Canceling your listing isn't ideal, but with the right relisting strategy, you'll find the right buyer.
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Listing a home is hard enough when it sells quickly. But canceling your listing, or waiting until it expires because it didn't sell in a reasonable amount of time, can be pretty demoralizing — not to mention a financial burden.
Once your listing expires on the MLS (how long it takes to expire depends on the agreement you made with your listing agent), it's time to reassess. Try to learn from past mistakes, rethink your pricing strategy, and do whatever it takes to get your home sold the second time around.
Before you relist, you'll have to determine your home's current MLS status. It's the very first step you need to take before you can move forward with a new strategy or hire a new agent.
When a home is listed on the MLS, the listing displays the number of days it's been active — meaning the number of days it's been listed on the MLS before going pending/under contract.
Days on the market, which is often abbreviated DOM, is a data point real estate analysts use to determine how fast homes are selling in a particular region or area.
To reset your days on the market to zero and start fresh, you may have to wait 90 days or so before relisting. What makes this tricky is that the MLS in every market operates a little differently. For example, Chicago's MLS requires six months off the market before a DOM is reset. But in other cities, your DOM may reset as soon as your listing expires.
Some regions' MLS systems display both DOM and cumulative days on market (CDOM). In these cases, the DOM resets every time the home goes pending, the listing expires or a listing is canceled. But the CDOM will continue to tally the number of days from initial listing to closing, within a certain time frame and regardless of any changes.
However, in some regions, your DOM “counter” will pick up where it left off if your home went under contract and then the deal fell through.
Regardless of how your MLS calculates DOM or CDOM, here are a few reasons why it might be worth waiting for a reset before relisting:
Here's one important distinction. Buyers may only be concerned about the DOM of your home if it's higher than the average days on the market in your area. If every home listed has a high DOM, it's probably just a sign of a buyers market, and it doesn't reflect poorly on your listing specifically.
Conversely, if every home has a low DOM, it’s usually a sellers market, where homes are selling very quickly. If your home is sitting around in a sellers market, it's time to rethink your strategy.
Delisting your home is when you actively cancel your listing before it expires. Your agreed-upon expiration date was decided by you and your listing agent when you started working together, and it can range between a few months to a few years, depending on what's appropriate for your market.
Your home can be considered off market in one of two ways. First, your home is off the market if you have an expired MLS listing. But off market also refers to a home that may indeed be for sale, but it isn’t listed on the MLS. Examples include FSBOs or pre-market homes.
If your home is currently listed with an agent, you may have to wait until the listing expires. If you don't want to wait, you may incur a cancellation fee — make sure to check the termination clause of your listing agreement.
If your home's listing on the MLS has already expired, you are free to list with another agent as soon as midnight on the expiration date.
Agents who are part of a professional organization are usually held to ethical standards that prevent them from reaching out to sellers who are already working with another agent. But you can always interview agents in preparation for your listing expiring or being canceled.
If you're selling for sale by owner, you don't have to follow the rules of officially relisting, since your home wasn't on the MLS to begin with. You're free to take your home on or off anywhere you have it listed, at any time.
One thing you should keep in mind is that, depending on the website you listed on, buyers may be able to see your listing activity in the property history. Many real estate search sites track listing and delisting dates as part of the home's profile.
If you're selling FSBO and your home hasn't sold, you might consider hiring an agent who can help you identify why your home might not have sold the first time around and give their professional advice to help you correct for the relisting. You can start working with an agent at any time, since you don't have to wait for a listing agreement to expire.
Consider these reasons your home many not have sold the first time:
Don't make the same mistakes twice. Listen to what past buyers and their agents had to say about your property and the reasons why they didn't make an offer.
It's also important to consider your current agent's perspective. Your agent should be an expert in real estate trends in your area, so if they make recommendations on the best time to sell, improvements you should make while your house is off the market, or the price you should list at, listening could help improve the outcome the next time around.
It's also possible that your agent could be the reason you had a hard time selling your house within your desired time frame. If you chose an agent that wasn't well-versed in your area, or you went with a part-time agent who was a friend, consider switching agents. Here are some tips for finding the right agent the second time.
One thing you'll definitely want to do with a stale listing is freshen it up. It will attract new buyers and could also make buyers who have seen the home before take a second look.
Whether you wait to relist until your DOM resets, and whether you're selling with an agent or FSBO, you want to freshen up your listing before it goes live again, with new photos, a compelling description and incentives.
If you received feedback that your house was overpriced, or if you think it may be overpriced based on other comparable houses selling sooner, you may want to lower your price before you attempt to sell again.
Professional photography is a must these days. According to the Zillow Report, 76 percent of recent buyers say that viewing professional photos was extremely, very or somewhat important to their home-buying decision.
If you use a real estate agent, they may include professional real estate photography as part of their services. But if it's not included or you're selling on your own, you can get real estate photos taken for only a few hundred dollars — a small price to pay for showing your home in its best light and enticing potential buyers to schedule a showing.
Most listings on the MLS offer a full 3 percent commission to the buyer's agent, so you should do the same if you want to compete with other listings. In addition, you'll also want to include any buyer incentives you're willing to offer — like closing cost credits or including furniture — in your listing description.
If you've done any renovations or upgrades to your home since your last listing, make sure to include those in the description. Common additions include:
Make sure as many people as possible see your listing. The more people that see your photos, read your listing description or take a tour, the more likely someone is to make an offer.
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