What to do if Your Home Didn’t Sell
You made the big decision to sell your home, your mind is filled with the promise of the future and the next chapter of your life. However 6 months pass and you have yet to receive an offer that makes sense, in fact you may even start to regret not accepting some of the offers you were given. Many homeowners at this stage of their selling process are confused and lost. The light at the end of the tunnel is not so far away though! Here is everything you need to know aoubt what to do if your home didn’t sell the first time around.
When to worry about house not selling
One of the worse feelings in the world is not knowing when something is going to end. Your home on the other hand is actually quite predictable. There are tons of tell tale signs that signal to you early as the homeowner whether or not your home will sell in the coming weeks.
The biggest sign and the easiest to spot is the number of private showings within the first 2-4 weeks of listing your home on the market. As a general rule of thumb, if you have less than 5 private showings scheduled, your home may be overpriced and can expect a slower selling time. Of course anyone can expect their home to sell right away if they dump the price down, but that’s not what you’re looking for, and your agent already promised you a high price point. They’re the experts, they should know, right…
Around the 2-3 month mark, if you have not received a single offer chances are your home is overpriced and will not sell during the remainer of your listing period. At this stage you should consider your options as a seller, either take the home off the market and wait for a later time to sell, or reduce the price and gauge the private showings you receive afterwards. One way or the other, it requires proactive action from you as the homeowner once you get a signal that your home is not selling. That is the key to acheiving your actual goal of selling your home.
What happens when your home 'Expires'
Let’s say you tried to reduce the price and you saw the signs early, but you still couldn’t sell. Now What…
When your home’s listing period expires and your home gets off of the MLS, your home is now called an expired listing. The information is still public on the MLS, but will be removed off of other syndicated sites like zillow and redfin. Your realtor will most likely have a continuation period, which basically means that they are entitled to a commission if a buyer that they had brought in during the listing ends up purchasing after the listing period is over. Almost like an insurance to make sure they get paid and that seller’s can’t cheat their agent out of a commission.
The unfortunate reality after your home expires is the constant solicitation by realtors afterwards. ‘Expired listings’ are a great method of generating business for real estate agents. Once your home expires, you can expect anywhere between 5-100 cold calls from agents that day and onwards. It doesn’t stop there however because realtors have gotten extremely creative in their outreach, going as far as email, physical mail, social media DM’s, and even doorknocking your home. Their intention is to pitch their value proposition to you as the homeowner in hopes that you will relist your home with them. This may be great for the homeowner who had a negative experience with their previous agent, but this can also be a nightmare for the homeowner that just doesn’t want to sell anymore and wants peace and quiet.
Your Next Best Options
Relisting With Another Realtor
The best thing about realtors solictating you is that you immediately find hungry realtors that are willing to work with you. Most commonly homeowners whose homes expire are frustrated with their previous realtor for not putting in enough work to get the home sold. You are almost immediately gifted with realtors who are pitching value propositions to you, often early in the morning and trying to show you that they want to sell your home as badly as you do.
I would personally recommend interviewing the first 5’ish realtors that call you and impress you over the phone. Be open to hearing their opinions on pricing and marketing and take all things into consideration. Around 50% of expired listings will be relisted with another agent, and of that over 55% of them will sell quite fast. Just because your previous realtor couldn’t sell your home doesn’t mean that your house is unsellable, sometimes it just needs a fresh perspective!
Waiting to Relist or Deciding Never to Relist
If you’re one of the many homeowners who are being disturbed by the constant reach outs of realtors, here is the best things to do to stop all solicitation. First and foremost sign onto the National Do Not Call Registry. This is a government website that will take you off of all solicator, realtor, telemarketer’s calling list. It takes around a month to kick in, and you have to re-register every 6 months, but it will stop most of the invasive calls. It’s important to note that you should register your entire family’s numbers as most of the time realtors will pull up all the numbes associated with the home or your family.
To stop all doorknocking solicitations you may put up a ‘no solictors’ sign in front of your door. However there is no way to stop email or physical mail solicitation. You may also request your realtor to update the MLS listing before the home expires to put in the private remarks for realtors ‘not to contact homeowners under any circumstances’. This is the best way to remain peace and quiet once your listing expires. Take the time to regather yourself and decide whether or not relisting your home is the right option for you.
FAQs
How much do i pay my realtor if my home doesn’t sell
Zero! You typically don’t pay any commission to your realtor if the home doesn’t sell, however most contracts are written with a continuation period, meaning if a buyer that your agent brought in comes to buy the home after the listing expires, your agent may be entitled to a commission.
Should I use a realtor from the same company as my last one?
Absolutely! Brokerages are just the company a realtor decides to sign with, at the end of the day you are getting the services of the specific agent you choose, so spend most of your time selecting the right agent over the right brokerage.
What percentage of expired homes sell the next time they are relisted?
While there aren’t any hard statistics on this, roughly 45% of expired homes end up relisting with a different agent. Of those homes, around 55% of them will sell within the first 3 months of being relisted.
📍 Final Thoughts from a Local Realtor
I specialize in helping homeowners who had negative experiences with their last listings, and especially with their last agent.
I understand it is extremely frustrating, not only to not be able to sell, but to then be bothered by nothing but spam calls from realtors.
It’s not your fault, homeowners like yourself are often a victum of circumstances. I’d love to take a proactive appraoch to finding out why your home didn’t sell, and what we could do to actually get it sold this time around!
Let’s Talk! No committment required, we are not signing a contract together, just gaining more info into what you can do better the next time around 🙂
