Selling your condo can be a surprisingly time consuming and emotionally draining task, especially if you’ve never done it before. Having a plan from the start and working with an experienced professional can help you avoid mistakes and get your home sold quickly and for top-dollar.

In this video, I give you my top-5 most common seller mistakes to avoid.

1) WRONG PRICE
Getting the right price is crucial to a successful sale. Pricing your condo too high will mean your property will likely sit on the market and ultimately sell for less than it could have.

Pricing your property too low means you may get an offer quickly, but you are leaving money on the table.

Pricing your condo is part art and part science. Often you won’t know you’ve priced it wrong until it’s too late.

2) NO PHOTOS
A picture is worth a 1000 words, yet thousands of listings still do not have any photos, let alone virtual tours and videos. Today’s buyers want instant gratification and they are not easily impressed. Having professional looking photos is absolutely essential to a successful sale.

3) POOR STAGING
So many sellers underestimate the importance of staging and how much it can contribute to your bottom line. Staging will help attract more buyers and more potential offers on your property. Your goal should be to make your condo look better than 95% of the condos on the market. Only the top-5% of all listings get top dollar.

4) SHOWING ROADBLOCKS
Showing roadblocks are anything the impedes potential buyers and real estate agents from showing your property. These can include un-co-operative tenants, unresponsive agents, and missing or hard to find keys. All these things can hurt your sale and ultimately leave less money in your pocket. For more info on this point, check out my video of the top-5 most common showing roadblocks.

5) UNCLEAR ROOM FUNCTIONS
Every room in your condo should have a clearly defined function. Keep it simple and don’t try to do too much with each space. A buyer should be able to instantly recognize what each room is to be used for and start to picture themselves living in your condo. Staging can go a long way to making sure this happens.

I hope you enjoyed my top-5 tips for staging your condo for sale. If you are thinking about selling your condo and buying a house this year, I’d love to help. For more information contact me.

In a seller’s market, where a monkey could sell a condo, agents and sellers will quite often pull a price out of the air without giving it any thought. In a buyer’s market, it’s back to the fundamentals of marketing: Product, Place, Promotion, and PRICE! Yes, choosing the correct asking price is a very important piece of the marketing mix for selling your property.

If you over-price your property, you are shooting yourself in the foot. You will get less potential buyers through your property, less offers, and potentially no offers at all. Inevitably you will have to reduce your price but by then your listing will be ‘stale’ and most potential buyers will have moved on.

You might think there are no risks associated with under-pricing, but there are. Underpricing a listing in a seller’s market results in multiple offers and potentially an artificially inflated selling price. Underpricing in a buyer’s market when there are less active buyers and more listings means you could end up selling your property for less than it is actually worth, but you would never even know it because there just isn’t the same critical mass of buyers out there.

Bottom line, you (and more importantly your agent) need to be able to defend your asking price when a buyer’s agent comes a calling and says, “How flexible is the seller on the price? It is a buyer’s market after all…”. Questions or comments? Thinking of selling? Contact me.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple years and still do not know what an assignment is, please read through my series of blog posts on the subject before continuing.

Time and time again I see assignment sellers (and their agents) making the same mistake: over pricing their assignments.Finding a buyer for an assignment is tricky under the best of circumstances. Finding a buyer for an assignment when that assignment is over priced to begin with is nearly impossible.

For example, Maple Leaf Square assignments are popping up everywhere.  Some sellers are asking $700 per square foot for their units. This is insane. There is almost nothing selling on the resale market at that price anywhere downtown. Why would anyone pay this for a run of the mill condo?

The high end of the resale market (for non-luxury buildings) are buildings like Glas (25 Oxley), College Park (761&763 Bay), Murano (37 Grosvenor and 38 Grenville), and The Met (21 and 25 Carlton). Units in these buildings are averaging about $575 PSF for units with parking spots. The odd unit is selling for slightly above $600 PSF. This is the creme of the crop. Trying to sell an assignment in an unproven building for $700 PSF is just silly.

So what is a realistic way to price an assignment? There is no set rule at this point, however, I would suggest you first determine the value of the property if it were a resale property TODAY, then subtract 10% from that. This is assuming of course, you are a motivated, rational seller who does not want to close on the property. This is also assuming occupancy will take place in the next 6 months or less for your unit.

Don’t get greedy. Price your assignment below equivalent resale market value to give yourself the best chance to find a buyer.

This one is sure to excite some people-let me know your thoughts or comments!

April 2009 update: NEW PRICES  and NEW FLOOR PLANS now available for FLY Condos. Suites available from an amazing $159,900! Click here for details.

Fly Condos – the wait is finally over! Email me to get your hands on VIP price sheet right away for Fly Condos.

Project Details:

• Location: Front and Spadina
• Size: 24 Storeys, 396 units
• Starting Prices (tower suites): $269,900 for 495 sq ft to $684,900 for 1112 sq ft.
• Price per square foot from the Mid $500s
• Penthouse Pricing starting from $849,900 for 1145 sq ft to $1,169,900 for 1533 sq ft
• Loft Pricing from $399,900 for 690 sq ft to $619,900 for 1050 sq ft
• Terrace Suite Pricing from $289,900 for 495 sq ft to $419,900 for 710 sq ft
• Parking $35,000
• Lockers $5000
• Floor Premiums: $1000 per floor
• Maintenance: $0.46/sq ft + Hydro
• Occupancy: Oct 31, 2011
• Deposit Structure: $2000 with offer, balance of 5% in 30 days, 5% in 90 days, 5% in 180 days, 5% in Occupancy

They are offering some incredible incentives for purchasers during the VIP stage:

• Savings of up to $15,000 per unit
• FREE Locker ($5000 value)
• FREE Assignment Prior to occupancy
• FREE Upgrade to Integrated Fridge and Dishwasher in Kitchen
• FREE In-suite 5.1 Surround Sound Home Entertainment System ($3000 Value)

Also being released at the VIP stage are some of the Terraced Suites, the lofts, and some of the Penthouse suites. Contact me for more information.

Click here to view the Fly Condos floor plans.

Contact me now and I will send you the Fly Condos VIP Price Sheet.

April 2009 update: NEW PRICES  and NEW FLOOR PLANS now available for FLY Condos. Suites available from an amazing $159,900! Click here for details.

See all my posts related to Fly Condos here.