Are you looking to sell your home quickly? For a quick sale, make your home stand out.  Selling your home is 90 percent pricing and 10 percent marketing (staging, advertising, maybe even an open house).

Remember, a buyer will not pay more for a property than it is worth, due to the market we are in.

In fact, great marketing doesn’t always mean you will sell your home quickly.  It is truly based on the comparables in the area, and the price you have it listed for. 

An overpriced listing could sit for a long time, and in the end you may not sell your home for quite a while. 

Pricing solves all shortcomings and issues.  Sellers today should consider setting your price based on current sold listing data, and less on active and expired listings. 

Serious sellers price their home to sell, not to sit.  If you are sellers who are not serious about pricing correctly, you might want to consider putting your home on the market at a later date. 

Your Realtor is the best person to help answer those questions for you. They have the means to give you all the correct information you will need. Your Realtor will help you through the process. 

Did you hear? Obama has extended the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) another year.  During Obama’s state of union address he promised to unveil new legislation in the coming days to allow more homeowners to refinance their mortgages under a separate program.  

This program was supposed to expire at the end of 2012, but the Obama Administration will instead expand the program to include investors and those eligible for the program. 

This program would include secondary evaluation for borrowers who could have hefty second mortgages and some so-called income properties. 

And for the first time, the government will offer incentives for principal reductions to government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The government will also triple the financial incentives for private lenders to reduce the principal amount of mortgages for homeowners. There is a lot of information on this, but not a lot of room to write. I hope this will inspire you a little bit.

As usual it is my honor to be able to bring you information that could be helpful to you. If you would like to contact me, I am at larpres2012@yahoo.com. Diane Gallagher is the president of the Lodi Association of Realtors.