3 Potential Reasons Your Home isn’t Getting Showings

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Home showings have played an integral role in the real estate industry for years. While virtual tours continue to grow in popularity, nothing compares to walking into a home and seeing it first-hand. If you want to increase your chances of selling your home, you want to schedule as many home showings as possible. However, this is easier said than done. If you are struggling to schedule home showings, here are a few things that could be holding you back.

You have it overpriced

The most likely reason why your home is not receiving showing is that it is overpriced. Home sellers need to remember that buyers and agents today have a plethora of information at their fingertips. They can access what similar homes are currently selling for in an area. If a house is overpriced, people are quick to toss it out for consideration. Many will keep scrolling through the other property listings and not give your home the attention it deserves.

You listed it too soon

Try not to get wrapped up in the excitement of selling your home and list it before it is ready. It is important to correct any issues with the home before you open your doors to potential buyers. Be sure to take care of things like lawn maintenance, decluttering the interior, repairing leaks, repainting walls, etc. You will turn away potential buyers if you list your home before it is ready.

Insufficient marketing

It is easier than ever to market your home online. There are several digital platforms that one can use to showcase property listing. Also, high-quality listing photos and well-written descriptions will catch the attention of potential buyers online. If you want to bring as many people through your front door as possible, make marketing a priority.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.