When a home sits on the market for too long, buyers may begin to wonder, “What’s wrong with it? Does it have a fatal flaw?”
Realtor Arthur Durkin of Keller Williams Realty in Andover said when a home comes on the market, it generates the greatest interest in the first several weeks. That is the time when people ask for a showing or make an offer.
Durkin said it’s not a good sign if a listing doesn’t have interest, showings and offers soon after it goes on the market.
” … It’s bad because you likely will not have increased interest without a price adjustment. The longer a home spends on the market, the more likely it is for potential buyers to question, ‘what’s wrong with this home?'” said Durkin.
“What’s wrong” could be one of many “fatal flaws” real estate agents often see.
What are real estate ‘fatal flaws?’
Durkin said the worst fatal flaw hindering a home’s sale is an unrealistic asking price.
“As a listing agent, I don’t overprice houses. I tell my client, if you’re not willing to go in at my price and not willing to make a price adjustment after two weeks, I’m not willing to take the listing,” said Durkin.
He’s very frank with his sellers. He knows other agents who don’t mind having a listing sit because their for-sale sign is out longer and they see that as good exposure. Durkin, on the other hand, sees it as a bad reflection on him.
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“As a listing agent, if I can’t properly market and sell a home, it tells other agents in the market, ‘this guy can’t get a home sold,”’ he said.
Durkin, who has been in real estate for about seven years, sells at least 40 homes annually. Some of these homes have had what a buyer might consider a fatal flaw, such as a home he sold in Boxford in December 2020.
The house’s front entrance was actually located in the back. It also needed a lot of interior work due to a leaky roof and mice that chewed electrical wires and left droppings throughout the insulation.
“The front of the house was in the back and the back of the house was in the front,” said Durkin.
The buyer, Kim Hamilton, looked at it with Durkin’s wife and stager, Chelle, who helped give her vision about how she could change the look of the house.
The sellers accepted Hamilton’s offer of $465,000, $116,000 over the asking price, in less than one week.
According to Durkin, the current median price of a single-family home in Boxford is $894,000.
“If you can provide potential buyers a vision to overcome the fatal flaw, it’s no longer fatal. It’s quite survivable,” said Durkin.
Although the house needed a lot of work, Hamilton said she really loved the location, just two doors away from her parents, and didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to live there.
She believes she was the only buyer who wanted to live in the home, not just buy it to flip it.
Hamilton’s advice to buyers who love a house needing a lot of work: “Figure out what has to be done for you to be able to live in it first. The cosmetics can always come later. Ask yourself, ‘what does it need so you can live there?’ You can make it what you want with time.”
Hamilton’s home is currently assessed for $816,000 now that it is updated, she said.
A home with a long market history
Other sellers are not as lucky, such as the owners of 440 Great Pond Road in North Andover that has been on and off the market since 2018, according to Durkin.
The Neoclassical 10,000-square-foot estate built in 2004 has 15 rooms, including seven bedrooms, seven full bathrooms and two half bathrooms, an elevator, four-car garage and a gourmet kitchen. It expands over more than 6 acres of land overlooking Lake Cochichewick. The landscape also has hand-carved fountains imported from Italy with cascading waterfalls which can be seen from the many verandas surrounding the estate.
The current owners purchased the estate in October 2016 for $2 million, according to the North Andover’s property database.
According to Durkin, it has been listed by five or six different agencies since 2018 for $8 million. Six months later, it dropped to $7 million. Then it was withdrawn from the market in 2020.
In August 2020, it was listed for $3.999 million for 159 days and cancelled in Jan. 12, 2021. It was listed again on Jan. 26, 2021 for $3.999 million and cancelled on Feb. 3, 2021.
The mansion is currently assessed by North Andover for $3,001,800.
Durkin believes $15 million has been put into the home over the years.
“It’s gone through multiple issues. The roof was not secured. Rain was coming in,” said Durkin.
He also said there is renovation work that still needs to be done on the property.
As to what he thinks would help sell the property, Durkin said, “I don’t know the specific flaws of this property, but I imagine that fixing any mechanical or structural issues as well as completing the unfinished renovation would be a step in the right direction.”
If it is not possible to complete the repairs before re-listing it, then Durkin said a price adjustment would be necessary to get it sold as well as a robust marketing campaign to overcome the extended market dwell time in its history.
“Identifying the target audience for this property would be important. Bringing in a professional stager or at a minimum, ‘virtually staging’ the property online,” said Durkin. Virtual staging is when furniture is shown in the home through computer renderings.
What are other flaws that delay the sale of a house?
Curb appeal
Durkin quoted Oscar Wilde and Will Rogers, “’You never get a second chance to make a first impression.’ If you can’t get potential buyers past the front yard, you can’t get them through the front door,” he said.
Upgrades needed
Durkin said sometimes sellers refuse to make needed upgrades.
“If other homes in the area, your competition, have upgraded their home and you haven’t in decades, it will show in the lack of foot traffic, showings and offers.”
Clutter
Durkin said he brings his wife, Chelle, a stager and operations manager for Keller Williams, to all of his listings to provide a staging report.
The No. 1 recommendation: declutter.
“Removing personal items like family photos, taste-specific artwork. You want buyers to picture themselves in your listing and not feel like they are intruding in someone else’s space,” said Durkin.
Mechanical or structural issues
Old furnaces and roofs can scare away many home buyers, especially first-time home buyers, said Durkin.
Jim Gray of Hi-Net Home Inspection, which has offices in Boston, Haverhill, Nashua, New Hampshire and York, Maine, said anything can be fixed.
“It all depends on how much you want to spend,” he said.
Buyers have to make an educated decision on how to proceed with information provided by their home inspector or contractor after a home inspection, he said.
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“Every buyer has a different comfort level with houses. So, what may be concerning to one buyer, may not be to another,” said Gray.
He has seen buyers purchase homes that need lots of work but they have connections to family and friends that can help them with the repairs needed.
“Big-ticket items are generally where most buyers have concerns, such as roofs, heating systems, foundations, electrical, etc. These are items that can generally cost lots of money to repair,” said Gray.
