8 Creative ways to Sell your House

There are endless ways to sell your house, some are more successful than others. The end result is that you want it sold as fast as possible, for the maximum price. I wrote an article recently on how to maximize the house price, now it's time to find out how to sell your house as fast as possible. 

By now you would've heard about the tech savvy guy who sold his house (way above reserve) by utilizing his social media skills.

And then there is the house with it's own Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus accounts 

But what other ways can you drum up interest and hopefully sell your property quick smart? Well here's a few ideas, some more realistic than others:

1 - You could use a Dead Celeb (or Alive)

Get a life size cardboard cutout of someone like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, or maybe Frank Sinatra, and take a photo of it inside a room in your house. Then use this photo in your marketing. Potential buyers will inspect the room more closely online when they have started to go cross-eyed after looking at thousands of online listings. 

2 - Joint Open Home and Make it a Party

Are there a few houses on your street that are up for sale? Then join together and make it more of a block party? Get your Realtor to contact the others on the street, and organise to have all have open homes at the same time. Then turn it into a party. Get in the coffee cart, maybe hire a bouncy castle for the street or other child friendly entertainment. You will draw out a lot of people who are looking, but don't feel like trudging all over town. (Just make sure your house is the best one!)

3 - Go Big! 

We all know the usual 'For Sale' signs, but why not go BIG, REALLY BIG. Think Billboard size - if your council allows it. Follow that up with BIG print and online ads. If you are committing to this approach, then everything should be big.

4 - Think Charity

If you are in a position to, can you sell your property with some of the proceeds going to charity? Maybe it's for a homeless shelter and at the open home collect canned food for the charity. Or what about animals.  Can you organize for the local RSPCA to bring some animals by the open home?They can try and organize animal adoptions and you can be collecting food and supplies from the viewers. Plus a portion of the house sale goes to charity. Would make great PR and the kids will love it. 

5 - Afternoon Tea

It is exhausting traipsing around open homes, especially if there are kids involved. Provide a nice afternoon tea, some good scones with jam and cream, tea and good coffee - maybe from a coffee cart. It will keep people in the house longer and give them time to imagine themselves living there. Yes, of course there will be those who come just for the free food, but you never know, that one buyer might be the one who asks for an extra dollop of cream. Make sure that the serviettes have all the info about the house on them, which include a floor plan. 

6 - Here, Have the Boat, (or Car or holiday...)

But wait, there's more!  You buy the house, we'll give you the boat out the back for free. Some people are throwing in a luxury holiday, cars, boats, jet skis. What about the 2-for-1 offer, buy the main house and get the holiday home free? Of course you have to be in a position to offer such an incentive.

7 - Creative Financing

Maybe it would a great selling point if you could help the buyer out. Research (if legal where you are) and consider if you could get the buyer to take over your mortgage payments for an agreed period and then at the end of the period they buy you out of the rest of the house. This means you won't have any mortgage payments and then the the remainder of the sale price will come a little way down the track.

There are a lot of other ways to massage financing, see if you can work out a deal, where you provide seller financing, or some other non-tradition financing deal.

8 - Sleep on it

Well more like sleep in it! What about having potential buyers stay the weekend? Let them get the feel for the house and the neighborhood to see if they like it. No strings attached. It is such a big purchase that this maybe the ticket for getting people to sign the dotted line.

So what's your favourite creative way to sell a house? Have you come across any good ones that I didn't mention?