Are Seller Incentives Effective in Selling Your Home in Bryan, College Station?
Selling your home in Bryan-College Station, means deciding if you will offer any incentives for the sale of your property. There are two groups of incentives; Realtor incentives and Buyer incentives.
A Buyer incentive is a special bonus for the Buyer. It is a special perk that the Seller is offering to sway the Buyer to pick their home over their competition. A Realtor incentive is usually a monetary selling bonus for the Buyer's Agent who brings the Buyer that purchases the property (within X period of time).
When there are many homes for sale, the competition becomes excessive. This is when Sellers start offering things like cars, boats and vacation packages with the sale of their property. This is meant to help the Buyer choose their property over there competiton. Luckily, here in Bryan College Station, the real estate market is not suffering enough to require such extreme incentives.
So, here in Bryan, College Station, are there times when a Seller should consider offering an incentive to help their home sell faster? And, should the incentive offered be a Buyer incentive or a Realtor incentive? This is the perfect question to ask your Realtor, because your Real Estate Professional should be familiar with your home and its direct competition. The answer depends on:
- The location of the home
- The condition of the home, and
- The Seller's competition with new construction and existing homes in the area.
For example, there are several subdivisions in town that have homes for sale with a set number of floor plans. When this happens, there will occasionally be multiple homes for sale at one time that are nearly identical. Additionally, in many of these locations there is still construction going on by the builder, and these builders usually offer the Buyer closing costs or home upgrade incentives.
The most common local incentive offered to Buyers by Sellers is to pay a percentage of the Buyer's closing costs and prepaid items. This allows the Buyer to bring less money to closing. A similar Seller incentive is for the Seller to buy down the Buyer's interest rate, which will result in the Buyer obtaining a lower monthly payment. This offer tends to be most attractive to First Time Home Buyers.
Instead of offering an incentive to the Buyer, sometimes a Seller will choose to offer the Real Estate Agent a bonus for selling their home. In my experience as a Realtor, the Buyer chooses the home they will buy, not the Real Estate Agent. As much as I would love to make more money when I sell a home, my first duty is to my client. The home they buy is based on their likes, preferences, and needs. We write an offer on the property that fits them best, not the property that offers a selling bonus.
Above all, the first priority of the Seller should be to make sure their home is priced right. Unlike children who want the box of cereal for the toy inside, the Buyer is not going to pick the home just for the incentive that comes with it. If the Seller is willing to throw something in as an extra, for example paying 3% of the buyer's closing costs, then it can also be said the 3% incentive is simply increasing the price of the home by that amount.
Remember, most buyers are interested in affordability over anything else. Experience tells me that the more attractive the home price, the faster the sale. If the buyer can't make the mortgage payment on the home they are considering, an added extra will be of no benefit. Remember, the lower the price, the more people that can afford the home in question and this is what usually leads to the fastest sale.
Happy Selling!
Raylene Lewis,
Articles on Home Selling
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