Three-Pronged Approach

Iowa builder uses three strategies to sell an inventory home.

MasterCraft Estate Homes of West Des Moines, Iowa, had a house that had been sitting on the market for over a year at a list price of $367,000. Carrying costs were running about $3,000 a month. MasterCraft knew the house had design issues. It was an older plan the builder had inherited and no longer used.

“When you first walk in, there's a living room that's very un-user-friendly,” vice president Matt Taylor says. “The complaint we kept hearing was that it was not a great layout.”

Great layout or not, MasterCraft needed to sell the house. So Taylor and his team came up with a trio of strategies to get it out the door without slashing the price. People just couldn't figure out how their furniture would fit in the living room, so Taylor had an interior designer stage that one room. “We didn't have to spend tons of money to decorate it,” he says. “We did a couple of couches and end tables and showed how the room would be used.”

The builder also decided to change real estate agents (a custom home builder, MasterCraft Estate Homes doesn't have an in-house sales staff ), switching to an agent who owned a home in the neighborhood. “She was more involved and motivated,” Taylor says. “She lives in the neighborhood, so it's a benefit to her to sell it.”

Third, and most importantly, the builder got the community involved in selling the house by hosting a cookout with the neighbors. “We get a lot of referrals,” Taylor says. “Our buyers' friends say it's a great neighborhood.”

Both the residents and the real estate agent invited people they knew were looking for a home. “From a marketing standpoint, that's a pretty cheap way to do it,” Taylor notes.

Within a month of those three efforts, the house was sold. The total cost for the staging and the cookout was less than one month's carrying costs.