In today’s residential real estate market, being competitive is not just an advantage, it’s mandatory.  That is, unless you want your property to rest stagnant on the market for years while “comparables” are selling in weeks and months.

In reality, those comparables are not likely at all comparable.  The properties that sell quickly do so because they’re prepared and ready for a timely sale in every way.

Real estate resale isn’t facing the doom and gloom so often used as part of the news hype machine.  Consider this keen observation from the BloodhoundBlog’s recent entry on the factors that make homes sell:

The resale market is not as dire as it is portrayed to be, but it’s not great, either. There are a lot more homes for sale than there are qualified buyers. For a home to sell in this market, it has to be priced right, perfectly prepared and properly presented to the marketplace. Miss on any one of those factors — especially price — and the buyers will take the home up the street instead.

Show value, but keep in mind that the extras aren’t always worth the sum of all their costs (in a perfect situation, they’re often worth more).  What ever you do, make sure your resale property is impeccably maintained and spotless, squeaky clean.

After all, the clean-factor alone might just end up being your big selling advantage against the other comparables.

While people do want the extras, they’ll probably be willing to skip a few amenities here and there in favor of a significantly lower price.  This holds especially true when the omitted extras are do-it-yourself friendly and lower cost tasks that the potential buyer feels they could easily tackle themselves as new homeowner weekend projects.  But this is certainly no excuse to skip on basic maintenance.

As real estate makes is dependable full circle transition from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market, it’s imperative to take every advantage you can.  We’ll close with this ever so true statement from BloodhoundBlog:

…it’s a certainty that if a home is not marketed properly, is not cleaned and repaired to show-room condition, and, especially, is not priced aggressively to the current market, it will not sell.

If you want to have the home that sells, market properly.