Selling a home can be challenging, especially now. Interest rates remain high, and listings are at their highest level in five years.
According to the Realtor.com® October 2024 Housing Trends Report, the number of listings on the market grew 4.9% year over year, and the total number of unsold homes, including homes under contract, increased by 22.5% compared with last year.
However, many buyers are still hesitant to jump back into the market. With more homes competing for buyers’ attention, some sellers go a little further to make a sale, employing new tactics—some ethical and some not—to attract interest in their homes.
For example, to get fresh eyeballs on their listing, some sellers like to list and delist their homes to refresh properties that have grown “stale” and potentially connect with a new pool of buyers.
But that tactic is risky because buyers and their agents can view the listing history as they peruse properties. Listing and delisting a property too many times might set off alarm bells—and result in your property sitting on the market even longer.
Below are more “seller cheats” to try and a few that you should absolutely avoid.
1. Do: Lower your asking price
Lowering the price of your home might be a difficult pill to swallow, but it will certainly help renew interest in a listing. How much you ultimately decide to reduce the list price depends on the condition of the home, the original price, and the current market.
Not ready for a large price drop? Another tactic is to create small price reductions that will help refresh interest in your property.
“We get permission from our sellers that the seller will reduce the purchase price by $10 on the 30th of each month,” explains Jeff Lichtenstein of Echo Fine Properties in Southern Florida. “The reason is that a $10 price reduction sends out thousands of email alerts to buyers and buyer agents looking for a home at that particular price point. It’s probably the best piece of marketing we do!”
2. Do: Turn your home into an event space
Sometimes, buyers come from the unlikeliest of places. And to make them fall in love with your home, you want to do something special.
“You want to attract attention from prospective buyers,” says Matthew Bizzarro, CEO and founder of New York real estate company The Bizzarro Agency. “Hold an event, such as an art gallery show or a wine and cheese gathering. This brings people to the home, even if they wouldn’t have come, just to see the listing.”
It often pays to partner with local businesses on these types of events.
“The way that I learned about an open house was actually through the social media of a local business,” says TurboTenant founder Seamus Nally. “The seller had essentially partnered with this popular local business by hiring them to cater snacks for the open house, and then that business shared information and pics/videos of the open house.”
3. Do: Entice buyers with special promotions
Ask your agent for help. They are getting more creative when it comes to matching homes with buyers.
“Recently, I launched a ‘fly and buy’ promotion for a property I listed in Lafayette, Winter Park, FL, priced at $1,375,000,” says Jules Carneiro, a luxury real estate adviser with Premier Sotheby’s International Realty. “We identified that many potential buyers for the property were out of state. To address this, we introduced a promotional offer: a $5,000 credit at closing to offset travel costs for buyers who came to view the property.”
Carneiro says this type of incentive tends to be more common in the vacation home market, where the intended buyers will likely have a primary home out of state or country.
“For sellers in those regions, it’s worth exploring as a potential differentiator,” he adds.
4. Don’t: Create an illusion
Staging can make or break a listing, but it’s important that the staging of a space represents how the space looks.
“One of the most common tactics I’ve seen is staging to the level of illusion,” says Alexei Morgado, founder of the real estate education company Lexawise. “I’ve seen homes that look great in their online photos, but once I physically visited them, strategic placement of mirrors, miniature furniture, and enhanced lighting made the rooms seem way bigger than they are.”
Many agents also use virtual staging in their listings to draw interest and show off a space’s potential. That might include adding furniture or artwork. But some real estate agents don’t bother labeling their images as “virtually staged,” says Bizzarro. Worse still, some digitally manipulate their photos without disclosing they’ve altered an image.
Bizzarro calls it a “high-tech bait and switch” because “it’s intended to deceive. It’s lying to the buyer.”
5. Don’t: Bait and switch prospective buyers
Another tactic some agents use to draw interest in properties is falsely advertising homes that aren’t for sale.
“When worried a listing won’t be particularly attractive to prospective buyers, some agents list different homes that aren’t even for sale, then direct interested buyers to the one that’s actually on the market,” says Bizzarro. “It’s not only dishonest but risky as buyers are likely to be angry at the bait and switch.”
6. Don’t: Use vanity upgrades to mask major problems
Sometimes, sellers try to create the illusion of value through “vanity upgrades,” cosmetic changes that hide more significant problems underneath.
“One seller put nothing but high-brow fixtures on one or two rooms of his house while leaving the rest in less desirable condition,” recalls Morgado. “At best, it was a means to lure buyers with the glitz of the upgrades and distract them from the outdated facets of this
property.”
This tactic might be partly effective—until the home inspection phase. When an inspector discovers a home’s true condition, the sale might go south, and sellers will have to start all over again.
Originally posted to realtor.com by Julie Gerstein
