Have you got a listing that has been on the market for 30 days or more with no offers?

Are your sellers getting nervous? Have you gotten offers that the seller won’t take because the offers are lower than what they expected/

If so, you are certainly not alone.  The current market is still a seller’s market (Of course this is market dependent) but it’s no longer the land rush it was just 8 months ago!

So what to do?  The obvious answer, although not always the right answer, is to lower the price.  Around my market I have heard “price improvement”, “price adjustment” and other euphemisms’ for “price reduction”.  Whatever you call it, it’s often a bitter pill for sellers to swallow.  

There are two alternative strategies coming forward out of the depths of yesteryear these days.  The first is to offer prospective buyers some sort of incentive.  One of the more popular ones is to offer to pay points on the buyer’s loan.  Another is to pay for the buyer’s non recurring closing costs.  Either of these can help the buyer get in to a property that they might not be able to get without that help. Check with your local lenders to see how to implement this in your market.  In many cases such seller concessions would cost the seller less than doing a price reduction.

The other method that I am seeing is for the seller to take the home off the market and rent it out.  The seller’s who do this are thinking that the market conditions will be improved a year or so from now.

Several issues come up though.  The first is how much rent can I get? Figuring this out is crucial to success with this strategy.  Something else to consider is the expenses involved along with the tax advantages (or disadvantages!)

I found a super resource that you can share with your clients to help them “run the numbers’ to see if renting their home “pencils out”.

Go to https://www.hemlane.com/resources/documents/#spreadsheets

Hemlane is a San Francisco Property Management company that offers quite a few spreadsheets to help you and your clients decide if renting is better than selling.

If you were to do a Google Search at https://www.google.com/search?q=rent+versus+sell+my+house you’ll find a variety of excellent resources to help you help your clients make that decision.

If your client does decide to pull their home off the market so they can rent it, you may lose the listing commission, but you will certainly earn the respect and trust of your clients as you demonstrate that you are truly their trusted advisor.  And that’s a good thing!