Article Surfing Archive

As odd as it may sound, home buyers and sellers speak different languages when evaluating properties. If you are selling, it is time to become bilingual.

As a seller of a real estate property, it is important that you remember the process you went through when buying your home. What was your motivation? What was you biggest fear? What where the less obvious things you were concerned about? How did you evaluate the home? How much could you afford to spend given your financial condition? The answers to all of these questions are critical and a seller must keep them in mind if they hope to sell their home.

One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is failing to put themselves into the shoes of potential buyers. In marketing, the fundamental axiom is that a business should know their audience. In practical terms, this means a business has to know what its buyers need and the language they use in expressing those needs and finding solutions.

As a simple example, a mortgage company refers to a home equity loan as a HELOC. The company, however, does not use such a term in its advertising because most of its potential clients either do not use the term or do not know what it means. When selling your home, you need to keep this in mind.

One area where sellers can learn the language of the buyer and smooth out the process is pricing. As a seller, you think in the language of total price, to wit, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I can get for the property. In the buyer's language, however, the issue is not so much the total price as it is the monthly payment on a mortgage. In your advertising, you can get much more traction if you list the price and an estimate of the monthly payment.

This thought process should translate throughout your selling efforts. You should be prepared to talk about the appreciation rate in your neighborhood, why your property is a steal in the neighborhood, statistics and rankings on schools in the area and so on. Simply put, you must have the information the buyer is looking for in evaluating your home.

For most homeowners, it has not been a particularly long time since they went through the buying process. If you can recall your thoughts and concerns during those days, you can use such information to help provide buyers with information and sell your home.