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These days people in many real estate markets are finding it tough to sell their houses. It's quite a turnaround from only 18 months ago, when many folks had prospective buyers lined up 3 deep in their kitchens, offers in hand. Now in order to help sell your house, you may have to resort to some more creative marketing methods. After all, not much separates you from the family down the street with a house on the market. What can you do to make sure your house brings in buyers and doesn't languish on the market? Stay tuned....

I just had the house down the street from me go on the market for about 5-7% higher than many predicted it would list for. It's a 40yr old, 3 bed / 1.75 bath rambler at about 1,300 sq feet. It has a nice large yard with entertainment deck and kid's play set, some quality improvements inside, such as tile kitchen counters, nice baseboards and freshly refinished hardwood floors. The asking price is $344,777. If they sell for anything close to that figure it would sure help the property values for the rest of us on our little street. They did many of the things that experts advise when trying to sell for top dollar. These are all the standard things you should try. After that we'll get to some of the more unconventional items.

Curb appeal -
Good first impressions are vital when you're trying to sell your house. I've posted on the importance of this before, and it bears mentioning again. You want to ensure that prospective buyers at least get out of their real estate agent's RX350 and take a look inside. Remember, in many cases their agent has never seen your house before either. You want to clean everything until it's spotless, make the front yard look great (even if it means spending a few dollars on landscaping) and make sure the porch area is inviting. The front door, the door hardware and all sidelights and windows around the front door should be in great shape, with no cracks or peeling paint. Ditto the porch and sidewalk. Unless you're going after the investor or the sweat equity buyer (not a very large chunk of the market), those areas can be a major turn off for buyers if they are in a state of disrepair.

Inside the house -
There's a reason so many new homes have soaring entries and dramatic staircases, even if the size of the home doesn't seem to warrant it. Home builders know how to market their homes, and they've found that the impression it creates on prospective buyers helps the home sell. You may not be able to create such a space if your house doesn't already have it (trust me, that's an expensive remodel and you won't get the money back), but you can use the same principle on your house. As with the front exterior, you want to be sure the interior first impression is favorable. Refinish the entry hardwoods, install new tile, and/or paint. If you've got a ratty, old light fixture in the entry, replace it. The $50 you spend at Home Depot will be well spent.

Clear out as much of your furniture as possible, especially if it doesn't match ( I know you prefer to term it an “eclectic collection”, but everybody else will see it as a junky mess), get the pictures off the walls and paint them (the walls, not the pictures) to hide the fade marks where those images of Uncle Harry, Aunt Jean and the kids were hanging for the last 10 years. You want people to take mental ownership of your home as soon as they walk inside and pictures of someone else's family don't help them to make that leap. If you have any colors that are too far removed from the norm, cover them with a fresh coat of Benjamin Moore in a more subdued hue . You're trying to appeal to the widest number of buyers there, Ace. Mazda's marketing plan of making products that a few people really like, as opposed to the broad market liking a little bit, doesn't translate well to the real estate industry.

Your real (estate) selling plan -
Now that you've handled the basics, you may have to get a bit more creative. Hopefully your home will sell quickly. If not, you may have to resort to some more creative selling tactics. One thing many people want to do if their home doesn't sell quickly is lower the price. While that may do the trick, it may just create the perception that the house was too expensive, and may not be worth what you're asking, even now. You need to find and overcome the buyer's objections. In many cases, it's not so much the price itself, especially if you priced it fairly from the start.

More often the problem either the monthly payment or the amount of cash they buyer must come up with in order to make the purchase. Here's where you can help. You can drop the price, but that doesn't really help the buyer with either the monthly payment or the down payment unless you give away the farm, something you'll not be well served doing. To help the buyer and avoid giving a steep discount that takes much of the profit out of your pocket you can try various strategies.

One would be to pay for all or part of the buyer's closing costs. That will set you back a few thousand dollars, but it helps the buyer avoid coming up with so much cash out of pocket. With the evaporation of no down payment financing and other creative mortgage products, this is a strategy that can pay nice dividends for you.

Something else that can help the buyer in their hour of need is to take a page out of the builder's marketing handbook by offering a buyer bonus. Rather than dropping the price $15,000, try using the cash as an incentive to help the buyer into your home. Give them a $10,000 buyer bonus instead. You'll spend less and they'll gain more. Remember, dropping the price on your home doesn't really give a commensurate drop in the buyer's monthly mortgage payment. For example, the monthly principle and interest payment on a $300,000 mortgage at 6% is $1,798. If you drop the price on your house $20,000, it lowers the payment by about $120 a month. That's not an inconsequential amount of money, but it probably won't make a huge difference in the monthly budget of most home buyers. Most people would rather have $15,000 cash in their pockets.

If you want to help the buyer lower their monthly mortgage payment, you could use what's called a buy down to lower the interest rate. That will be a more effective way to lower the monthly payment, and cost you less money at the same time. You'll pay points to lower the interest rate of their loan. You can either make a buy down for the entire term of their mortgage, or for only the first few years. A buy down for the first few years is usually termed a 3-2-1, 2-1 or some variation of that. With a 3-2-1 buy down, the buyer's interest rate is 3% lower the first year, 2% lower the second, and 1% lower the third. After that, it reverts to a standard, fixed rate mortgage, at the standard 30-year rate, for the remaining 27 years.

It is also more cost effective for you than simply lowering the price of your house by $15,000 - $25,000. For example, in the $300,000 / 6% scenario above, you would give the buyer a 3% loan for the first year, a 4% for the second and a 5% for the final year of the buy down. In year one, rather than a monthly P&I payment of $1,798, the new home owner would pay only $1,265, a monthly savings of over $500. You'll pay a hair over $13,000 for the buy down. It's obviously cheaper for you to pursue this strategy than to chop $15,000 - $20,000 off the price.

Lastly, don't forget to use all the Internet resources available to you when it comes time to sell your house. Social networking sites myspace, digg, redditt, stumbbleupon and the like can all be used to help spread the word about your abode. Don't neglect YouTube, either. In many cases, you'll be better positioned than your realtor to market in these unconventional ways. Happy selling!