"He hasn't suggested we lower our price, he thinks it was priced right."

Well, obviously it's not priced right or someone would have bought it by now. Six lookers in six months is pretty bad, unless you are really out in the boonies. We live in an area with a crappy housing market, too, but houses here are still selling as long as the sellers are willing to come down in price.

How is your house being marketed? Is it on realtor.com and the realtor's website? Can you send us the link for feedback?

Sure. Here it is. This is when we had some furniture in it, though.

http://homes.realtor.com/search/listingdetail.aspx?zp=81019&ml=3&typ=7&sid=cfe3f06c7bdc45d5ab730db929209644&pg=3&lid=1078576214&lsn=25&srcnt=44e. (This is from realtor.com)

http://wetmountains.com/main.php/properties2.php/ (From the realtor's website.)

Thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

We have a wonderful mountain view that doesn't show so well on the pix, besides a greenbelt behind us and a lake just across the road behind us.

I would ask him to gather information on how many houses sold in your price range - say $130K to $175K - in the greater Colorado City area in the past six months . And I would ask to see the listings of the ones that sold (I assume that's possible?) to see if your price is the reason the house hasn't sold.

You can get this information yourself through sites like trulia.com, but it is a way to get the conversation rolling.

Here is a link that might be useful: realtor.com link

That must be disheartening. I took a look at the links and I'm not crazy about the outside photo. I think a closer up shot would work better, eliminating some or most of the road in the photo.

I would also like to see all the photos on realtor.com if that's possible.

If there are beautiful views as you say, get good photos of them. It looks like you could get nice ones of the mountains right from the backyard. That should be a major selling point. I would rather see the view as your first photo than the current one - it just doesn't reel you in at all.

Do you have any bedroom photos? Don't take them if the bedroom is empty - it needs a bed to define the space in a photo.

In a bad market, the quality of marketing is even more important. Your pictures are not doing the trick in terms of making people want to come through the door. Take a better photo of the house and some more of the view.

Do a small price reduction after you have updated all your marketing and use that as an opportunity for your agent to send out a new advertising 'blast'. In my market that means a blanket e.mail to all local agents, a fax to every local real estate office and an update on the MLS that will show in the 'hotlist'.

Do it in the right order. New photos first and then the new price. Doesn't matter if it's a very small reduction - just enough that it gives the chance for another big push.

Good luck!

I agree with the comments about your pictures - they are horrible. If the view is your selling point, play that up.

Definitely take a new look at the comps, and then lower yourself to a listing price that will get you sold. At this point, you are just incurring carrying costs and you need to get the place sold.

Could you tell me how I find prices on houses already sold, and what recent sales there have been? I've tried zillow.com but they don't show any listings for 81019.

Thanks for all your help, everybody. I thought our pix were not so bad, gosh, shows I don't know much. I really appreciate your feedback.

Could you tell me how I find prices on houses already sold, and what recent sales there have been?

Ask your agent. That is the fastest, easiest way.

The front picture would look better if it were cropped to eliminate the huge expanse of road and dirt. The vehicles should also be removed from the driveway.

{{!gwi}}

(sorry it's so small, but the source picture was tiny)

terriks, you're certainly right about that. I thought the dirt road had to be there in order to get the tree in, but I see that's not at all necessary. Maybe he doesn't have cropping abilities. Anyway, you guys have given me food for thought and discussion with our agent. Thank you very much.

Yup. Lack of photos could definitely explain why people aren't even looking. If there are a lot of houses on the market in your area, you're probably losing them before they even see the place.

You may want to post some pictures here and get an honest opinion of them before you post them online.

terriks - that's so much better already!

I went to Remax to see what it looks like. IMO you need him to fix the description - it's in all caps...

Description
VERY NICE HOME IN EXCELENT CONDITION ON 2 LOTS. GREENBELT IN BACK. ONLY 1 BLOCK TO LAKE BECKWITH. METAL ROOF, FINISHED OVERSIZED GARAGE. QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD. FAMILY ROOM IS CURRENTLY BEING USED AS A HOME OFFICE WITH COMPUTER SET UP. HIGH SPEED INTERNET IS AVAILABLE THROUGH RYE TELEPHONE FIBER OPTIC.

I like the cropped picture better. Every computer has a program called Microsoft paint which crops fairly easy. There are also free programs, so cropping shouldn't be an issue. The issue is the agent IMO and what they "have time for".

The computer room, retake that photo.

The next suggestion would be to try someone else. I'm not nuts that your agent doesn't have an enhanced listing at realtor.com. I found this listing which is a Century 21 office, that is featured and enhanced.

In my search, which was $125k to $200k, you seem to be priced lower than the others are. It's possible the market is bad.

IMO, in this market, I would want as many features as I could get from an agent. I'd like an agent that has their own web site in addition to their company site as well as someone that has enhanced listings on realtor.com. I wasn't nuts about open houses but we changed our minds. My new "must" is an agent that also paper advertises - open houses Friday to Sunday and on realtor.com as well as price reductions in the Sunday paper.

I have a post with questions to ask agents. If you do a search here for my name it should come up.

roselvr and all -- Thank you so much. I found the list of questions. We're going to have a sit-down with him. I've probably been too cautious about asking questions.

Thanks again to everybody. I'll post here when we get new pictures.

Also, roselvr, I think the market is really bad here; I don't see much change in realtor.com, which I check every few days.

There are listings on realtor.com that are enhanced, showcased, internationally featured-- one is a house that we made a full-price offer on a year ago and the owners were worried that my husband's job offer wouldn't really materialize so they didn't accept it; we built a house instead-- and it's still sitting there.

I think all that you guys have said is correct, and I intend to address all these issues; and yet I wonder if there's anything that will work.

Thanks again for all your help.

Susanka

susanka, the market is bad all up and down the front range right now.

We live in Pueblo 30 miles to the north of you and houses are not selling well here either. Our house has been listed for 6 weeks with only 4 showings.

We have a wonderful realtor though that we really like. She has done about everything that can be done to sell our house.

We have a vitual tour and a talking house. Our realtor gives us feedback when someone comes out and looks at the house. All the feedback has been positive.

Our contract runs out in mid November. So if it doesn't sell by then, we will take it off the market. If the market improves next year, we will try again with this same realtor since we like and trust her.

You have a nice house and a beautiful location, but I doubt that there is a lot that you can do to make the house sell better until the market turns.

Since your contract is running out, maybe you should consider getting a different realtor?

The first one we had was standoffish and we really didn't like him. So we fired him and now have a wonderful realtor that we like and that is easy to work with.

Go with a 3 month contract this time and ask some serious questions. If the realtor is not easy to talk too, then don't use that one.

You might consider renting the house until the market improves? That seems to be what a lot of people are doing?

catfishsam, we really like this realtor. He is experienced and knowledgeable, very easy to talk to. One thing I've just realized since reading your post is that he himself has never actually shown this house -- it's been his assistant. Also we aren't getting any feedback or calls to tell us what they're doing unless I call and ask. Time for a serious talk, as noted above. We had thought to let him call us when the 6 months is up; I now think we should call him and say we need to meet.

DH doesn't want to rent the house out because we had hoped to relax a little, without worrying about renters. We had a bad experience previously with renting a home we owned in California. I have weekends off for the first time in 30 years and we had thought we'd take little trips on weekends instead of worrying what the renters might be doing to our house. I think it's time to discuss renting the house too.

catfishsam, are you willing to post your listing? I'd love to look at it and see what's being done. Thanks very much for your post.

I probably should have said that the realtor's assistant is also a realtor.

Even if a house seems to be "priced right", if there are not enough buyers it won't sell. You need to know how many comparable homes are selling each month. Let's say that there are 30 comparable homes for sale, and 3 homes per month are selling. If NO other homes come on the market it should take 10 months for those 30 homes to sell. But usually there will be more homes for sale. Some of those 30 homes just aren't going to sell. So what to do? If you MUST sell your home you need to do something to make it more attractive than the competition. The easiest way to make an impression is to lower the price. It's the old rule of supply and demand, when the supply is greater than the demand the price needs to go down.

catfishsam, we really like this realtor. He is experienced and knowledgeable, very easy to talk to. One thing I've just realized since reading your post is that he himself has never actually shown this house -- it's been his assistant. Also we aren't getting any feedback or calls to tell us what they're doing unless I call and ask. Time for a serious talk, as noted above. We had thought to let him call us when the 6 months is up; I now think we should call him and say we need to meet.

From what I am reading and seeing, while you may like him, he may not be doing all that he can. I feel feedback is important. With our agent, she has a form that the agent can fill in, she then emails it. It's very handy to have.

There's one local Remax on realtor.com, I did a search of the office and found a few agents that uses enhanced listings; you can find it here. I'd give the agent listed a call and interview him. His profile is here, Willie Willadsen. I found another Remax agent with enhanced TIM LUDWIG, his realtor.com listing. I then went to the main realtor.com page (not advanced search), put in your zip code (with nothing else). There's an ad to the top left, that goes to this page the agent is Maggie Davis, her personal web site (1st one I found that had it) is here. In order, I would contact Maggie, then Tim Ludwig and Willie Willadsen.

Century 21 isn't one of my favorite sites to use. I find that for NJ they only bring up their own listings when I search at their site. With Remax, it brings them all up. I also went to your agents site, I dislike their search feature. It's a vanilla search from what I see, there are no search options and it looks like it only lists their properties like C21 does.

Since you are not living in the house, I would use a bigger name company that gives more options. I also would only sign a 3 month. While some agents don't like to, if I am happy with them, I will gladly resign. I know in this market that some times it isn't the agents fault.

Thank you very much for all your help, roselvr. Don't know what else to say, you did so much. Thanks again.

susanka, one of the realtors roselvr mentioned was Maggie Davis, who lives in Colorado City and might be good to try.

I think the most important thing is for the realtor to keep you in the loop and work directly with you. One complaint we had about our first realtor was that he had us deal most of the time with his assistant. Our present realtor deals with us completely.

So we are much more pleased with our current realtor.

She always listens to whatever we have to say and fixes the problem. For example, I mentioned to her that the flyer box was broken and she replaced it promptly.

She uses e-mail to keep us informed about what is happening. She is also very positive and still thinks our house will sell since it priced right. She has also spent a lot of money on the virtual tour, talking house, and local newspaper ads.

So don't be afraid to switch realtors. Maybe you will get a really good one like we did.

Hi, catfishsam -- Yes, DH and I were actually talking about her last night, although I have to say her houses aren't really selling either that I've noticed.

My plan is to talk to our present realtor and get a list of the houses that have sold in the last six months, tell him we need weekly calls to know what has been done to sell the house in any week, ask him appropriate questions on roselvr's list, tell him we need new and better pix and listings in the Pueblo paper, etc., etc. He IS a great guy, but I agree we're not getting what we should be getting at this point. I think we don't need to spend any time talking about how poor the market is; we know that. What we need to know is what he is doing, and then compare that to what the realtor you guys like is doing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, catfishsam and everyone.

First of all, the realtor's website is so slow, I gave up. I tried to search for your MLS number and couldn't find any option to insert it at your realtor's site. Is there a link to the ACTUAL Mls listing to see interior photos or are there none?

If I visited that site looking for homes in your area, I would skip it completely because it is not user friendly and does not offer all the search options a buyer wants. That could be part of your problem right there.

Our house was listed two weeks ago. Not one looker. It's a tough market, but I'm also starting to believe that not necessarily price is the issue, but actually getting buyer's agents to bring potential buyers to the home. I've got an incentive in the back of my mind to get more lookers if we have nothing in a couple weeks.

sparksals, I couldn't get the pix to transfer from the agent's website, but here's a link to a Remax page that has the pix.

There are only a few agents in this town, and only 40 houses for sale in the whole place.

Are you willing to share what your incentive is?

Thanks very much for your post.

Here is a link that might be useful: Here's a page with pix of our house

Forgot to say, we have a beautiful view, which you certainly cannot tell from the outdoor picture he took.

susanka - thanks for the link to a listing with the photos. I agree, they are pretty bad.

Have you thought of moving the couch to face the fireplace and putting a chair in the corner to create a cozy sitting area with the FP as the feature of the room? The way you have it set up right now, it looks like it has no purpose and the ottoman seems out of place - too small for the room and the couch.

We haven't offered an incentive yet. We've only been on the market for two weeks, but it is in the back of my mind. I don't want to chase the market down for months, so we feel that to get lookers, we need to sweeten the pot for the realtor. If we do it, we will offer $1-2K over the share of the 6% commission.

If I visited that site looking for homes in your area, I would skip it completely because it is not user friendly and does not offer all the search options a buyer wants. That could be part of your problem right there.

I agree. In another post I said it was a vanilla search with no search options and it looks like it only lists their properties like C21 does. I do think this agent may be hurting her sale. Going with a larger firm with better features gets the listing to more places.

I wouldn't consider extending with this agent. In this market, sellers can't afford to waste time and need to go with the best they can find.

My plan is to talk to our present realtor and get a list of the houses that have sold in the last six months, tell him we need weekly calls to know what has been done to sell the house in any week, ask him appropriate questions on roselvr's list, tell him we need new and better pix and listings in the Pueblo paper, etc., etc. He IS a great guy, but I agree we're not getting what we should be getting at this point

Since the contract is up in a few weeks, you can try to get him to change out pictures, fix the description and maybe post on craigslists, although I do not see him paying for enhanced listings at realtor.com. Id give him these last few weeks to sell it; then move on.

Selling a house is business, not a popularity contest. While he's knowledgeable in the area, he may not be doing enough. I am a firm believer that the future of real estate is realtor.com and the agents that want to survive are going to have to use it. Think of all of the people that relocate from another state. Without an enhanced listing, finding your property is a royal pain. You have to go to google to find the agents web site, then since there is no advanced search option, you have to sift through listings until you find it. As Sparksals says, too much of a hassle, you would get passed over.

I'm in the same boat as you are - 4 showings in 3 months; in my case I do feel my agent is hurting us. We've made the decision to switch; we're also going to put new counters in the kitchen.

questions on roselvr's list

If you are not close to a military base, leave those questions off. In our case, it worked to our advantage because I found out that someone that works on base is an agent in the office I'm considering switching to.

One agent I saw said he doesn't advertise in the paper but would consider it after I mentioned that some older people don't have computers. I have an 84 year old neighbor that has a bi level and may be looking for a rancher which is what we have.

Thank you very much for all your help, roselvr. Don't know what else to say, you did so much. Thanks again.

You're very welcome.

We met with our realtor. He provided us with a printed-out list of all sales here in the last six months, and the complete listing of the ones in our price range, who sold them, etc. (there have only been 14 closed sales altogether in 6 months). He agreed to take new pictures and get our approval on them, agreed to do more internet advertising, and we liked him just as much as we always have. He said he doesn't call usually unless something happens, but invited us to call him. He invited us to talk to other realtors, which I did (the realtor you guys liked, MD) and sure enough, she's only sold 2 houses, which were ones he had listed for us.

He said the people who were so interested in our house last week were set to go, were talking about building out on the front of the house to make the kitchen bigger, and then got a good look at the house across the street with the shingles coming off the roof and junk in the front yard (which they'd be looking at from their kitchen window), and were turned off. They bought a house a few blocks away not nearly as nice as ours.

I'm on the Architectural Commission in this little town. I previously talked with the folks across the street about their messy yard, got the Arch.Com. to sponsor a citywide free cleanup, and the neighbors cleaned up a bunch of their mess, in April. But they have now accumulated much more junk, and the winds here have torn off even more of their roof shingles.

Does anybody have any more ideas? I'm so upset. We haven't signed with the realtor yet for a 3-month extension, but it seemed like he had the right answers on all our questions. I guess I'll go talk to the neighbors again, but I feel hopeless at this point. The other houses in our neighborhood are quite nice except for a couple down the street a ways that are not so great.

Thanks again for all your help.

Maybe give him a 30 day extension to see how he is with doing what he said he would?

susanka, it probably doesn't make a lot of difference whether you switch realtors or not. The truth is that houses just aren't selling well right now.

But switch realtors anyway. Maybe the new realtor will come up with something that will help you sell. But be realistic and realize that your house may not sell for a long time.

Our house in Pueblo hasn't been getting many showings either even though we have a great realtor that has done about all she can do.

So the best thing to do is realize that your house may not sell for a long time. We have finally arrived at that conclusion and realize that it may not sell until the market improves.

The best thing we have going for us is that we don't have to sell right now. So when the contract runs out, we wait until spring and then look at the market again. If it improves, we may put it back on then.

If the mortgage payments are hurting you having two houses, you may have to rent out the vacant one even if you don't wan't to?

By the way, did that hail storm the other night hurt your houses? A lot of houses on the south side of Pueblo suffered lots of damage. Also people at the Fair had damage to their cars.

We lost a skylight due to a hailstone, but that was all the damage. We live on the northside and didn't get as much damage as some other parts of town.

So we lucked out since our new paint job wasn't messed up.

Hi, catfishsam -- No, we didn't get any damage at all. I hope your skylight wasn't too expensive. We wanted to put skylights in here, decided we couldn't afford it, and didn't even think of the potential hail problems, so I'm glad we didn't.

We actually were able to pay off the other house, so we don't have double mortgages; we're not hurting in that regard, just DH who is uptight about money at this time since I plan to retire at the end of the year is concerned about the interest we're paying on our new house. He's willing to think about renting it if it doesn't sell in 60 days. I think we'll either do that or just take it off the market, as you're thinking of, and put it on again next spring.

It hurts to know our messy neighbors took away our sale, but at least we were close; certainly not any worse off than others who have houses that aren't selling. It just that we can't "fix" the problem since it's the neighbors and not us.

roselvr, as always, thanks.

susanka, the glass company can't come out until next week since there was so many broken windows in the city. So I won't know how much it will cost until they come out.

The skylight doesn't leak though since it only knocked a hole in the top of it.

But I am really happy that the hail didn't hurt the roof. We have replaced the roof 3 times in the 15 years that we have lived here. Frankly I am tired of doing that so will not replace the roof again unless it starts leaking.

The entire front range of Colorado is one of the worse areas in the U.S. for hail. Our newspaper estimated that the hail damage for this storm would be 100 million for Pueblo.

Colorado Springs also got a really bad hail storm. My daughter-in-law said that they got 4 inches of hail from that storm. Her roof leaks pretty bad, but at least it is a rental so she doesn't have to worry about it.

catfishsam, we got Malarkey shingles that are rated 4, I think; even got a discount on our homeowners insurance because we have them. They weren't terribly expensive and are supposed to hold up really well to hail. Got them from a Pueblo firm, can't remember the name (just in case you end up having to replace yours).

We used to live in Colorado Springs, so we know about hail also!

Good luck to you on your house.

A bitter pill to swallow - if your house has not had any offers in six months on the market - it's the price. I read an article today in the Milwaukee newspaper where the R.E. agent said it best ... it would be a buyers market if there were buyers out there. With winter coming and the usual slow down in the house selling market, with a paid off house, you should probably consider renting at least it will make you some income and offset some of your costs of upkeep and insurance on the house while you decide what to do with it. Sad about your neighbors, after all the stuff I read on this forum, having decent neighbors became a concern I had never had before. Now it's on my list of things to consider when looking at houses.