Home Sales Tips
This is a transcript of a podcast posted Tuesday, May 1, 2007.
 Ilona Bray: Hello, I’m Ilona Bray, and I’m talking with George Devine, the author of For Sale By Owner in California and also a real estate broker and educator based in San Francisco. During George’s many years of experience, he’s naturally been around for periods when homes were harder to sell, or worked with sellers whose own homes presented particular challenges. We’re talking today about what a seller can do to hasten the appearance of a “sold” sign on the front lawn. George, let’s imagine someone comes to you after having tried to sell their house, perhaps on their own or with a different broker, but they’ve had no success. How would you evaluate what’s going on?
George Devine: Well, the first thing I would look at is price. Sometimes people price their home for sale on what I call a “need basis” rather than a market basis. They look at what they think they need to achieve in order to make the next transaction and they set their price there.
The second thing I would examine is whether or not there are painfully obvious things (at least to me) that maybe their real estate broker in the past has suggested but that they have not done because they decided it’s too much money or it’s too much hassle. For example, there are certain relatively inexpensive but annoying things people sometimes should do and frequently don’t: a fresh coat of paint, possibly clearing out some clutter in a room, maybe fixing a few minor things that really don’t cost much to fix but the people don’t want to bother with, figuring that the new owner will take care of it. It’s amazing the things you can do to make a place more saleable with relatively little expense and relatively little effort that some people just don’t do.
Ilona Bray: Now that raises a question at the other end of the spectrum. How important do you think it is to have the house staged or really put on a show to make it look great?
George Devine: Nobody’s fooled by staging, with the idea that, “Oh, gosh! This is what it looks like all the time. Wow, and all this wonderful furniture, all these great paintings are included.” Nobody believes that, but staging is meant to titillate the imagination to give people an idea of what kind of a lifestyle you could have if you lived here. That may not be the way they live now and it may not at all be the way that they’re going to live when they move in there, but it gives a very nice feeling and that’s what staging can help accomplish.
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