Your house has not sold in 3 months. What now?
You may have chosen to list your house “for-sale-by-owner” or you may have chosen to list your home with a real estate agent.
Either way, it’s been 3 months and it has not even had an offer.
Let’s break down a couple of reasons that will require you to take a good look.
Not Sold in 3 Months: Do People Know Your Home is for Sale?
Do people know your home is for sale?
If you have chosen to list your home with a real estate agent, your home has likely been put on the MLS, and then pushed out to the major portals and syndicated to more than 800 websites.
If you chose the red-signed For Sale By Owner route, where are you listing your home so that other people know it is for sale?
A homeowner on my street put a bright red “For Sale By Owner” sign in the yard to sell the home without a real estate agent. When I went online to search for the address, I could not find the home for sale. The only marketing the owner had was a sign in the yard for those who happened to drop by.
At the end of the day, the home did not sell. For reasons not known, the owners have decided not to sell their home for now.
Around the corner for me is a vacant lot that has been “for sale by owner” for all the years we have lived in this neighborhood (in 2024, that’d be 9 years).
When I search for the address, I cannot find the listing or what the price is.
Can People Find Your Home for Sale?
In today’s fractured real estate market, a sign in the yard or discounted access to the MLS is not enough. People consume media through many different websites, portals, searches, and videos.
When we list your home for sale in Port St Lucie and surrounding areas, we do great multi-channel marketing.
- Direct Mail to at least 200 homes.
- Social Media Organic Marketing on at least 4 platforms, utilizing video, carousels, stories, and posts.
- Paid Social Media Advertising.
- Local Groups on Social Media Platforms
- Local Online Marketplaces.
- Single Page Website for your home.
- Email to 300 Keller Williams Agents
- Social Media Share to over 900 Keller Williams agents in the Treasure Coast area.
If you permit us to have an open house, we’ll have a fresh week of marketing through most of these channels again.
We will provide you, the home seller, with additional tools to be our partner in getting the word out.
Not Sold in 3 Months: Does Your Home Make a Great First Impression?
We have seen listings without photos.
We have seen listings with unprofessional photos that are dark, crooked, and shot by the homeowner or rushed real estate agent.
We have seen listings of cluttered houses, close-ups of meaningless vases, dirty kitchens, and rusty door handles.
When we list your home for sale in Port St Lucie and surrounding areas, we arrange for professional photography, including video footage.
We provide guidance on how to properly present your home for photos and showings. Check out this example of a well presented house
Not Sold in 3 Months: Do You Show Up in Search Results?
We have also seen listings with bad data entry.
For example, we recently searched for homes with 3-car garages. We got homes that had 1-car or 2-car garages because the data was missing.
We searched for a house with an in-ground pool. In a related search, we found a home for sale with an in-ground pool that was not in our first search – the listing did not have the pool field filled in. That house was not showing up in searches for pool homes.
In March of 2024, I spoke with a seller whose home did not sell.
- The address of the listing was inaccurate.
- The type of home was inaccurate.
- The photos were dark and full of clutter.
With bad data like this, it will not show up in some searches.
Wrong Data Contributed to a $60,000 discount
Recently, a for-sale-by-owner chose the discount route with a flat fee service to put their home in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).
The owner asked for my input.
Sadly, I could not give input because the home was already listed with another agent in the Multiple Listing Service – a flat fee broker that doesn’t give advice.
Their property listing had all three types of information problems:
- incomplete information,
- incorrect information, and
- irrelevant information.
Homebuyers could not find the listing because it was marked in the wrong MLS area (similar to a zipcode). Homebuyers could not find the home in a subdivision search because the subdivision name was missing. That community is known for the active adult lifestyle (55+ age restriction), but none of that information was in the description or property listing. Common search terms for that neighborhood were missing in the description and various parts of the listing.
Eventually, the sellers accepted a “low-ball” offer (60K under their list price) just to be done.
Their final words to us: “It is hard to sell a home.”
Not Sold in 3 Months: Condition of Your Home
Prospective buyers often make purchases based on emotion. Do they squint their nose at your house photos?
Would they make critical observations of perceived defects as they walk up to your front door?
We hosted an open house not too long ago. It was a new listing on the market.
We were to host the first open house. Each of the 10 different sets of homebuyers commented on how “outdated” the house was when considering the list price.
These buyers were making comparisons. The same money could get them less work with other listed houses.
Buyers will compare your property—both the condition and the price—to other active listings in and around your neighborhood. They’ve been to other homes before yours. They will see others after yours.
Homes in great condition attract more interest and offers and tend to sell for more than homes in less-than-great condition.
First impressions begin with good photos online, great curb appeal, and a bright and inviting interior.
Not Sold in 3 Months: Are You Priced Right?
Your list price is a factor.
During the first four weeks your property is on the market, ACTIVE lookers who ready to make a decision will have seen your home and will have made a judgment about it based on price and photos. Maybe they have come to see it. Without offers, they have said “No.”
After that you are now waiting for new buyers to come to the market.
If the current buyers said “no,” what do you think the new buyers will say?
A good price is not based on what you hope the property will sell for. The best price is what buyers will offer and competing sellers are accepting.
The wise seller will base the current market, that is, those similar properties that have recently sold. A good price will influence whether buyers even see your home in their online search, whether they schedule an in-person showing, and what price they will ultimately offer.
You’ve probably even squished your nose at a listing in your home that was “too high. ” Buyers don’t want to overpay. Active buyers who are ready to take action today know value when they see it.
Realistic pricing will achieve the maximum price in a reasonable time.
Your cost or profit desire is irrelevant; the market determines the price.
Here is what we see:
- No showings = your home is at least 10% overpriced.
- Showings but no offers = your home is 5-10% overpriced.
Buyers are not dumb. In a normal market, they will not overpay for a property. If that buyer has an agent working for them, know that their agent’s job is to make sure they don’t overpay for your house.
When it comes to listing your home, most home sellers want three things:
- to make a lot of money,
- to put in minimal time and effort, and
- to sell quickly.
But the reality is, selling a home is rarely that simple.
Not Sold in 3 Months: What can you do next?
Homeowners who try to sell the home themselves—or receive bad advice—can end up stuck (months later) with a property that hasn’t sold.
If that is you and your home has not sold in 3 months, don’t panic!
A house that is priced right from the beginning achieves the highest proceeds.
Putting your home for sale is not just a matter of photos and a sign in the yard. Marketing your home involves keyword-driven descriptions, videos, social media, paid advertising, and more.
Review your For-sale-by-owner marketing or review your real estate agent’s marketing for professionalism, completeness, and frequency. This will help you be confident that the public knows your house is for sale.
Review your pricing to make sure you are within 5% of the recommended price the market supports. In St. Lucie County, houses are closing within 97% of the final list price consistently month after month in 2024. Overpriced houses will sit out there with no phone calls, no showings, no inquiries.
At Casas De Walker, we market our listings through many channels to get your listing in front of as many people as possible.
Review these three things with your agent if you already have it listed with someone.If your listing has expired and you want to try again with us, consider our relisting service.
We go beyond “a sign in the Yard and data entry in the MLS.” We run an extensive campaign to get your home in front of as many people as possible in the first 30 days with direct mail, open houses, video, social media, and paid advertising.
If your home is priced right and shows well, this exposure will generate offers for you.
