There are a lot of challenges home sellers have to encounter as they sell a home in an unfavorable area. It is not only a matter of engaging to clients and persuading them to buy it no matter how good its condition is. It involves many other potential issues during the home showings as well.
To make it clearer, here are some typical areas that are considered undesirable to buy and live in. The predominate factors causing that are annoying local Neighborhood, high crime rate, alarming pollution level. The places that see these cases most frequently are often located near an industrial area, right on the side of a highway or main road with busy and noisy traffic, and are surrounded by mining and fracking activities.
Understanding the most common sources for an undesirable place, we would like to recommend some essential solutions to reduce the risks, keep property moving, and help to sell a home faster and more valuable.
The most important things are to enhance the home’s condition itself by removing unfavorable smells, improving the sophistication, or staging it in an impressive interior style.
Ask the Help of the Right Real Estate Agent
Selling a home by yourself is difficult and selling a home by yourself in an unfavorable area is much harder. Therefore, it is wiser to use a real estate Agent that has experience in selling homes in a rough neighborhood. These agents will help you to make your home more appealing in the buyer’s eyes, find the right clients who are more likely to buy your home and get a higher price.
Then, make sure all channels of communication are open if you decide to ask for the help of an agent. And make sure the agent isn’t costing you the sale to save their pride because some agents don’t want to show their price while others have no experience. In these cases, these agents don’t really want to take the next necessary steps to sell your home, and you need to talk about that matter. You need to discuss with them the specific strategies and ask them a few questions about how long the home has been on the market, what they are doing to market the house, how much the price can drop, and what are other housing markets are doing.
These questions will help you to identify whether the agent is able to make a sale. If not, you might want to find a new agent.
Provide the Necessary Information
It can be said that honesty is a determining factor in a sale, the best policy. It is completely normal to take pictures of the corner that has a problem in the home and make a note of it in the description so that the client will see it easily and feel your honesty when they come to visit directly. However, homeowners should balance the issues of the home with the plus points of the home. For example, to cover the minus point of the car next door, you should show the view of the mountain from the living room, highlighting the peace of the backyard.
According to the recent statistics, each year there are thousands of real Estate Agents that have the problem related to disclosure issues. And this is the most common lawsuit for those in this business area.
It is the obligations of real estate agents to provide the information that can materially affect the value of a property. Although the disclosure laws differ across areas and countries, this information mainly focuses on environmental factors and the neighborhood. In fact, many disclosures are stick to material defects of the home itself. For instance, the information that must be disclosed in California is the potential flood hazard, earthquake, seismic hazard, or high fire hazard. The home buyers who are interested in buying home in this area have a right to be informed with these disclosures to decide whether to make a purchase or not.
In other cases, the natural and social related problems should be available for the clients. For example, an area that there was once a murder or criminal activity is considered a psychological or emotional defect. Then, the information of a person who died of a natural disaster in the last 3 years should be available.
Real estate agents should update all relevant laws in the place where you get involved and ensure that you will not complete disclosure forms on behalf of clients. Instead, make sure that all forms need to be filled in by the client in order to prevent possible problems in the future.
Promote Buyers to Actively Do Their Due Diligence by Themselves
To be honest, the decision to buy a property is of the buyers, so it should be their responsibility to get familiar with the neighborhood. But the real estate agents should encourage them to do that by showing them the benefits they could get after that.
However, it is necessary to be cautious if a potential client asks for information about the neighborhood. What you provide might affect other’s privacy. It is best if you refer them to the third parties for the sources of information such as the police for crime data and local government for other neighborhood information. On the one hand, you will show your respect to the local neighbors. On the other hand, your liability will be less than providing related information directly if there is anything going wrong.
Give Directions to the Property in a Wise Way
Try to enhance the positives of the property by giving the viewers a more desirable transport route. That would make a good impression on the client during the showing, adding a plus point to the property when it is located in an unfavorable area like being close to the local waste depot, industrial site or crime-riddled street. Despite the availability of smartphones with Google Maps, it is still extremely necessary to give clients directions.
On the other hand, bear in mind that rerouting clients so far away from the most direct route is not a good idea because they will think that there is a blatant strategy in you to try to avoid something bad in the neighborhood. The clients will feel the dishonesty from you, keeping giving the questions about why you are trying to hide the information about the neighborhood.
Have the Best Photos of the Home
Because of the fact that nowadays most buyers are searching for information about homes on the internet before paying a visit, it is very important to post the welcoming and visiting images on the market. Therefore, you need to take the best pictures and give them to the professional editors who can help you to create the most appealing pictures that are the first exposure to the clients. There will be more likely to attract more potential clients and make it easier to buy a home.
