3 Fixes That Finally Get Your Home Sold

By Matt Stark

Matt Stark is a top 1% REALTOR® in Seattle with over 19 years of experience. A Seattle native, he began his career in 1999 as an investor before transitioning to full-time real estate.

You priced your home, you put it on the market, and now it’s just sitting there. No offers, no real movement, and a growing question in the back of your mind about what you should do next. And you’re far from alone.

Right now, about half of homes are on the market for more than 60 days without selling. It means a lot of sellers are sitting on a property that isn’t moving at its current price. So the real question is what a seller and a good agent can actually do to change that and generate an offer.

Whenever I look at a home that isn’t selling, it usually comes down to a few buckets. The first one is the obvious one, but it’s worth being honest about.

1. Figure out the true fair market value. Yes, if you drop the price far enough, a buyer will eventually step up and buy it, but slashing the price isn’t the best way to protect your equity. The better starting point is an honest, realistic look at where the home actually sits. Are you truly at fair market value, above it, or priced a little under and in a position to hold and be patient?

Until you know whether you’re priced high, right in the middle, or low, you’re guessing. Everything else follows from getting that read right.

2. Be honest about the home’s condition. Does the home need some work? Is it a little beat up? Or is there something intrinsic to the property a buyer might pass on, a busy road, power lines, something the seller can’t really control? If there are condition issues you can fix, taking care of them is usually the easiest and least expensive way to move the needle. If it’s something you can’t fix or don’t want to spend money on, then the home has to be priced for its condition.

Think about it from the buyer’s perspective: if your home and a similar one are listed at about the same price, but the other one has more upgrades and features, the buyer will choose the one that gives them more for their money. That’s just logical.

3. Take a hard look at the marketing. If a home isn’t selling, I think both the agent and the seller have to honestly ask whether they are doing everything they can to present the property. Does it have a 3D tour? A digital floor plan? Professional photography? Is all the information a buyer needs to make a decision easy for them to find? When any of that’s missing, it changes how buyers perceive the home before they ever see it in person.

Beyond the listing itself, it matters whether you have an aggressive agent, someone who knows the market, can price it effectively, and doesn’t just blast it out to the masses but targets the specific buyers and active agents who match this property right now. That includes marketing to agents who are actually selling homes, and tapping a company’s internal network.

At Windermere, for example, I can market a listing directly to our own agent network, which is another pool of motivated buyers most sellers never reach.

Once you have worked through all of that, you have really narrowed it down. If the home still isn’t selling after price, condition, and marketing have all been addressed, then you’re left with just two variables: price and time. Either you stay patient at your price, or you reduce it to sell faster. The two always go hand in hand.

That’s the honest reality of the market as I see it right now. If you have questions or would like an evaluation on a particular property, reach out anytime. Call or text me at 206-940-4557, email me at matt@mattstarkrealestate.com, or visit searchhomesnw.com.