When it comes to selling your home, everyone wants to make the highest profit they can. To do that, their first instinct might just be to raise the price of their home as high as humanly possible and hope it sells. But in fact, there is a whole hidden science to selling a home, based on mountains of data, copious independent research, and the psychology of perceptions and human behavior.
We'll start here with a few of home selling secrets but we have dozens of these from decades of successfully representing home sellers, so click on the free order form and of course contact us if you want to find out how to make the most money when you sell your home!
Data shows that the best way to get top dollar for your home is to price it just slightly below market value – or at least on par with your lesser competition. Why does that make sense? By pricing it aggressively, you set up the perfect conditions for a bidding war, where buyers swarm to see the house, their realtor's push them to make offers, a sense of urgency becomes palpable, and multiple offers ensue, all trying to one-up each other. It takes smart strategizing, the right marketing plan, and an experienced, savvy agent representing you to do this right, but sellers always benefit and maximize their profits when there is a bidding war.
Remember that human psychology reveals that people are more motivated by the fear of missing out than the hope for gain, which means that they'll write better offers for higher dollar amounts when they know there is a lot of interest in the listing and they stand to lose a great deal to someone else if they don't act quickly and definitively.
2. Make sure you trigger a buyer's olfactory sense.
Research shows that smell has a major impact on if a buyer likes a home or not, and to what degree. In fact, the sense of smell incites memories and the deepest emotional attractions more than any other sense, literally harkening back to our childhood and earliest recollections of family, home, and comfort. But of course people can't really objectively detect their own home's scent, so ask a neighbor, friend, or your real estate agent to walk through with attentive nostrils and give you an honest assessment.
There are many ways to get your home smelling great including scented plugins that automatically discharge periodically, a fire if you have a fireplace, fresh flowers, and even baking cookies. But no matter what you do, try to keep it simple and neutral. A study conducted by Washington State University found that shoppers will spend 32% more in stores when a simple orange scent is piped in compared to more complex potpourris of orange, basil, and green tea.
3. Consider not pricing your home with 9's at the end.
It's hard not to notice that the price of almost every consumer good or service that's advertised ends with 9's these days. We pay $19.99 for a book, $49.99 a month at the gym, and $29,999 for our brand new car. But when it comes to pricing your home, you may want to rethink the "Rule of 9." That's because a study by Old Dominion University found that pricing a home with $XZY,999 at the end (like $349,999) can actually be perceived negatively by potential buyers. It seems that in this day and age of marketing and advertising overload, consumers are wary of high-end purchases that purposely try to appear a penny or a dollar less.
So try pricing your home correctly and fairly without resorting to the $XYZ,999 trick. And don't worry about getting left out of home searches, because people always input "$350,000 and less" or the equivalent in home search sites, never $349,999.