Ideas for selling your home in 2010

2010 looks better for home sellers:
Happy New Year!!

If you’re trying to sell your home in the El Paso real estate market during 2010, what can you expect from the market? Here is a list of things that I think will help sellers;

• Interest rates have been at or near historical lows, this means that more buyers can qualify, as long as interest rates stay low it will help buyers and therefore sellers.

• The continuation of the first time buyer’s $8,000 tax credit and the addition of a $6,500 tax credit for repeat buyers will surely have an impact on sales in 2010.

• There is a lack of housing for the needs of the troops and their families coming to Ft. Bliss, even though this housing need is more about rentals than it is about homes for sale. The pressure on rentals will have a positive impact on the sale of homes at least for those in the $250,000 and below price range.

In the 30 years that I have been in the business of helping families moving in and out of El Paso, these are 4 things that I have learned when it comes to putting a home on the market and especially in a challenging El Paso real estate market

• Do yourself a favor, make sure your home is priced correctly; this market is unforgiving if you don’t! Don’t let your home be one of those in the Multiple Listing Service that are used as examples to demonstrate what a deal the competitor’s homes are.


• How can sellers be assured their home is priced correctly? The short answer is to hire a licensed appraiser and pay $350.00 to $500.00 for an appraisal.


• Hire a professional real estate agent who has a proven track record of understanding the El Paso real estate market and will do a comprehensive market analysis, including visiting the homes that they are using as comparables to yours.

• Your job in this process is to keep your emotional biases in check, more often than not sellers, and that includes me, become overly emotional in pricing our homes. Example: we made sure there was extra insulation in the walls or we converted the garage to a play room…while that’s great, we did it for our benefit and it probably won’t bring us a higher price at the time of sale. Here are a couple of other things about the pricing process; If your home has a new roof you are not going to get more for it than the home down the street that has a perfectly good 8 yr old roof…sorry that’s not the way it works. The same goes for new carpet and air conditioning (now if you just converted from evaporated to refrigerated that’s different) If you have a in ground pool you will only get a portion of its original cost, from $0 to about $8,000 dollars..Good professional agents will advise you of all these peculiarities in the selling of your home.


• Markets are driven by what willing buyers are willing to pay and what willing sellers are willing to sell for….Generally this is the criteria that is interpreted and used to come up with an opinion of value by licensed appraisers. A good market analysis will mimic or come close to what an appraiser does. A word of caution- Appraisers in most cases will try to use comparable home sales that took place in the last 6 months only.

The bottom line is that 2010 should be a much better market than 2009 was. If we know what dictates the pricing of homes, we should be able to sharpen our pencils and price our properties competitively. Beware that maneuvering in a challenging
El Paso real estate market is easier and more profitable with the help and guidance of a real estate professional.

Have a great 2010 and may your home selling be smooth and profitable.
I invite your comments.