How to sell a house quickly in a slow market

Sunil Mishra

The primary and resale residential real estate market slowed down from 2013 to 2016 and has been showing signs of revival from past one year. However, rental sector has been seeing a visible growth with more and more people deciding to wait before buying their dream home, and staying on rent for some more time.

In such an environment, if you own an apartment and are trying to dispose it off, you may be looking at a tough ordeal. You may like to consider the following points while trying to sell your house in a slow market like the current one.

To increase the number of potential buyers for your property, you need to list details of your apartment on 2-3 leading property portals. The more accurate information you will give on these portals, the higher are your chances of getting genuine enquiries. Also, some of the portals do a physical verification of your apartment, and take their own photograph. Your listing becomes “verified” then. Such portals will obviously attract better quality (more serious) buyers.

Try to find the rough prices of similar apartments in your locality – similar size, age, location on a road. While listing your apartment on the property portals, see that you do not over-price your apartment. While there is merit in starting a bit higher and discounting later on, if you price too high than what you really think it’s true value could be, then you may discourage some good buyers from even contacting you, in the first place. For arriving at a proper price, you may also look at the new upcoming buildings – for which prices are easily available – and discount your apartment for age and having been used by you.

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Get your apartment cleaned up, white-washed and done up a bit, so as to look nice and clean to potential buyers, who come in to have a look. An investment of Rs 10-15,000 in doing up the apartment can fetch an additional value of Rs 50,000-100,000 for the apartment. More importantly, by making the apartment look good and liveable, you are avoiding some of the buyers from just walking away the moment they see the home. Once people like the first look of the home, and think that they can live in there, price negotiations becomes easier and in your favour. But if the apartment is dirty and old-looking, some buyers may just leave within 5 minutes of entering.

Once the verified listing has been created on a property portal, you can post the link to that listing in your WhatsApp groups, Facebook wall, requesting your friends to share the link with like-minded friends. Depending on how comfortable you are, you can mention a 0.25% fee for finding a suitable buyer. If you get your buyer through a professional broker, you will be paying him 1-2% anyways.

You could also use the services of your neighbourhood broker. But if he is creating a listing of your apartment on any property portal, insist that he puts in all the correct information, in the first go itself. No point in increasing the flow of people coming in to see your apartment, but majority of them returning disappointed, because the information on the listing did not match with reality.

For sweetening the deal for any buyer who has short-listed your home and is serious now, you may decide to throw in some existing white goods, AC, cupboards as part of the deal. While the monetary value of this may not exceed Rs 20-50,000, some buyers love to get a freebie and might end up signing up for that.

All in all, be honest with facts, be realistic with price, and be smart – you should get your buyer soon.

(The writer is group chief strategy officer, Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com)