This 2-part series looks at the 11 Worst Mistakes Sellers make when selling their home . . .

So you’ve decided to sell your home. Selling a home is stressful enough. There is a lot of “behind the scenes” action taking place that you may not know about. Contrary to public perception, your listing agent does not usually attempt to sell your home to individual home buyers. That wouldn’t be a very efficient process.

Your listing agent markets and promotes your home to the other local agents who work directly with home buyers. This dramatically increases your personal sales force. During the first couple of weeks your home should be a flurry of activity with buyer’s agents coming to preview your home so they can sell it to their clients…

Unless these mistakes are being made. . . .

7. Wait too long to get to the right price.

When you drop your price, your house is “old news.” You will never be able to recapture that flurry of initial activity you would have had with a realistic price. Your house could take longer to sell. Once your home sits on the market awhile, it is harder to get a good offers. Potential buyers will think you might be getting desperate, so they will make lower offers.

8. They don’t take the first offer as serious as they should thinking they will get something better.

It is human nature for you to want the highest price for your home. In a buyer’s market, you’ll need to determine what is most important to you–price, moving date, keeping the appliances–and get the best deal possible.

That said, the first offer is frequently the best offer, so don’t be unreasonable.

9. They try to improve the property instead of lowering the price.

Smart sellers will weigh the cost of proposed improvements against the home’s market value after the repairs or upgrades are completed. If an upgrade won’t return the investment, such an improvement might not be warranted. And keep in mind, if your home is already overpriced, more improvements won’t necessarily bring the home value up in your market.

10. Focus on who is right or wrong vs. getting their home sold.

If your home isn’t selling, it’s easy to get into a battle of wills over who is right or who is wrong. It doesn’t matter what you want for your home, it only matters what someone is willing to pay for it. Every buyer wants a good deal, and every seller wants top dollar. Realtors have to walk a tight rope to balance things to try and achieve a win-win for both buyers and sellers. For example:

If you had just 6 weeks to sell your home, and you got a reasonable offer in week 3 or 4, wouldn’t you take it? Or would you risk having to pay double mortgage payments, or live apart from your family for months, etc. to POSSIBLY make 3% more? (knowing also there is a possibility you would get less). The goal is to get your home sold.

11. Try to find their next home before they sell their current home – cart before the horse.

Imagine you found the home of your dreams.  You’re all ready to move in.  The problem is you still have to sell your old place otherwise your stuck paying on two properties!  By selling first it helps ensure that you can afford the new house on time without worrying about extra mortgages to cover yourself.  Also, if you buy a home first you will most likely put a bit into the contract that says you have to complete the sale of your old place before you close on the new home.  This helps protect you from being stuck with two places.  But it doesn’t make you an attractive buyer either!

The latest video from Keller Williams Real Estate International . . .

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One of the truest indicators of the health of a real estate market is the absorption rate. Simply put, the absorption rate is the numerical representation of the percentage of inventory that is being absorbed and the number of time-periods of supply there is presently on the market.

The information used to calculate the absorption rate is the number of available properties at the end of a time-period and the number of properties sold during that time-period.

As I track the market data only on a weekly basis, I am only, at this time, able to present the data in a weekly format. If I am able to gather the data, I will present a historical look at things in the future.

According to typical historical expectations, when calculating absorption rates on a monthly basis, a supply of 5 months or less is a Seller’s Market; a supply of between 5 and 7 months is a Balanced Market, and a supply of 7-plus months is a Buyer’s Market. In the Milton area over the last 10 months, we have, according to these measures, been in and out of a Balanced Market.

Here’s the chart:

Click the thumbnail above

Remember, the data above is presented with numbers pulled on a weekly basis. That means that, if no more homes came on the market, we would have no homes left for sale after 5 weeks. That won’t happen, but it sure is a good time to get your house on the market right now.

Call me @ 905-208-7002 to discuss how we can position your house in the marketplace.

Please take our brief survey and let us know your thoughts on the housing market in the GTA.

I came across this article today, and it made me think abo u

t the real estate market locally – more specifically, how the market is in kind of a shambles because people have been buying into the messages from the mainstream media (msm) for far too long.

You see, the msm has spent the last 12 months talking about how everything is so bad, and how much worse things are going to get, and everybody listened. It reminds me of the politician who reports when gas prices are going to go up – they go up. What if he reported that gas prices are going to go down? Might they go down?

Anyway, my position on the real estate market has been, and still is, that people have to live somewhere, so why not buy a house? Prices have gone down, rates are crazy-low, and rents have gone up. Talk about three things to stop people from renting! Yet they have continued to hold off on buying a home.

The reasons given are varied:

1. Worry about job security. Well, as mentioned, if you have to live somewhere, and it is cheaper to own than to rent, why would you rent?
2. Prices are going to go down even more. Are they? They haven’t, and they’re not going to. Why? Because we are not the United States, our systems work very differently, and Canadian banks don’t want to own real estate.
3. If it is such a great time to buy, more people would be buying. Actually, the fact of the matter is that if there were more well-priced, well-maintained houses on the market, more people would be buying. There’s almost a herd-mentality amongst homebuyers – when everyone’s buying, it must be a good time to buy. Hmmm. The laws of supply and demand say the opposite, don’t they?
4. I’ve got 9 months left on my lease. Yes, and? What I mean by this is that there are all kinds of creative ways to buy now even if you are in a 1-year lease for another 364 days. Call me for details – there are lots of ways to take advantage of the rates and prices before they go up (which they will once everyone else starts buying).
5. I don’t have enough of a downpayment saved. Well, what is ‘enough’? You can still get 100% financing; you can still get cash-back. I’m telling you, times are perfect to buy!

So, are you going to just sit back and wait? Wait for changes that won’t come? Wait until the home of your dreams is priced out of what you can afford because prices and/or rates have gone up?

Search on Twitter for GTA real estate agents – they are all saying the same thing: multiple offers. The sellers won’t sit back and wait for you – get into the market while it is to your BEST advantage.

Here’s the article that spurred my thinking:

The Bank of Canada is declaring the recession essentially over in Canada and projecting the economy will bounce back at least twice as strongly as in the United States.

The bank said today it estimates the Canadian economy will advance by 1.3% during the current July-September period, and 3% in the fourth quarter, both at annualized rates.

The bank’s quarterly monetary policy report contains many cautions about how the world and Canada is coming out of the deepest and most painful downturn since the Second World War.

The bank remains concerned that the fragile financial systems in the United States and Europe may contain more unpleasant surprises that will sideswipe the global economy once more, and it believes the strengthening loonie is not helpful given the Canada’s dependence on exports.

As well, it warns the recovery is at best nascent and dependent on massive government stimulus and historic low interest rates to support domestic activity and consumer spending.

But overall, the new outlook represents a clearly more optimistic view of the Canadian economy than governor Mark Carney presented in April, when he saw the contraction that began last October lasting at least until the fourth quarter of 2009, and the dip in the first month of this year breaking all records.

The Bank of Canada first indicated it was about to brighten its outlook on the economy on Tuesday in a statement accompanying the decision to keep short-term interest rates unchanged.

At that time, it said the economy would shrink by 2.3% this year—implying growth had already begun—and expand by 3% in 2010.

On Thursday it said that economic growth “is now projected to turn positive in the third quarter.”

Carney told reporters the recovery it will be a “gradual” process.

“Global economic activity appears to be nearing its trough, and there are increasing signs that activity has begun to expand in many countries in response to monetary and fiscal policy stimulus and measures to stabilize the global financial system,” he said.

“However, this recovery is nascent, and to sustain global growth effective and resolute policy implementation remains critical.”

That effectively means that the downturn that cost Canadians close to 400,000 jobs since October has ended, although the recovery will be modest by historic standards.

The bigger bounce the bank is projecting starting this quarter does not change its overall view that it will take until mid-2011 for Canada’s economy to return to full capacity.