Two-Step Home Selling Strategy

As we start working our way through summer and getting close to the end of it, school's starting back in a few weeks in our area, and that's going to change an awful lot of the buyer profile. We won't be having folks that need a lot of bedrooms for kids and things like that buying as much. But the good news is, for our area, the majority of our buyers, probably over 80% right now, are folks that are 55 and over. They're not buying for a whole lot of bedrooms. They're buying for quality, low maintenance, and location and convenience. And they want something one level in many cases. But anyway, I want to talk about what I call the seasonal two-step approach if you're thinking about selling your house. I've done this for years, and I just met with some folks the other day who are planning on moving next year. They're actually building a house that won't be ready until next fall in another state. And what we had talked about originally was they were thinking about maybe next spring, which everybody thinks spring is the most wonderful time to sell, and sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, depending on who you are. But they were thinking about putting the house on the spring, and I was chatting with them. I said, That's fine, but tell me what you want to do, because you're going to have to rent either way. I mean, do you want to get down there where they're building the house and watch your house being built, get with your friends that are already down there? I mean, it's a lifestyle choice. And I said, Well, there's two ways to do this. Right now, there's not a lot on the market, and as we head into the fall, there's going to be less. On the market. Because people put their house on the market thinking it doesn't sell in the fall. But the truth is, in our market, with our demographic of buyer being 55 and older, the whole school thing is not as much of an event or a factor with our homebuyer pool. So we sell homes 12 months a year. It's just, unfortunately, people don't realize that, and a lot of realtors don't realize that. What we talked about and I recommended was an approach that put your house on the market in September or even August. And because what we're doing is we're trolling for that one buyer that's willing to pay more than what the most recent sale might perhaps have been, just because there's nothing else to choose. They don't care if they pay 10 or 20 thousand more because they crushed it on the sale of their house over the years, wherever they're coming from. And so I think that it's a matter of put your house on the market now. We'll try it through the first of November, because once we get into the holidays, you probably want to have your house off the market and enjoy it and enjoy the holidays, decorate, do what you want to do. But run through that period, and then if it sells, great, and you can sometimes demand a premium price and get more than what you might would have regularly gotten if you were competing with a bunch of people, and go ahead and move because nobody's getting any younger. We're all one phone call or one doctor visit away from a life change event. And all of a sudden, what we thought was 10 years from now is now. So, we talked about doing that, and, you know, the price of that is going to be, in this case, probably about 5 to 10 percent more in their price if we can do it. And I'm the one taking the risk, and I'm going to be doing the marketing. Plus, we get to get great pictures with, you know, great grass, great greenery, everything looking fantastic. And we put it on the market. If it doesn't sell, we pull it off the market, and then we come back after the first of the year, and we beat the spring market, by the way. Our world in our region is not about people moving for schools as much as it is in most places. It's also not as much about people moving for jobs as most places. People come here to the Wilmington and coastal North Carolina area because they want to live here. They just want to be here because of the coast, the community, our cost factor, not our traffic per se. But compared to most big places in the country, our traffic is nothing. But that is a two-step approach, and I've done it for years. I've done it myself because it doesn't hurt you. You put your house on the market in the August, September, October, give it a three-month run, and it doesn't sell. You pull it off the market. You bring it back after the holidays. You come back to the market strong. Who knows what the market conditions will be. They'll either be better or they'll be worse, or most likely they'll be about the same. I don't see anything dramatically changing right now. The market is still good. If a house is priced properly and priced well at or below the market just a little bit. If you're competing with new construction or other houses, you're going to sell. If you are not competing with a lot of other properties, and you've got some unique features in the location and scarcity, you're in a great position to sell. Because the buyer is paying cash. A lot of our buyers that are moving here are paying cash, so we're not really as concerned about appraisals as we would be if it was the traditional move for school and things like that. But that's a two-step approach, and we're getting into the season where we're having those conversations. It's a great tactic. It's worked for many, many people over the years, and I don't know of any other realtor, certainly in our area, that even talks about it. But again, I'm not trying to rush people into selling. I'm just saying, if you want to be somewhere and you already have a place to go to be with family, to be with kids, grandkids, friends, lifestyle, whatever, go do it. Let's get your house sold. Go do it. Let's give it a shot. If it doesn't work, we'll bring it back out later. Now, this isn't for everybody. Not everybody's in a financial position that they can do this. But a lot of people in our area are in a financial position they can do this. A lot of folks don't owe money on their houses because they've been in them for 20 or more years. They've certainly got tremendous equity if they've been in it since before 2020. So that's the two-step approach, and it's getting to be the season where we're having that conversation with folks again. If you want to talk more about it, certainly give me a call. But I call that our, the buddy two-step. Let's call it the buddy two-step. 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🎙️ Real Stories — Episode Two-Step Home Selling Strategy Most sellers wait for spring. In coastal North Carolina, that's often the wrong call. Here's the two-step listing strategy I've used for years — list into the thin fall market, chase a scarcity premium, then pause and relaunch in January ahead of the crowd. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ About Your Host Buddy Blake, Buddy Blake Real Estate 📍 Wilmington, NC 📞 (910) 395-1000 ✉️ buddy@buddyblake.com 📱 Follow & Connect: • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@buddyblakenc • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buddyblakedotcom 📎 Resources & Links 📖 Read the full blog post: https://buddyblake.com/blog/two-step-home-selling-strategy/ 🌐 Website: https://buddyblake.com 💼 Free Home Value - No Registration Rquired: https://expresshomesale.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🏠 FREE HOME VALUE ESTIMATE Curious what your home is worth? Get a free instant estimate. https://www.expresshomesale.com/sell 📊 COST OF WAITING CALCULATOR See what waiting could cost you — the real numbers. https://expresshomesale.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚖️ Equal Housing Opportunity Powered by https://buddyblake.com