Faulkner: Strategy tips for listing in a seller’s market

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The first and foremost strategy when selling a home is pricing, sometimes referred to as positioning.

In a seller’s market, my wife and I often recommend competitive pricing with only a few exceptions. Our single goal with respect to competitive pricing is to start a fight for the home and, hopefully, a big fight to get the highest sale price possible in a timely way and reduce inconvenience to the seller.

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To start that fight, we have to garner a lot of attention and create a lot of enthusiasm for our client’s listing during the first three days the listing is active.

Before we recommend a list price, we will do a detailed assessment of the active competition. We assess not just the list price of the competition but what we determine to be the actual value, that is, the market value of the competition.

In a seller’s market, active competition is more relevant with respect to pricing and, therefore, should be weighted more heavily than the recent sales data.

We will suggest a list price that makes our client’s listing appear to be the best-perceived value compared to the current competition. A competitively priced listing will attract the immediate attention of active buyers, create a sense of urgency, and garner many showings in the first three days.

That urgency is generated from the fear of missing out, which in real estate circles is called FOMO. The fear of missing out is an incredibly strong motivator, especially for buyers who have already lost out on two or three offers.

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To start a proper fight, we need several buyers writing simultaneously.

We have had considerable success listing on a Thursday evening and advertising an open house for Sunday to get as many eyes as possible on our listing in just three days. Booking an open house on the listing day gives interested parties time to see the home.

Our goal is to present multiple offers on Sunday evening. We will communicate that in the realtors’ private remarks to set expectations appropriately upfront.

Listing on a Thursday evening will trigger almost all buyers’ search notifications that match the home’s criteria within 24 hours and allow them the weekend to see it with their realtor or by attending the open house themselves.

This strategy works best when we launch all our marketing simultaneously. That marketing would include out-of-province marketing to Ontario and British Columbia. Many homes are sold in Edmonton from out-of-province buyers who buy a home without viewing it in person.

Buyers from Ontario and B.C. see our homes as bargains and will often happily offer more than a local buyer.

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The other advantage of this pricing strategy is that a seller can receive several great offers in only three to four days, dramatically reducing the inconvenience of showings that might otherwise continue for weeks.

We rarely recommend that our client accept an offer on the first day of a listing without giving the market more time to start a bidding war.

Other pricing strategies can also work well, provided your realtor is a skillful negotiator. And there are some situations where competitive pricing is not the best option. I wrote about that in a recent article titled Ask for Less, Get More. Feel free to check that out.

Our second go-to strategy is timing. In addition to the Thursday night listing, we sometimes recommend postponing a listing.

A case in point is a half-duplex we listed in the spring. Our seller had purchased their new property with a three-month possession. In this case, we had a four-week window to list the home and confidently line up our seller’s sale with their purchase.

There were two other half-duplex active listings of similar size, same build year, on the same street. There were no other competitive listings in the entire neighbourhood.

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We recommended that our client delay pulling the trigger on the listing, hoping the competition would soon go pending. We delayed the listing for almost three weeks until both were pending. That meant if a buyer was looking for that property type in that area in that price range, they had a choice between our listing and nothing.

With our listing being the only option in our category, we increased our asking price to $10,000 higher than the competition that recently went pending.

Within a few days, we received three offers and sold our client’s home above our client’s higher list price.

Our third strategy is marketing. I see marketing as a big umbrella. Under that umbrella, I include prepping the home for photos and showings, digital walk-through tours, write-up descriptions, advertising and networking. Effective marketing will identify and reach the demographic most likely to see the most value in the property and pay the highest price.

The write-up will lead or prime the reader in how we want them to see the property. A case in point is a client’s home in an unusually shaped crescent that is a bit tight to navigate. However, it did offer more parking as it had a rectangular green space in the middle.

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In this case, we want the buyer to see this unique crescent as an advantage. One could call that priming the reader or buyer. The write-up would look something like this: “This upgraded home is nestled in a quiet crescent with a large boulevard that affords more trees, green space and visitor parking. This secluded crescent has fostered a greater sense of community where neighbours know each other, feel more connected and look out for each other.”

Regarding optimally prepping your home to maximize sale price, check out my most recent article, Seven most profitable home improvements before selling.

Marketing will also include the showing and offer process and the communication between potential buyers who attend our open house or contact us directly. It also includes our communication with the buyers’ realtors. We want the process to be transparent with thoughtful and timely communication.

We want to give the active buyers all the reasons to write an offer. A seller’s sale price often correlates to the number of offers received. Again, our goal is always to start a big fight.

In our experience, these strategies have helped us sell our clients’ homes for full market value, that is, the most the market is willing to pay.

Your trusted and skilled realtor can help you formulate your home’s unique listing strategy and reach more of the right buyers who see more value in your home and offer more.

Dennis Faulkner, B.A. Economics, works as a realtor at MaxWell Challenge Realty. He can be contacted to answer your real estate questions at [email protected]

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