Knoxville Tennessee Real Estate Blog

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeThese 9 “deadly sins” are the most common I see almost everyday in the Knoxville & Farragut Tennessee real estate market. If you truly want your house to sell in a reasonable amount of time and for a good price, DO NOT commit any of these 9 deadly sins.

1. First, and probably worst, is overpricing. I hear sellers and their agents all the time saying things like; “we’re just trying a higher price for a while.” and “make us an offer, we’re negotiable.” The sad fact of the matter is that overpricing not only drives away buyers, it often drives then to more reasonably priced Knoxville sellers who are also negotiable. Here’s a perfect case study.
2. Not listening to your Realtor. Selling houses is what we do for a living and most of us are pretty good at it. You need to listen to your Realtor if they are suggesting painting or improving something. Here are 40 tips to “Dress your Knoxville house for success” and help it sell faster.
3. Micromanage the marketing. Just because you had a Tennessee real estate license 20 years ago or sold Amway doesn’t qualify you to market real estate in today’s very competitive market. Here’s a valuable hint; lots of open houses wastes a lot of everyone’s time. The only people that come are noisy neighbors and potential crooks who want to check out what you have they might want.
4. Not “staging” your home to sell. Selling Knoxville area homes these days is as much about theater and presentation as it is about location and price. Statistics show that professionally staged homes sell for a 6.9% higher price and in much less time than non-staged homes.
5. Failing the “smell” test. That old saying about “you can’t see the forest for the trees” really applies here. Objectionable odors you don’t notice such as pet smells, cooking odors, tobacco smoke, and others are a huge turnoff for buyers. Get an “outside nose” to give your house the “smell test” and tell you honestly what it smells like.
6. Controlling your pets. Sure your love your “Fluffy” or little “Snookums” but not all buyers appreciate animals of any sort in the homes they’re looking to buy. The very best way to handle this is to send your pets on vacation with a friend or vet while your house is on the market. Second best solution is to keep them caged or penned up while the house is being shown. This also goes along with the smell test, number 5 above.
7. Ignore feedback from potential buyers. Sure, not every buyer is going to like everything about your house. But if 3 different buyers say they love your house but hate the red walls on the dining room that’s a good sign it’s time to get out the paintbrushes or call a professional to fix the issue.
8. Talking to potential buyers viewing your home. The best place for you to be when buyers are touring your home is someplace else. Go shopping, go for a drive but please go away. Buyers feel less inhibited about looking and asking questions if the homeowner is not following them around and hovering. Additionally lots of potential buyers won’t raise objections if the homeowner is nearby. Your Realtor needs to hear what buyers are saying and they talk much more freely if you’re not there.
9. Not putting your house in tip top shape to sell. This probably should have been number 1 or 2 but all the sins are important. Paint up, fix up, throw out, and do everything you can to put your home in showroom condition. You noticed how car dealer polish up and shine their used cars to make them more appealing and saleable; this technique works for Knoxville & Farragut houses as well.

There you have it, the 9 deadly sins I see Knoxville & Farragut area sellers commit on almost a daily basis. If you have a house to sell in the Knoxville or Farragut Tennessee area please do yourself and your sale a favor and don’t commit any of these “homeselling sins”.

For more tips on how to get your Knoxville area home sold quickly for a good price visit www.KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com, there is a wealth of home selling knowledge just for you.
Happy home selling.

Knoxville always rates very highly on those “best cities to do whatever” in.

Boating on Fort Loudon Lake in Knoxville, Tennessee

One of the latest polls rates the greater Knoxville, Tennessee area as one of the best 25 cities in the country to retire to if you want to keep working after retirement although continuing to work is not a requirement.

This survey was based on the following factors:

• General employment growth.
• Revalence of key retirement job opportunities.
• Presence of age-friendly employers.
• Unemployment rate
• Housing costs
• General cost of living
• Health-care services

Free fishing day for kids of all ages at a Knox County park.

Knoxville was classified in the Central/Midwest area along with these cities:

• Louisville, Kentucky
• Columbus, Ohio
• Knoxville, Tennessee
• Indianapolis, Indiana

Further proof of what Knoxville area residents have known for a long, long time. Knoxville, Tennessee is a great place to work, live, play, and raise a family.” There are lots of fun & exciting things to do in the greater Knoxville area for all tastes and budgets.

And KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com is a great place to look for a new home.

Knoxville offers a great selection of one level homes & condos

No, I’m not talking about ‘giveaway’ pricing, but right pricing.

In today’s market my experience with working with lots of buyers is that they look at far more homes than they used to before making a decision.

After looking at several homes and doing lots of research and online searching they become very adapt at recognizing an overpriced listing as well as one priced correctly.

This month I sold a home to some buyers that had put an offer on another home in the same neighborhood but at a price considerably below the list price. The sellers countered back at a figure very close to their original asking price.

The home they did not buy has now been on the market for almost a year and in both my buyers opinion and mine, is about $25,000 overpriced for the current market. Additionally this home is sadly in need of updating to hope to command anywhere near the asking price.

Here’s a photo of the kitchens in both homes.

$25,000 overpriced, dark, drab interior in need of updating.

Priced to sell, “move in” condition, with light & bright interior and decor. Which one would you choose?

The home they bought is same style, a similiar square footage but was priced at current market value, in ‘move in’ condition, AND was about $20,000 lower than the first home we made an offer on. The home they chose and bought was on the market 2 days when we reached an agreement with the sellers for only 2.5% less than asking. The buyers felt good about making an offer that close to the list price because they felt good about that price and saw the value.

Here are some of the pitfalls of overpricing:

• Buyers know what houses should sell for generally. If yours is overpriced they will likely pass it by for something more competitively priced.
• Buyers will look and leave because they’re expecting more in your home than the price dictates.
• You’ll attract fewer offers and offers will come in below your asking price but those offers will be closer to fair market value.
• Buyers will use your home as an example to help them buy other homes that are priced closer to the market.
• And even if you do find a willing buyer at your price you then have to pass the mortgage appraisal hurdle. Appraisers know values very, very well (that’s what they’re paid for) and if you can’t get an appraisal at your asking/selling price then no lender is going to grant a mortgage to your buyer and you can’t sell.

Visit www.KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com to see some right priced homes; call me to help you pick one out.

Best wishes to all for a Happy New Year!

So you have your Knoxville house on the market and you’re not getting any offers or you’re thinking of selling and you have concerns about the perceived state of the so called “national real estate market.

First of all relax, there is no “national real estate” market but rather a large number of local markets more dependant on local conditions, (i.e. jobs, local economy, employers, jobs creation, etc.) than the national economy.

The greater Knoxville, Tennessee area is one of those fortunate areas that is blessed with a diverse economy and all of those diverse sections are humming along pretty well right now and is projected to improve in 2008

Combine that with historically low interest rates and there’s no reason anyone that needs to sell (or buy) a house can’t do so.

In addtion to the traditional “fix it up”, “Price it right”, and “market it well” philosophies that are tried and true; a little “outside the box” thinking could give you that extra push you need to rise above competing Knoxville houses.

Here’s a few suggestions:

• If you receive an offer and then make a counter offer to the buyer, consider lowering your asking price to your counter-offer price and make sure the buyers know it. That puts additional pressure on them to accept your offer if they truly want your house because they know you’re offering it to others at the same price you countered to them.
• If you have a buyer that you think is serious, you make an initial offer to them slightly below your asking price, don’t wait for them to make the first move. That will tell you if the buyers are serious. If so they will either accept your initial offer or make a counter offer back to you. Either way you have negotiations started and now all you have to do is come to the proverbial “meeting of the minds” and you’ve got a sale.
• Don’t “chase the market down” by coming on at an unrealistically high price. You’ll only end up costing yourself both time and money as your house sets on the market unsold. Ask your Realtor what the current Knoxville area absorption rates are for homes and how that relates to the market. For example if there are 12 months of inventory on the market, the probability that your house will sell in a given month is only 8.33% unless you do something to set it above the herd.
• Provide some financial incentives that make your Knoxville or Farragut house more appealing both to buyers and to buyer’s agent. Offer a higher than normal commission to a buyer’s agent. Most homeowner’s association dues are fairly modest, offer to pay the next 3-5 years for your buyer; sounds good but doesn’t cost all that much relative to the price of your house. Buy down a buyer’s interest rate; that will attract buyers who couldn’t otherwise afford to look at your house.

Those are a few “outside the box” and traditional marketing methods you can use to attract a buyer to your Knoxville home and get it sold so you can move on with life.

Yesterday is gone and today is here so deal with the here and now rather than what once was but may not be anymore.

I would be delighted to sit down with you and discuss how to position and martket your Knoxville area home to get it sold quickly for the best price.

And if you’re a buyer, now is a great time to buy; let’s talk about that too. Lots of homes to choose from along with great interest rates.

Get more buying & selling tips at www.KnoxvilleMLS.com

Here are some economic events happening this week that have a huge impact on what your house payment will end up being.

Weaker than expected economic data tends to send bond prices up and interest rates down, while positive data points to lower bond prices and raise loan rates. 
 

Economic Calendar for the Week of Dec 10 – Dec 14

For the latest interest rates and what the Knoxville housing market is doing give me a call or email.

Office Direct # 865-539-3162

email: [email protected]

website: www.KnoxvilleMLS.com

 

Now through January 1st: Comcast Christmas at Chilhowee Park is the signature event of Christmas in the City.Chilhowee Park in East Knoxville is transformed into a Christmas wonderland with:

•  a forest of lighted Christmas trees floating on the lake
• Free pictures with Santa and cookie decorating with Mrs. Claus
• Carolers, carriage rides
• Marshmallow roasting, peppermint ice cream, egg nog, and hot chocolate
• and a holiday light display from 5 PM til 10 PM

Ice Skating on the artifical rink on Market Square Mall downtown. Admission and skate rentals are $7 for adults, $5 for children.

And lots of other, fun for all ages, Christmas related events. Read all about them at the City of Knoxville Christmas website.

And of course if you need to buy a new home to set up that Christmas tree; www.KnoxvilleMLS.com is always open.

 

One question that always comes up when I’m talking to potential sellers about marketing their house is; “Do you see anything we should do to the house?”

These sellers are usually referring to paint, carpet, landscaping, and other relatively minor fix up items.

The short answer to all these questions is: “Yes, you should, and as much as you can.”

A couple of years ago when the Knoxville area market was hot you could count on selling fairly quickly and often without doing very much if your house was in reasonably good condition to start with.

Not so in today’s Knoxville real estate market, you absolutely need to “Dress your home for success” on the sales market.

While Knoxville area homes are still selling well, there are lots more of them on the market, the time to sell has increased to 99 days as of October 2007, and buyers are taking longer to make a decision on which one to offer on.

No surprise there, buyers know with the current supply of homes, that the pressure to buy today is not as strong as it was in a hotter seller’s market.

With buyers more willing to wait for what they consider a deal, that means that sellers need to work harder and spend some time and money to make sure their house stands out from the crowd.

A surprising amount of things you can do to make sure your house shines like a new quarter can be done with very little or even no money. Here’s a short list from my website, http://www.knoxvillemls.com/selling.htm

“1. Be sure your lawn and shrubbery is kept trimmed at all times. Consider
removing overgrown trees and shrubs that  hide the house from the street.2. Keep the garage doors down at all times.
18. Wash all your windows and make sure window treatments are clean and in
good repair. Keep the window coverings open whenever possible to let in
more light.19. With a good degreaser, wipe down everything in the kitchen so it feels
clean to the touch. Clean your stove and oven; replace stove eye pans if needed.”

Visit www.KnoxvilleMLS.com to see the rest of the list of 40 free or inexpensive things to do to make your house sell faster and for more money.

You can also get a no cost, no obligation estimate of what your home could sell for at www.PropertyPricer.com

Sources say the Bush Administration will announce Thursday that certain homeowners that have subprime mortgages with adjustable interest rates will benefit from a five year moratorium on future schedule interest rate hikes.

Some Knoxville TN homeowners with sub-prime ARMs will benefit from a rate freeze for the next 5 years in a deal to be announced this coming Thursday.

Under the agreement certain mortages originated between the start of 2005 through July 30 of this year with rates that are scheduled to rise between Jan. 1, 2008, and July 31, 2010 will have their rates frozen at current levels for the next five years.

This plan is reported to only be available to owner-occupied Knoxville area homes; not investment properties.

Through October of 2007, there were about 1.8 million foreclosure filings nationwide, compared with about 1.3 million in all of 2006, according to Irvine, Calif-based RealtyTrac Inc. With home loan defaults still rising, the trend is expected to worsen next year.

According to RealtyTrac Knoxville/Knox County foreclosures are trending down instead of up like some states. The top 5 states for foreclosures are California, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, and Texas.

I’m wondering if this mortgage freeze scheme will actually happen because a mortgage note is a contractural obligation and a very high percentage of these loans are sold to investors who are counting on getting the higher payments.

For the most current Knoxville, Tennessee area real estate information visit www.KnoxvilleMLS.com