Reasons Why Your Home Won't Sell

Has your lawn grown up around that "For Sale" sign? Have the wasps moved into the lock box on your front door? Did you just receive an invitation to your real estate agent's retirement party?

Say you've had your home for sale for months and not a single home buyer has decided to make an offer to you. You've spent a lot of money on home advertising, made a number of price reductions and nobody calls you. Maybe your agent now has an expired listing. It's possible that you've even buried a St. Joseph's statue in your yard, and that didn't bring any offers, either. What can you do when it's plain that your home isn't selling?

If so, chances are your home sale fizzled. Here are the six most-common reasons why homes don't sell and what you can do about it.

Your home is overpriced

Overpricing is the most common reason homes don't sell. When you ask an unrealistic price, it sets in motion a process that often works against you. If your home remains on the market for too long, agents and buyers may begin to wonder if there are other, perhaps, more serious reasons why it isn't selling.

Your home doesn't 'show' well

Your home is competing against shiny new houses in those pristine subdivisions out in the suburbs with their attractive prices, incentives and community amenities. Face it: Even the best old house needs a little makeover if it hopes to attract a qualified buyer. The good news is most of the work will be cosmetic and relatively inexpensive: a new coat of paint, a few attractive window boxes, a thorough cleaning of floors and carpets. Voila! The place may look good enough to reconsider

You're in a bad location

Nothing has a greater effect on your home's value than its location. If your home's location is less than desirable, your options are somewhat limited. A good real estate agent will do his best to help you accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative of your circumstances, say by using foliage to screen off offensive adjoining properties or dampen traffic noise. The best way to compensate for a poor location is to reduce your asking price or offer attractive incentives such as seller financing or a lease option with rent credit.

You have a lousy listing agent

What's more, if your agent is abrasive, arrogant or otherwise difficult to work with, other agents may not want the hassle of showing any of their listings to prospective buyers.

You are battling competition or market conditions

In real estate, market conditions are affected by any number of external forces, some of them predictable (the weather, sort of), some of them unpredictable (the local economy, interest rates, public optimism or pessimism). While in a "hot" or seller's market, homes go fast. Inventory (homes on the market) may be low, meaning less competition for you. Chances are better that you will get your asking price in a hot market; in fact, it is not uncommon to even be offered more than your listing price. But in a "flat," "cold" or buyer's market, sales slow to a trickle, inventories grow and buyers can find bargains, especially when they know the seller is motivated (i.e., paying on two mortgages).

You have ineffective marketing

Gone are the days when an agent could simply place your listing with the local multiple listing services, hold a halfhearted open house and wait for another agent to bring forth a buyer. Today's top performers launch a multilevel marketing plan that includes listing tours for area agents, newspaper and even TV ads, weekend open houses, listing fliers and placements in local real estate publications. Also, the Internet also had changed the face of real estate. According to the National Association of Realtors, today more than one-third of all home buyers use the Internet for house hunting. The best real estate agents are computer-savvy. They have your listing in color on their laptops to show clients and communicate frequently via e-mail, a particular boon when working with out-of-town buyers.

HOME: Owning or Renting?

In everyone's life there comes a time where they have to make the ultimate decisions and decide whether to buy and own a home or continue to rent. It's a huge decision as both have notable benefits and disadvantages and it is not one to be taken lightly. Well, if you're renting an a apartment, chances are that you've had somebody tell you you're just "throwing your money away." In most cases, that's the truth. But renting is something most of us start out of doing and many people are comfortable doing it all their lives. In the contrary, owning your own home is the traditional dream that practically everyone has, especially when it comes to starting a family. It gives you a feeling that you have accomplished one of your goals that are both financially and emotionally secure as well as giving you a great sense of community.

To sum up, there are many advantages and disadvantages to owning your own home and renting. Some have advantages and disadvantages the other doesn't have, but both can be comfortable way to live. When it comes down to it you have to choose the one that suits you're financial, emotional, and lifestyle needs at the present time. Also, you have to take your future account as well, will you want to be tied down and take responsibility for a huge investment or will you prefer the freedom of being able to move whenever you please?

How to Sell Your Home Quickly and For Top Dollar

Getting your home ready

Home buyers are attracted to clean, spacious and attractive houses. So your goal is to dazzle potential buyers. First get rid of clutter and personal items from counter tops, tables and floors. Scrub-down your house from top to bottom, inside and out. Landscaping and touch-up paint can greatly increase the curb appeal. Fix creaking steps, squeaky doors and holes in walls. Also you will need to banish suspect smells; you don’t want your house to become known in real-estate circles as “the cat pee place.”

Home inspection

This must be done so you can find out the condition of your home. This way you can decide if you want to make the repairs or give the buyer a price reduction or credit towards repairs. Thus, a pre-sale inspection can help in two ways, says real estate columnist Tom Kelly. Professional inspections can identify problems that could thwart a sale in time to fix them. And if there are no major problems, he said, an inspection can publicize that fact to skittish buyers.

Pricing your home correctly

When trying to sell your home, one of the most important things you must do is price your home correctly. Always remember that overpricing your home may reduces buyer interest, makes competing properties seem like better deals. A seller may think she’s just testing the market with a high price tag, assuming buyers will at least make an offer, but buyers may assume she’s unreasonable and move on. Remember that the real estate market changes daily. We suggest revaluating your price every few months. Your goal should be a fair price — something that’s reasonable given the price of other homes in your area.

Market your home

Effectively advertise your listing with online marketing. Over 90% of all buyers use the Internet to search for a home, so online marketing is key to selling your home. Complement your online listing with traditional tactics including yard signs, open houses, and social marketing — both online and the old-fashioned kind, called word of mouth.

Selling a home takes thought, time and knowledge of your local market. Many FSBO’s fail because they don’t research the market, price their homes too high and do not expose their home to a larger enough pool of qualified buyers. If you have the time, skills and are willing to do some research and put your best effort into selling your home, then you should be able to sell it quickly for top dollar.

US Real Estate and Recession

The impact of recession has already resulted in higher unemployment numbers in the building industries, which has slowed to less than 10% of what it was during the real estate boom, and does not account for more than one million estimated undocumented workers in the U.S. working for the contractors building homes and other properties under the table, who are now out of work. There is no doubt that the real estate markets are in full blown recession. In most real estate markets property is depreciating at 2%=+ per month. Troubled by the mortgage melt down and failing home prices, the U.S. housing market has fallen into a national real estate recession, according to the latest analysis by Housing Predictor.

The crisis is unprecedented in U.S. history and could cause the U.S. economy to suffer worse national economic turmoil than caused by the Great Depression in the 1930's. New laws were enacted to help avert a repeat of the Depression and only further interest rate cuts and infusing more money in the economy may help at this point.

Furthermore, agents need to buckle down and be financially, mentally, and emotionally prepared for the real estate markets (and the nation's overall economy) to be in a recessive state for some time to come. The over-whelming majority of local real estate markets are either in housing recessions or battling to keep their economies strong enough to keep from declining. Housing Predictor forecast more than 250 local housing markets and at least 221 are in the woes of recession.

We now face a new economic era, a period without precedent. Will we have a mild recession -- or a deep one?

Will the recession be short-lived --or something that will continue for years?

Old Home Vs New Home: What's best fit for you?

Buying a home could be complicated and challenging than people realize, and deciding to buy either a new or old home is another thing. For every qualifier, there's a dis-qualifier. For every "on one hand," there's an "on the other hand." Both have advantages and disadvantages that must be consider before buying a home.

Location: New homes are often to be found in newer suburbs and in reclaimed wild areas. If a home buyer wants to live in an area that is already an established estate or in an established neighborhood, an older home is preferable. Some home buyers may also object to buying a new home that was built on newly cleared forest land or wetlands. New subdivisions -- and newer schools -- are generally on the outskirts. But the expense of daily commute is one factor that many buyers forget to consider. In an older community, he said, people have moved in and out over the years and you tend to get more diversity of neighbor backgrounds that include older people, singles, families and renters. Some older homes have been passed down from generation to generation. Relationships develop over the life of a house and its occupants, and a watching-each-others-back mentality surfaces that can extend to folks buying into the neighborhood. You don’t just buy an old home . . . you buy an extended family.

Price: Existing homes are usually less expensive per square foot, in part because of escalating land costs in new subdivisions. But ownership costs are considered more predictable -- almost inevitable -- in a new home, especially considering the cost of a code upgrade or remodeling of a vintage home.

Space: Older homes tend to be smaller than new homes, but they tend to be on larger parcels of land. With the fast rise in land prices that has occurred in recent years, new homes are often built on less land than even 10 years ago. Whether a home buyer prefers a larger home on less land or a smaller home with a larger yard should be considered before deciding between new homes and older ones. The layouts of new homes also tend to be slightly different than older ones. Older homes may have all of the bedrooms grouped together and may have only one or two bathrooms.

Living space and design: Lower building costs of the past mean more homes for the money for the buyer of a resale. Resale basements may have been finished out nicely for additional living space. On the other hand, new-construction homes often employ more efficient, innovative uses of square footage and property. Also, newer "zero-lot-line" developments offer more living space per square foot than a same-size lot that surrounds a resale.

While buying a used or new home should be largely a lifestyle decision that still shouldn't prevent the potential buyer from also thinking like a seller.