Of course, I'm not talking about YOUR house not selling.  I'm talking about someone we all know. It's been mathematically proven from a study at ISU 9 out of 10 of us know SOMEONE whose house didn't sell recently (ok I made that statistic up) lets call him Billy Bloomington.

Reason #1  Billy's price was too high too high. I know it's easy to drive around Bloomington and see houses with sold signs and say "If they got $175k for that then I can get $200k for my house".  That's why you should talk to a Real Estate Professional (I'm partial to John Armstrong).  A great Realtor is a student of the business and has a feel for the Bloomington Real Estate market

In Bloomington-Normal we had a great year in 2013 and yes prices went up in some price ranges more than others.  I felt from March 1st to July 15th the BloNo market shot up as much as 5% because our inventory in Bloomington-Normal fell to historic lows while buyer activity was up 12%.

Reason #2  Billy didn't take into consideration what buyers would say about his home.  Just because Billy can live with his 1987 parquet entry (parquet flooring reminds me of Boston Garden and Larry Bird) doesn't mean a buyer will want to live with it.

How is a buyer going to feel about your homes condition? If your trying to get the top of the market price..... then you need to know the top of the market expectations.

Reason #3 Billy should have taken that 1st offer 3 days after listing. Value is never higher than when you first hit the market. Every morning when I get to my office (I like to call it the John Armstrong Home Selling Teams pent house in the sky), I look at what sold the previous day. I look to see what they were asking vs what they sold for.  After 18 years of doing this I can tell roughly how long it was listed before I look.

I would never advise you to take a low ball offer but I will give you advise.  It breaks my heart from time to time when against my advise a seller passes up a good offer. On the other hand I've had sellers agree to offers when I advised them to hold out for more.

Reason #4 Billy didn't take the market seriously.  If the market is hot and you've had no activity that should tell you something about your price or marketing.

In the Bloomington-Normal real estate market from March 1 to July 15, the median days to sell a house was 12 days. If you were on the market for 7 days and didn't have a showing...it's time to change what your doing, think about improving your price.

Reason #5 Billy hired his aunt Milly (all names were changed so I don't get in trouble) to list his house, Milly's marketing blows!!!

Billy's problem was he hired aunt Milly to list his property. Billy needed a mind change. He needed The John Armstrong Home Selling Team to PROFESSIONALLY MARKET the sale of his largest asset.  My team has the best SYSTEMS available in the Bloomington-Normal Real Estate market for selling your home.

• It starts with professional advise on getting the home price correctly the first time


• We use a professional photographer with better equipment than any amateur would use


• The great part is we put those picture everywhere buyers are looking 

The John Armstrong Home Selling Team 309-661-7068

For more Bloomington-Normal Real Estate updates, tune into "On The House" with John Armstrong on Saturday morning at 8:00 on Cities 92.9.

To learn more about the John Armstrong Home Selling Team check out JohnArmstrongHomes.com

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