Why Your Austin Home Isn't Selling and How to Fix It

By Linda Welsh

Specialize in representing savvy Buyers and Sellers for residential, second home, vacation properties, lake and hill country properties, new and existing homes, land and lots. Relocation services include area, community and neighborhood expertise and helping the entire family to find the perfect home to meet their needs and wish list.

Recently, a home here in Austin came off the market after sitting for six months with another broker, and it hadn’t received a single offer. Same house, same price, same great floor plan. Once the right plan was in place, it sold in one weekend with two full-price offers. Nothing about the house itself had changed. What changed was how it was presented, and that gap is the whole story I want to tell you.

The sellers called after their listing expired. It wasn’t originally my listing. It was a lovely home right around a million dollars, which isn’t unusual in the Austin area, with a great floor plan, very good condition, a huge study, and lots of living area in a very nice neighborhood. The comps showed it was priced in the right range. The problem was simply that it sat for six months with no offers.

Focus on what you can control. There are things we can control and things we can’t. We can’t control interest rates, the headlines, or the wider market, and right now that market is genuinely challenging:more than half of Austin sellers are reducing their price, and homes are taking months to sell. The two things we can control are marketing and marketability: how a home is presented, and how and when buyers get to see it. So I walked through that house, and I could see exactly what was holding it back.

Start with the presentation itself. The sellers were still living there with some dated, heavy furniture, big brown inherited pieces, the kind a lot of us have. It was a beautiful home, but it wasn’t showing like one. I convinced the sellers to let us stage the main rooms, the formal living room, the formal dining room, and the breakfast room. Here’s a little secret: we just moved their old furniture into the garage. Nobody photographs the garage, and nobody cares, as long as the inspector can get to the mechanicals.

Match the stager to the home. Then we hired the right stagers, who brought in the right furniture for this specific house, and I want to stress the word right. I match the stager to the home. A newer mid-range home with simpler lines might call for a trendy bohemian look. This was a large traditional family home, so we brought in traditional pieces. When we finished, it looked like you’d walked into the showroom of a fine furniture store. Same house, completely different feeling. Knowing how to stage a home while you’re still living in it makes this far easier than most sellers expect.

Staging is an investment, not an expense. Let me be practical, because I know what sellers are thinking. Staging costs money. A job like this usually runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,500 to $4,500 minimum, and in a slower market, a lot of people assume that’s just not in the budget. What most people don’t realize is that you have options. Sometimes the seller pays directly. Some stagers take their payment at closing. And some brokerages offer a credit line that covers staging, painting, or flooring up front, repaid when the home sells. Don’t let the sticker price scare you off, because staging usually costs less than the first price reduction and pays for itself.

Think about it: these sellers had already paid six months of mortgage payments on a house that wasn’t selling. That’s the real cost of skipping a presentation that would have helped sell their home at the right price.

Turn awkward spaces into selling features. Presentation isn’t only about the inside. Outside, the home had a raised back patio that sat high over a sloping yard, looking straight at the neighbors’ properties on either side. So we brought in heavy, weighted outdoor draperies on rods that created a private little sitting area, blocking those views and turning an awkward space into a selling feature.

Then market the home hard. We had it professionally photographed, and I cannot stress this enough, because it drives me crazy to see million-dollar homes with amateur photos. Then we marketed hard. We held back-to-back open houses that first weekend. We placed targeted Facebook ads aimed at the cities people are actually moving to Austin from, and yes, we can find that migration pattern. I also personally reached out to other agents who’d sold homes in that area over the past two years, because they often know the next buyer or the one who missed out on another sale. If you want the fuller picture, here are the top reasons a home isn’t selling in today’s market.

Same price, a completely different result. We put it back on the market at the exact same price it had come off at. That very weekend, after our two open houses, we received two full-price offers. Nothing about the house itself changed. Same home, same price, same market. The only thing that changed was the presentation, online with beautiful photography and in person when buyers walked through the door.

When a home is presented in its very best light from day one, buyers see it, and they act. Get it right up front, and you don’t spend another six months slowly reducing your price. That’s especially true in a market like ours, where so many Austin sellers are cutting their price rather than fixing the presentation that’s holding a home back.

If you’re thinking about selling and you want a home that sells instead of sits, I’d love to walk through it with you and show you exactly what we do. You can call or text me at 512-657-4033, email me at linda@lindawelshrealty.com, or visit blog.lindawelshrealty.com. Let’s get it sold right the first time.