The time has come for me to let homeowners in on a little secret. The secret is a group of tips that will help you sell your home faster. If you are a homeowner, interested in listing your home, first of all, give me a call, and second of all, here are a few hidden tips on how to do so in the right way. No more worrying—you have come to right place!

So you want to sell your home, right? Let’s start with paying attention to the buyer’s market. As a seller, it is vital that you attract a market of buyers—but this is not just any market of buyers. You need to target the buyers who are looking for specifics that fit your home. If you have a three-bedroom home, then someone looking for a six-bedroom home is not going to be in your buyer’s market. You need to hone in on those buyers who are looking for something like your product. So what do you do? Let’s move on to pricing. More times than not, homeowners tend to value their homes for more than they are worth according to market demands. Sometimes the market is stronger than other times and you can demand a higher price. However, this is where comparative market reports are key. Hire a professional to appraise the true value of your home. A lot of the time we tend to feel attached to a home and get carried away with pricing because we are getting too emotionally attached to the product. The smartest thing you can do is to price it in a way that will be attractive, void of your emotional attachment. Remember—you are presenting your product to a market that does not necessarily understand your emotional attachment to your home. Feelings aside, pricing well is crucial.

Now, before listing your home, you need to present it to the market as if there is nothing else like it. Whether that means staging (which I am a big fan of!), professional photographing, utilizing social media or anything of that sort, you need to make sure that you focus your efforts on the presentation of your home. Think about if you were a buyer, what would you want to walk into? What would make you feel comfortable? Remember that the home is what provides us with the most basic form of comfort. We get back after a long day, and we are home. What does the home mean to you? Take all of these ideas and put them toward creating your product for the market. Think of a way that you can present a general feeling of comfort in your home so that when buyers come to see it, there is an overall sense of beauty and belonging. Statistics show that a buyer decides within the first 3-5 seconds whether or not they are interested in a home. It takes that short amount of time for your subconscious to decide whether it feels positively or negatively about what they are walking though. So it is essential to make them feel at ease when they are looking for a home to potentially purchase. The saying “Home is where the heart is” is a very telling line. It is such a true form of what the home represents. Let your buyers feel that as well.

Now, let’s talk about photography. If I had a penny for every time a broker in New York City posted pictures of an apartment on his/her iPhones, I would be a very happy camper, let’s leave it at that. As brokers, we are presenting a unique product to the market. If it doesn’t arrest the eye from the thumbnail photo on the internet, then it will most probably sit on the market for longer than an owner wants it to. If there is one thing that you can take away from this article, it is that you are presenting a unique product to the market. You need to be able to attract a market to your product versus another similar product. Ask yourselves, what makes yours special and how can you showcase that? Capture the features of your home that stand out. Make sure to include detail shots. Make them appear clean and professional. You are catering to the psychology of the buyer’s market. Think about what will lure someone in to look at your home and not another.

If you are looking to sell your home, make sure to have fun doing it! It can be a very tedious process, but make sure that you enjoy it the whole way through. Make sure that your broker is someone who has the same mindset and mission as you. Be present throughout—it is a valuable learning process. I hope that this has helped any sellers looking to list their homes in understanding what attracts buyers to the market.

By Noa Hubsher

Noa Hubsher is a licensed real estate salesperson at Douglas Elliman Real Estate in New York City.