Attractive Buyer Incentives To Enhance Showings And Offers

In today's housing market the biggest complaint I hear from sellers looking to put their house on the market is how I am going to drive traffic to their house to generate an offer on the house. I recently read an article that addressed some of the main things buyers looked for when looking at homes last year and purchasing homes. First, pricing a home strategically correct is the most crucial item to consider. if you price a house too high for the market or the neighborhood you are not going to attract buyers to your home. But what if the house is priced right and staged correctly. What is a seller to do to gain an edge in this housing market? One of the biggest things that buyers are looking for besides great pictures and videos are incentives that will help entice them to buy your house over your competitor down the street. Some of the most common incentives that attract buyers to a house are: Paid home warranty for the first year. Every new builder offers a free one year warranty and an extended warranty on other items and structural parts. When reselling a home offering a buyer a one year home warranty will give them an added peace of mind when buying the house. A lot of buyers are cash poor after closing. If something breaks they may not have the money to fix it. The home warranty gives them a peace of mind of knowing that after a small deductible of usually $100.00 or less the items can be fixed with a simple phone call to the service provider. Another popular incentive among home buyers is closing cost assistance. With the economy struggling home buyers are finding it increasing hard to save enough money to cover the down payment and the closing costs on the purchase of a house. by offering to pay a percentage of the sale price toward closing costs or a fixed amount you are giving the buyer a little more breathing room and maybe putting your home into the consideration pool because of that as well. I have a lot of buyers over the past couple of years that struggled to get the down payment saved and needed the assistance of sellers toward their closing costs to purchase a house. That added incentive I know made a lot of buyers happy and able to purchase a house they normally would not have been able to buy.... Coupling the free one year home warranty with paid closing costs is a win win for buyers and sellers alike. For buyers there is the peace of mind of knowing that if anything breaks they are covered for the first year and that the closing will be paid in full or partial from the seller. For the seller it allows for a quicker closing and more motivated buyer coming through looking at their house. In addition by factoring those costs in upfront the seller will have a better idea of where the net number is going to be and how much they will have to negotiate knowing what concessions they are already giving up. If your home has not sold or you are not getting the showings you think you should be getting and the price is right; photos are good and the house is staged for showings then consider offer some incentives to the buyer to entice them to visit your house...it could be the difference between the words looking and SOLD. Dave diCecco Realtor/Broker Coldwell Banker United www.davedicecco.com