You can sell your home in a bad market

The home next door is in foreclosure. The neighbors down the street just put their house up for sale at a ridiculous discount. And "For Sale" signs litter lawns all over town.

Welcome to the toughest selling conditions in years.

Closing a sale can be teeth-grindingly slow if you don't do everything right — and maybe even if you do.

"It's probably the worst time you could find to sell a house since the late'70s or early'80s," says Loren Keim, professor of real estate at Lehigh University.

Indeed, the best tips for selling underscore how the market has changed:

Price aggressively. Even if you're fully aware that prices have plummeted, it can come as a shock when a real estate agent advises you to slap a low-low price on your home.

The reality is that only 4 percent to 10 percent of homes on the market nationwide sell in a given month right now, according to Keim. A typical selling time for a home the past two years has been eight to ten weeks. But that timeframe makes selling sound easier than it is, because it doesn't factor in all the homes that never sold, or were pulled off the market and later relisted. With that in mind, Keim says you need to ask for at least 1 percent less than competing homes.

Stage like a pro. You may not be able to compete with the price of homes in foreclosure, but you can outshine them when it comes to the condition and appearance of your house.

"Staging is no longer optional," Severance says. "It's like a boot camp that the seller and listing agent go through together."

Go all-out online. Sellers used to post photos of their homes online only sparingly to entice buyers to visit. No longer. With about 90 percent of buyers starting their search online, according to the National Association of Realtors, you can't just tease and hope.

So, make sure your listing agent markets your home in as many places as possible — from AOL Real Estate to Zillow — with a special emphasis on sites that work well for mobile access.

Be flexible with buyers. The single biggest change in the real estate market since the Great Recession is tighter financing, according to John Vogel Jr., real estate professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business.

If you're about to accept an offer, make sure you inquire about the down payment and are informed about the buyer's financing status. Consider accepting an all-cash offer, even if it's not your highest. If your buyer is hitting a roadblock, consider talking with the lender to help structure a deal.