good psychologist will tell you that the stages of grief begin with "denial".  Many home owners are in denial about the market.  "Of course my home will sell.  My neighbor's home sold two years ago in only two days and they had three offers, and their home certainly isn't as nice as mine!  I had extra insulation installed and included hose bibs on both sides of my house!"  The next stage is anger.  "It's that Realtor's fault my home isn't selling.  She couldn't advertise her way out of a paper bag!"  Once you get past the denial stage and the anger stage you can move toward acceptance.  The housing market is a cycle.  Unless you want to wait three to ten years for the next great upturn, you'll have to deal with the market that currently exists in your location.

Our goal in the book, How to Sell Your Home in Any Market, is to provide you with the steps necessary to deal with the sale of your home.  We'll examine the primary reasons homes don't sell and how to overcome them.  Then we'll examine parts of the home sale process step by step and show you where you might be able to improve your odds of selling more quickly and obtain a higher sales price.  The last sections of the book are dedicated to desperation measures for those in significant recessionary real estate markets.  These include short sale methods, renegotiating your payoff with your lender, auctions, lease-options, second mortgages, and similar measures.

In every market in the country, there are specific reasons homes don't sell.  Even when an area is experiencing a major economic downturn, or when competition is fierce for the buyers in the marketplace, there are still homes selling.  You want to make sure that yours is not one of the unlucky ones, and you want to get it sold for the most money possible in a reasonable period of time. 

When I started my career in the real estate industry in the early 1980's, interest rates had risen to seventeen percent and above.  The real estate industry had hit a brick wall and the buzzword was "stagflation".  My team was trying to deal with the fact that most people couldn't afford to purchase a home. Using ingenuity, and a little understanding of the markets, we overcame the challenge by working with banks on shared-equity mortgages and assignments of loans in order to move properties.  In the late 1980's and early 1990's there was another great real estate recession in many parts of the country.  We sold homes by utilizing "no money down" tools from organizations like Nehemiah, and facilitated dozens of workshops explaining how a family could own a home cheaper than renting the same type of home. 

Even in the worst markets, in the worst economic times, in every part of the country, homes do sell.  In almost every market there are people who need to buy or sell.  These people face job transfers, relocations, divorces, deaths, and moves from apartments.  Our goal is to tap into the available pool of buyers and get our properties sold.

In most markets, there are three primary components to selling a house, and none of them are "location, location, location".  Even in the poorest locations, homes sell.  The three components are pricing, marketing and staging.  In the worst location in town, if a property is offered for sale for a dollar, someone will buy it very quickly.  The question we have to ask is: "What is the maximum price you can receive for your home in the time frame that you need to receive it?"

My team has spent over twenty years studying sales patterns and marketing techniques.  We've determined that there are six major reasons a home doesn't sell including:

- Improper Marketing - How can you get your home in front of the most likely group of buyers that want or need to buy?  Is your home positioned everywhere it needs to be in order to find and attract those buyers?  Are there specific techniques to attract those buyers to your home over everyone elses?

- Incorrect Pricing - There are price points that are keys to getting your home noticed and shown.  There are price strategies that attract buyers.  You need to make sure that you're priced perfectly in a slow market.

- Poor Staging - Why are there two dozen books for sale about home staging?  Because it works!  There are techniques that make your home stand out among the others in the market.  Use them to your advantage.

- Locational Challenges - How to overcome obstacles like busy streets, train tracks, unattractive neighboring homes, and more.

- Functional Obsolescence - Your home is 20 years old and doesn't have the gigantic bathrooms of the newer construction.  Does that matter?  What if you only have one bathroom?  How will that affect you in your home sale?  How do you counter it?

- Dead Markets - no one is buying in the area?  That's actually not true.  There are buyers in every market in the country.  You have to insure that your home is one of the ones that sell.

Our guide to selling your home, regardless of market condition, is full of real life examples, stories, explanations, helpful website and tips and it's all put together in an easy to read format.  I hope you'll consider buying!

How to Sell Your Home in ANY Market