7 Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Home
Ever wonder why some houses sell quickly and others sit on the market for months? It’s likely because of one of these common mistakes.
Amanda Thomas
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7 Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Home
Have you ever had a friend whose house sat on the market for months, or even years, without a single offer? This is a nightmare situation for homeowners. Not only is having a house on the market for sale stressful, but it also is a major inconvenience to have your home ready to show at a moment’s notice.
Sometimes the market is to blame for a house not selling quickly, but other times, it is because of a mistake that the homeowners have made during the process. Today I’m going to walk you through some of the most common mistakes that people make when they put their homes up for sale. If you can avoid these pitfalls, you can increase your chances of your home selling quicker than other houses in your neighborhood.
Mistake #1 – Picking the Wrong Real Estate Agent
The first mistake that people make when selling their home is to pick the wrong real estate agent. Deciding on the right person to help you sell your home is not something you should take lightly. This is not the time to bring in your cousin, or the guy you went to high school with, or the friend who is down on his luck—unless these people are also great real estate agents. Ideally you want to find someone who is familiar with your neighborhood because they can help ensure you have your home priced correctly. You also should be looking for someone who sells homes on a regular basis, not just a couple homes a year, so you can be assured they know what is actually going on in the market right now. Also, the agent you choose should also not be a “yes-man” who only tells you what you want to hear. You need someone who will give you honest feedback on your house and its value.
Unless you are selling your home in a market that is so hot a four-year-old could sell a house, picking the right agent is one of the most important things you can do. Make sure you spend time talking with a few agents to make sure you get the one that you can confidently give the task of listing and selling your home.
Mistake #2 – Not Staging for Pictures
When your house is being listed, the pictures are what get people to start connecting with your home. Good pictures can bring more potential buyers through your door, and more buyers viewing your home increase your chances of getting a good offer on your home. Bad pictures make people want to simply move on to the next listing because it simply looks better than bad pictures.
Common staging mistakes that make listing pictures unappealing include:
· Not packing up clutter
· Not making beds and straightening rooms
· Leaving trash lying around the home
· Having too much furniture in rooms
· Having non-neutral paint colors on the walls
When potential buyers see things like these in pictures, they think that the house wasn’t well cared for, or that it is going to be a lot of work after the purchase. Help potential buyers start to see themselves in your house by getting tips from your real estate agent, or hiring a home stager or decorator to help you make the home look its very best.
Mistake #3 – Not Cleaning Before Showings
Imagine walking in to what you hope will be the home of your dreams, only to find that the bathtub is covered in a black sludgy residue, the baseboards are coated in a layer of fuzz, and the kitchen have a visible layer of grease. It would take some super imagination skills to be able to see past that mess and to never think about it again if you chose to live in that house.
You know that old saying, “You only have one chance to make a first impression”? It is especially true when it comes to selling a home. Potential buyers can’t unsee your dirt and grime once you’ve presented it to them. Yes, you may be able to find an investor who is going to gut the house and therefore doesn’t care about the nastiness, but if you think there’s even a chance that someone will find your home to be their dream home, you need to make sure it won’t scare them away when they walk in the door. Even if you’ve never hired a professional house cleaner, this is the time to invest the money to get your house in tip top condition.
Mistake #4 – Keeping It Too Personal
Just like potential buyers don’t want to walk in and see your dirt and grime, they don’t want to walk in and see all your personal touches. What they want is to walk in and start picturing themselves in your home. The challenge is that if they see all YOUR pictures, YOUR kid’s trophies, and YOUR collection of creepy porcelain clowns, they have a tough time imagining THEIR stuff in the home.
Give buyers a clean slate to start imagining themselves in the home by clearing out as many personal touches as you are able. Start boxing up your personal items and store them away until the home sells. If you aren’t sure what to remove from the house, use the general rule that if it shows a face or a name, it should be removed for safety reasons (these are strangers walking through your home, after all), and anything that creates clutter or controversy (including should be removed to prevent distractions for buyers. Yes, it’s going to feel like you’re living in someone else’s home for a period while the house is on the market, but in reality you ARE living in someone else’s home. They just haven’t bought it yet.
Mistake #5 – Ignoring Storage Areas
Before you go shoving all your personal items into a closet, remember that potential buyers also want to see how much storage their new home will have. They are likely to open up closet doors and look in garages and storage rooms to start assessing if your home has enough room for all their stuff. If you’ve just tossed items and boxes in to the spaces, the storage may look smaller than it really is. And limited storage can scare off buyers.
Help highlight every nook and cranny of storage that your home offers by tidying up the storage spaces and removing anything that doesn’t absolutely need to be kept in the home. This is a great time to donate items you don’t use, or to rent a storage space for a few months to simply get stuff out of your home. No matter how you decide to clean out the storage spaces, do it before your first showing to make sure all your potential buyers can see just how much functional storage space your home really has.
Mistake #6 – Forgetting About Outdoor Spaces
Once you’ve won over your potential buyers with the interior of your home, make sure you don’t scare them away with the exterior! Broken roof tiles and missing shingles are a red flag for roof leaks. An unmaintained lawn and flaking exterior paint are indicators that the home may not have been maintained well and in need of more repairs. And a bunch of overgrown bushes or piles of leaves in the yard show buyers just how much work it will be to maintain the yard.
To make sure buyers are seeing the very best your home has to offer, make sure to clean up the landscaping, pressure wash or at least sweep off the patios and sides of the house, and make sure your windows are clean so the views can be enjoyed. A weekend’s worth of work and a great looking exterior can go a long way in pushing buyers into purchasing your home over the one down the street.
Mistake #7 – Being Too Attached
The last mistake I’ll mention today is also quite a doozy. It’s when sellers are too attached to their home to compromise to get it sold. This plays out in a variety of ways. They could intentionally ignore the previous 6 tips because they “know better,” even though their real estate agent has told them they need to clean and stage their home. They could also not be willing to bend on the price they think their home is worth and refuse to lower the price or take a lower offer.
If you truly are ready to sell your home, do whatever you need to emotionally separate yourself from the property so you can make objective decisions. If you don’t think that you can do that, consider waiting a while to list your house on the market.
Putting a home up for sale is stressful, even more so if you aren’t willing to bend on your living style, price, or other issues that come up. Save yourself, and your real estate agent, the hassle and get yourself mentally prepared to let go of the home before you even put it on the market.
Have you ever sold a home? What tips do you have or mistakes did you make? Let me know in the comments below or on the Domestic CEO Facebook page.
Until next time, I’m the Domestic CEO, helping you love your home.