Real NEastate: Moving out of Rhawnhurst

Q: My home has been for sale in Rhawnhurst too long. I wanted to move before the kids started school, so I put it up for sale at the beginning of the year. No bites. I really want to move! How can I help it to sell faster?

A: Currently, there are 1,640 homes for sale in Northeast Philadelphia. Not counting the almost 350 pending sales, that’s still more homes on the market than have sold in the past six months. Even if zero homes went up for sale for the rest of the year, it would take more than six months to sell out the current inventory. Yours is one of them.

If your home is still for sale after seven months on the market, you have to face the facts. Eighty-three homes sold in Rhawnhurst since the beginning of the year. If your home wasn’t one of them, it is simply because the available buyers don’t want it at its current price in its current condition, and most likely it won’t sell at the price you have it at right now.

If you want your home to sell faster, you have to make it attractive to buyers. Basically it boils down to two options:

1.      Spend money on upgrades. 2.      Reduce the price.

If it’s in good condition, then there’s no sense dumping tons of money into the house. Lately, spending money on upgrades doesn’t pay you back. Instead, you could give it a quick facelift by cleaning, painting, sprucing up curb appeal, and generally making it more attractive. But I wouldn’t stop there.

The fact is, the average sale price in Rhawnhurst is $175,000 right now. If you are priced higher than this and can’t justify why —  i.e. more bathrooms, square footage, yard space, etc. —  then reducing the price is probably something you should seriously consider. Consult your agent to find out what the average price is for a home just like yours and adjust accordingly.

Stacey McCarthy is a real estate agent with the McCarthy Group of Keller Williams. Her Real NEastate column appears every Wednesday on NEastPhilly.com. See others here. Read other NEast Philly columns here.