Susan and Jeff Walters were featured in the Reporter Jan. 26 in an article about the local housing market. Here’s their update on how they fared selling their home.

We are happy to report that we did indeed sell our house. We sure learned a lot and wanted to share that it is still possible to sell your house in this buyer’s market. Just a few helpful hints that we learned along the way:

• First of all, the agent you choose to represent you is huge. We ended up mutually agreeing to release our first agent after six weeks, since she had not generated one showing. We chose the Jeremy Mellick Group and were not disappointed. We felt having a local “group” of people working for us was a much better choice in this market than a single agent. We aren’t saying a single agent isn’t capable of selling a house, but having a group behind you is definitely an advantage.

Jeremy’s group consisted of a professional photographer (as opposed to me sending pictures from my digital camera to my agent), a staging crew (makes for a professional look) and marketing group. Jeremy actually marketed our house, and before you knew it, we had over 17 showings. Every week, we were given information as to what his group was doing to sell our house.

• Second, make sure the house is priced correctly. So many homes are overpriced and will sit for months because they aren’t competitively priced (okay if you aren’t in a hurry to sell and can wait quite a while).

• Third, keep the house neat and tidy. Again, not a prerequisite – some people are quite capable of envisioning future possibilities for a place – but it sure doesn’t hurt.

• Fourth, make sure you’re paying the buyer’s agent enough, usually at least 3 percent. They will show their buyers a house if they absolutely want to see it, but paying them enough to show yours is also an incentive.

• Fifth, be available and flexible. We had a few agents calling from our driveway asking to see the house, and we never turned them away. We were always on-call to be ready to show (even with two very young children, which was definitely not easy but well worth it). Unless they really want to see it, may not make the effort to come back when it is more convenient for you.

So to recap: We have found that to sell a house, you must be priced right, have people who will aggressively market your house, not be stingy with the buyer’s agents’ commission, keep the house clean and always be ready for a showing. And oh, yeah – don’t give up hope!