Home Sellers Will Try Anything, but It’s Hard to Get a Look

Mark and Elaine Hendricks recently offered their 2000 Mustang convertible as a freebie to anyone who would buy their Woodbridge house, but even that failed to distinguish it from the roughly 700 other homes for sale in their Zip code.

“We wanted to try something unusual, thinking maybe it might be crazy enough to bring somebody in,” Mark Hendricks said. “But with so many houses on the market, a free car doesn’t do the trick.”

Frustrated home sellers are adopting extreme tactics, with mixed results, as they try to stand out in a crowded market. They’re giving away prizes, sweetening commissions for agents, and trying to auction or raffle off their homes when all else fails.

These measures are another symptom of the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis. In many cases, sellers are struggling to compete with the record supply of foreclosed homes listed at rock-bottom prices. In Prince William County, for instance, the number of single-family houses listed for sale for less than $200,000 shot up 15,000 percent last month compared with a year earlier — from 5 to 768. There was a 66 percent increase in listings under $500,000.

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House Selling, Real Estate Market home sellers