Earth to sellers...

I've been working on the sales charts for August this morning and will have the post on that shortly. I've been catching up on my favorite real estate blogs this morning and wanted to share something with the sellers out there.

This is from the BloodhoundBlog, the finest resource of straight-forward real estate information on the Internet.

What should you do as a seller? Whatever it takes.

Here are a couple of ideas:

First, have the house appraised, price the home below that appraisal and leave the appraisal report out where buyers can see it.

Second, have the home professionally inspected. Do all of the repairs in the inspection report, then have the inspector back to confirm your work. When everything is ship-shape, leave that report out where buyers can see it.

You can’t control lenders or interest rates. You can’t control the price of homes into the future. What you can do is take away every buyer objection over which you have control.

Nothing matters more than price, so if you won’t price your home to the current market, you needn’t bother with anything else. Your house will not sell. But if you’re committed to doing whatever it takes, these ideas could swing the balance.

Read the rest here. (emphasis mine)

I'm still offering my listing clients a rebate against the negotiated fees at close of escrow if the client is willing to pay for an appraisal and/or inspection.

In fact if you are a seller and are willing to do whatever it takes to sell your home, I will not only subtract the costs of the appraisal and/or inspection from the listing side of the commission, I'll double that amount off the fees at the close of escrow. I'll do this through the end of this calendar year for any listing client.