We did a survey asking what our first blog topic should be and the consensus was to discuss alternative sales techniques.  In this buyer's market it helps to think of creative ideas that can set your house apart from your competition.  I was reading one article last week that discusses five wacky ways to sell your house:

1. Let prospective buyers sleep over
2. Hire house sitters
3. Offer incentives, incentives, and more incentives
4. House trading
5. Sell to a builder

Now, some of these are indeed pretty wacky and have their pros and cons.  Offering incentives has become fairly commonplace, but does it work; and if so, which ideas work the best?  The most common incentive is to offer to pay closing costs.  But, in this market buyers now expect to receive some seller paid closing costs, so offering it does little more than communicate the seller's "real" asking price.  Other popular incentives are things like paint, carpet or appliance allowances.  There is a big problem with this in today's market.  Right now buyers are either looking for an absolute steal of a deal or they are looking for a fairly priced home that has all of the nice finishing touches.  This means that sellers really need to decide in which of these two categories they will fit.  And with so many bank-owned distressed properties with which to compete, most sellers will need to compete on the market as a nicely finished move-in ready home.  And a seller cannot compete effectively in that market if there is paint, carpet or appliances that need to be replaced, even with an offered allowance.

Incentives that make the most sense are ones that are so unique or outlandish that it will certainly grab a buyer's attention and make them want to find out more.  Ideally it would be something that does not have an obvious dollar value attached to it since, again, this would mostly just communicate the seller's "real" asking price.  For example, maybe the seller own's a time share or has access to a beach house for a week and can offer buyers an all expenses paid vacation for a week.  Or perhaps a seller might own season tickets to a theater company or sports team that are really difficult to come by and offer buyers some or all of those tickets.

One of the most practical and effective incentives is to find out how much it would cost to buy down a typical buyer's interest rate to say 4% or even 3%.  And then market the incentive that if a buyer purchases your home they can do so at that incredible interest rate.  Picture that on a sign in your yard and on all of your web advertising or perhaps even flyers around town.  That will most certainly grab some attention.

Now, one more question to ask is if the seller should instead just lower the price.  Showing statistics consistently reveal that houses priced right below quarter marks (for example, $225k, $250k, etc.) get the most showings compared to those priced $5-10k above a quarter mark.  So, if you are priced right above a quarter mark and you are trying to figure out how to better market yourself to potential buyer then your best bet will be to lower your price under that next quarter mark.  If you are already right under a quarter mark and you are trying to figure out what to do, then consider offering the rate buy down or some other incentive instead of lowering your price.