A Coldwell Banker Real Estate survey of more than 600 of the company’s real estate agents across the U.S. shows that, according to a slight majority of the agents polled (51 percent), home sellers are more willing to lower their asking prices to increase the chance of a sale than they were last year.
Home sellers are also more willing to reconfigure their homes to facilitate a sale this year than they were last year, according to 45 percent of the survey respondents. The survey was conducted from Jan. 24 to Feb. 7.
A vast majority of home sellers (94 percent) are streamlining their homes’ contents and doing cosmetic repairs and minor updates like painting, according to the agents surveyed. Fifty-nine percent say sellers are staging their homes with outside decorations and furniture to make them more appealing.
Coming as no surprise, finished basements and rec rooms are not on top of homebuyers’ minds when searching for a home — only 1 percent of the agents surveyed thought those features were the highest priorities for buyers.
Nice kitchens and open floor plans, however, are priorities for some buyers — 33 percent of surveyed agents reported that nice kitchens were the most important home-selling feature, while 14 percent of respondents felt open floor plans were a priority.
Babies, jobs and marriages represent 70 percent, 69 percent and 59 percent of the respondents’ opinions, respectively, of the life events driving homebuyers’ decisions to purchase homes.
