This thread really rings home to me, since I’ve been trying to sell my place since July.

First of all, in a normal real estate market, all the little things like paint, decluttering, staging, etc help to sell a home. But I can tell you, as a seller who did EVERYTHING by the book, Ready Set Sold (which is an awesome book by the way), and put a lot of money into my home before I listed it for sale, in this crappy market, it doesn’t seem to make one bit of difference.

The only good thing that has come from me staging my home and painting it the right colors and making it “show perfect”, is that I was getting a LOT more traffic then other listings in my area, according to my former realtor who had 19 active listings, and told me that most of her listings weren’t getting any showings. But, all that traffic, and zero offers because people just don’t seem to want to see past the fact that my place is small and doesn’t have a big yard.

However, I let my listing expire with her for one reason, and one reason only. She was charging me 3% (plus 3% to the buyers realtor for a total of 6), but wasn’t doing any more work then the realtors who only charge 1%. Also, i realized that I need to lower my price, and the only way to do that without a short sale was to go with a realtor who charged less, so I did.

There are no easy answers in today’s market. There are a very limited number of buyers out there, it’s a brutal market, and I’m just hanging in there hoping someone will fall in love with my home emotionally and not care about the financial fundamentals. Otherwise, I guess it will be an interesting ride.

Good luck to your friend (and by the way, I do think that $100 in paint would be money WELL spent, as well as getting rid of the dogs for ALL showings if they have dogs).