Why do 40 Percent of Real Estate Listings Expire in Sacramento?

Selling your house in Sacramento can be done quickly, but if you hire a real estate agent your time to sell may not be what you think. We all hear about the houses that sell within a week, for asking price or above… but is that the rule or the exception?

None of us like to talk about our failures and often times, unless we mention it ourselves, they become buried and isolated never to be spoken of again. In the Sacramento real estate market there are roughly 400 out of every 1000 homes that sold, that did not sell. These unsold houses are known as expired listings and in Sacramento the number is greater than 40%.

What is an expired Listing?

Simply stated an expired Listing is a home of a seller that did not sell within the contractual time frame as outlined by the Real Estate Listing Agreement. The average length of a real estate listing agreement is 6 months or 180 days.

In researching this article I was a little surprised at how difficult it was to pinpoint the number of listings that expire every month within the Sacramento region. I was also very disappointed that no one is talking about the number thereby relegating it to a footnote rather than talked about as a real problem for the real estate industry as a whole. When you think about the enormity of the number, you would think that the National Association of Realtors would address the huge failure that the 40% Expired listings represents.

Think about it for a moment, if 40% of houses that are listed, expire from the multiple listing service before they are sold, it means that a lot of real estate agents (essentially sales people) are not very good at what they do and yet we never hear about it.

Prior to listing and advertising a house, every real estate agent that I know sits down with a potential client and performs a comparative market analysis to determine a pricing strategy and a marketing plan to sell a house. Together the agent and the homeowner talk about their motivations, time frames needs and of course the most realistic outcome for their efforts. One thing is for certain, they do not talk about what happens if the house does not sell or of the possibility that their house will become part of the vast expired listings that sit on multiple listings services across the State of California.

Homeowners that need to sell their houses fast have never heard of this alarming statistic, otherwise 95% of all

house sellers would not interview and list their home with the very first agent to present a plan to sell their house. You heard that right… 95% of all sellers list with the very first agent that they talk to. It is perhaps the single biggest mistake homeowners wanting to sell a house fast make. Maybe the thought is…  the faster to market faster to sell?

Whatever the motivation, if sellers want to maximize their sales price they need to take their time and interview at least three real estate agents, three Sacramento Cash Home Buyers or Real Estate Investors and also consider to pay for an independent home appraisal so they can determine the true value of their house as it is today.

The cost of not doing so can be catastrophic financially when considering that the seller is going to continue to pay for the all of the ongoing household expenses known as holding cost until the house does sell.

What are the Reasons that Real Estate Listings Expire? Why Houses Don’t Sell.

• Pricing of the House (too high)
• Inexperienced Agent
• Weak Agent (not honest with their clients)
• Condition of the house
• Targeting the wrong buyer
• Marketing
• Staging
• Difficult or Inconvenient to Show

So if Expired Listings Top 40 Percent in Sacramento what does that really mean for house sellers in Sacramento?

It means that the homeowner needs to be diligent and know the market. It mean that the seller needs to be realistic and not just offer the listing to the real estate agent that recommends the highest price. In fact it means that the seller may not want to list the house with a real estate agent at all.

Sellers need to look at the big picture and determine how much that they are going to receive from the sale of the house after all of the expenses are tallied. Those expenses include Holding Cost, Commissions paid to real estate agents, Closing cost and repair and maintenance cost for the entire time that the house remained unsold.

My name is Peter Westbrook and I am a local Cash Home Buyer and owner of Westbrook REI. Unfortunately, I am very familiar with expired listings and the holding cost that homeowners accumulate and endure while their houses linger without so much as an offer on the Sacramento real estate market. The dirty little secret that 40% of all homes listed by real estate agents go unsold is kept safe by the industry, but you do not need to become a victim.

I can’t tell you the number of times that a homeowner have said to me that they wished that they knew I was an option before they signed a long listing agreement that cost them thousands of dollars. All too often that is the case, as real estate agents don’t fully explain the process of selling a house and what can go wrong or the risks associated with the house not selling or even what the chances are that the house will end up an expired listing.

Many real estate agents will promise what cannot be delivered by claiming to be able to sell the house for a higher price than they know is possible and then scramble days before the listing expires hoping to make a fast sale. It does not work.

At “Westbrook REI” and “We Buy Houses Sacramento“, we are the best at what we do because we work at it every day. We understand that a commitment to customer and a commitment to our business only happens with hard work. We have years of experience and a plan that we follow. We are a real company with real people that are committed to helping you achieve your goals.

If you need to sell your house fast in Sacramento, Stockton, Manteca or Modesto, CA. you can bypass the Multiple Listing Service roulette wheel by targeting the right buyer for your house to begin with. We Buy Houses in Sacramento and we pay cash. Call me at (209)481-7780 or visit my website at https://www.webuyhousessacramento.org and fill out the short form to see what we will pay for your house.