How to Actually Get Your Chattanooga House Sold

Almost every article you'll ever read about selling a house is about throw pillows. Declutter, depersonalize, bake some cookies, put a lemon in the garbage disposal. And look — that stuff isn't wrong, we'll get to it. But it's the last five percent of the outcome getting ninety-five percent of the attention.

I want to spend this episode on the part that actually decides how this goes for you. And the nice thing is I don't have to argue about it, because there are two numbers from our own market that settle it.

This is The Chattanooga Real Estate Report — I'm Mike Burge, broker at Southern Property Shop.

Here are the two numbers, and I promise this is the least boring math I'll ever ask you to sit through.

Number one. Over the past year, houses in Chattanooga have sold for roughly ninety-seven to ninety-eight and a half cents on the dollar compared to what they were asking at the time they went under contract. So if a house was sitting there priced at three hundred and fifty thousand, it sold right around three-forty-something. That's a healthy, normal negotiation. Everybody goes home fine.

Number two. Over that same stretch, those same houses sold for only about ninety-four to ninety-six cents on the dollar compared to what they were asking on the very first day they hit the market.

Now, why are those two numbers different? There's only one possible reason. It's price cuts. That gap exists entirely because a whole lot of sellers started at one number, sat there, didn't sell, and came down. The gap between those two numbers is not a market condition. It's a scoreboard of guesses that were wrong.

And the gap is about two and a half to three cents on the dollar. On a house in the mid-three-hundreds, which is right about the middle of our market, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of nine to eleven thousand dollars. That is what it costs, on average, to pick your price emotionally instead of carefully. Ten grand. For a decision you make in about twenty minutes at your kitchen table before you've even listed.

So let's talk about why that happens, because it's not a matter of willpower or being a tough negotiator. It's mechanical.

The first two weeks are the whole ballgame. When your house hits the market, every single buyer who's been actively looking in your price range gets notified basically instantly. Those are the good buyers — pre-approved, motivated, they've been looking for weeks, they know exactly what everything's worth because they've been to fourteen of them. That's your best audience and you get one shot at them. If your price makes them scroll past, they don't come back later when you fix it. They've already bought something else.

Then there's the search filter problem, and this one is so simple and it costs so much money. Buyers search in round numbers. Under three-fifty. Under four hundred. So if your house is genuinely worth three hundred and fifty-five thousand and you list at three-sixty because you want negotiating room — every single buyer whose filter is set at three-fifty will never see your house. Not "will see it and pass." Will never see it. You have deleted yourself from their world for five thousand dollars of imaginary cushion.

Third thing: days on market is public and buyers read it. In this market the average house has been going about six weeks to get under contract. So when a buyer sees something sitting at ninety days, they don't think "what a nice house that's been patiently waiting." They think: what's wrong with it. And then they offer accordingly, or they don't offer at all. Your listing gets stale, and stale is not a feeling, it's a discount.

And fourth, the appraisal is standing at the end of the road regardless. If your buyer is getting a mortgage, an appraiser is going to come look at what comparable houses actually sold for. You can list at any number you want. You cannot close above what the appraiser will support unless your buyer brings the difference in cash, and most buyers can't and won't.

That's why overpricing doesn't just delay you. It costs you. The market doesn't argue with you, it just quietly stops calling.

Now let me be straight with you about the market you're selling into, because this matters and I'd rather you hear it from me than find out on week seven.

Over the past year, the number of houses on the market in Chattanooga has climbed from roughly nine hundred seventy-five to about twelve hundred seventy. That's a meaningful increase in your competition. Months of supply — which is just how long it'd take to sell everything currently listed at the current pace — has moved from around four point two months to about five point three. Under about five months we'd generally call that a seller's market. Around five to six is drifting toward balanced. And average days on market has stretched out from a bit under six weeks to a bit over.

None of that is a crash. Prices in Chattanooga have been basically flat with a slight uphill drift for about a year now — the middle house is still selling in the mid three-hundreds, same as it was. This isn't a falling market. It's a market where buyers have more choices than they used to, and where they have time to think. Those two things together mean the house that's priced right and shows well still sells just fine, and the house that's priced on hope sits.

If you sold a house around here in 2021 and you're expecting that experience again, that's the adjustment. You're not going to get six offers in a weekend from people waiving inspections. You're going to get a reasonable number of showings and, if you've done this right, a solid offer in a few weeks.

So here's what actually moves the needle, in order, and I'm putting them in order on purpose.

Number one is price. We just spent ten minutes on it. It's not close. Price is more powerful than everything else on this list combined.

Number two is photographs. Your listing photos are your open house now. Ninety-some percent of buyers see your house on a phone screen before they ever see your street, and they decide in about four seconds. Professional photos, taken in good light, on a day when the yard is mowed. This is not a place to save four hundred dollars. I've watched bad photos cost people twenty thousand dollars, and I'm not exaggerating for effect.

Number three is access. This one sounds boring and it's brutally important. If a buyer's agent tries to schedule a showing on Saturday at two and gets told "we need twenty-four hours notice and it has to be after five," they'll just show the other four houses on their list and never come back. Your house needs to be easy. That's a hard couple of weeks, especially with kids or a dog, and it's genuinely the difference between selling and sitting.

Number four is the first ten feet and the first ten seconds. What buyers see from the curb, and what hits them when the door opens. Mow it, edge it, mulch it, pressure wash the walk, paint the front door. And then the smell — and I'm sorry, but somebody has to tell you: you cannot smell your own house. Nobody can smell their own house. Ask a friend who will be genuinely rude to you.

Number five, now we get to the decluttering, which I know a lot of you are wondering about because it's one of the things people search most. Here's the real reason it works, and it isn't about tidiness. A crowded room reads as a small room. That's it. Your brain measures a space by how much floor and wall it can see. So the goal isn't "clean," the goal is "empty-ish." Get about a third of the furniture out of every room. Clear the kitchen counters down to almost nothing. Take about half of what's in your closets somewhere else, because buyers absolutely open closets and a stuffed closet says "this house doesn't have enough storage." Rent a storage unit for two months. It's the highest return on investment in this entire episode after the price.

And take down the personal photos — not because there's anything wrong with your family, but because a buyer standing in your hallway looking at your kid's graduation picture is thinking about you, and you need them thinking about themselves.

Last piece: repairs. What do you fix and what do you leave?

My honest triage is this. Fix anything that's a safety or a system problem, because those are the things that blow up deals at inspection. Fix the cheap cosmetic stuff that reads as neglect — the running toilet, the burnt-out bulbs, the torn screen, the cabinet door that won't close. Those cost forty dollars and they make a buyer wonder what else you didn't do.

But do not do a big renovation right before you sell. You will not get your money back on a new kitchen you picked out for somebody else's taste. Price the house honestly for the kitchen it has instead.

And seriously consider a pre-listing inspection. Pay your own inspector to find the problems before a buyer's inspector finds them for you. Then you get to decide, calmly, with time, what to fix and what to disclose. It costs a few hundred dollars and it takes away the single most common way deals fall apart around here — which is a scary inspection report landing on a buyer's kitchen table two weeks in, when they're already nervous and looking for a reason.

One more thing, and it's the part everybody's unprepared for: how to read an offer when it finally shows up. Because the highest number is not automatically the best offer, and I've watched people learn that the hard way.

Look at the financing first. Is this a cash buyer, or a conventional loan, or one of the government-backed programs? They're not equally likely to close, and some of them bring an appraiser with stricter opinions about the condition of your house. A slightly lower offer from somebody who's fully underwritten — meaning a lender has already looked at their actual pay stubs and tax returns, not just pulled a credit score — is worth more than a higher offer from somebody with a pre-qualification letter they got off a website.

Look at what they're asking you to pay. A four hundred thousand dollar offer where the buyer wants ten thousand toward their closing costs is a three hundred and ninety thousand dollar offer wearing a hat. Have somebody run you a net sheet — what actually lands in your account after commissions, closing costs, your payoff, and any concessions. That's the only number that matters and it's rarely the one on the front page.

Look at the contingencies. Inspection, appraisal, financing, and the big one: is this offer contingent on them selling their own house first? Every contingency is a door they can walk back out of.

And look at the earnest money. That's the deposit a buyer puts up to show they're serious, and it tells you something real. Somebody putting up a thousand dollars on a four hundred thousand dollar house has not risked much by walking away. Somebody putting up ten thousand is telling you they intend to close.

Timing matters too. If you need thirty days and they need sixty, that's worth negotiating over — sometimes it's worth more to you than a few thousand dollars on the price.

So what does this mean for you?

If you're selling — get three real opinions on price and pay attention to which one comes with actual comparable sales attached and which one is just a big flattering number. The agent who tells you the highest number is not the agent who will get you the highest number. Frequently they're the one who'll ask you to cut it twice in six weeks, and you already know what those cuts cost. Price it right, photograph it properly, make it easy to see, and get a third of your stuff out of the house.

If you're buying — flip everything I just said around and use it. Look at how long a house has been sitting and look at whether it's had price cuts, because both of those tell you something true about the seller's state of mind. A house that's been on the market seventy days in a six-week market has a seller who's rethinking things. And with roughly twelve hundred seventy houses on the market and supply drifting up, you can afford to be patient in a way buyers around here couldn't a year ago. Patience is leverage.

That's the episode. If you're thinking about selling and you just want a straight number without somebody trying to sign you up for something, head over to southernpropertyshop.com and see what your home could sell for. We'll give it to you honest, even when honest isn't the number you were hoping for.

Thanks for listening to The Chattanooga Real Estate Report. Follow the show wherever you listen, and I'll talk to you next week.