Selling your home can be stressful; after all, we are talking about YOUR HOME, and possibly your largest investment. No one wants to make a mistake, but you would be surprised how often it happens. In this video, I’ll cover five basics, five mistakes that are easy to make, but also easy to avoid, if you know what they are and take the time to avoid them. Of course, every situation is different, and a smart seller will always consult an experienced, trusted Realtor® that knows the area, the local market, and special circumstances that will affect a given property.
(Transcript below)
Hi, I’m Debbie Wright with Charles Rutenberg Realty, and I’m here to talk to you about the top five mistakes to avoid when selling your home. All right, follow me.
All right, the first mistake most people make is they don’t price their home according to the market. It can be overpriced, it could be underpriced, both of them are mistakes. If you overprice, you’re eliminating an entire segment of buyers. If you underprice, well, you’re leaving money on the table, and you don’t want to do that. So make sure to understand how to price your home, and you can do that with a Realtor- which is the second biggest mistake people make.
Hire a professional. This is your largest investment, you want to get the most out of it. Time and time again, statistics show hiring a realtor will get you more money. They pay for themselves. They’re gonna pay for themselves because they’re going to negotiate on your behalf and they’re going to navigate through the pitfalls, but make sure that you hire a good Realtor.
Okay, so once you hire a Realtor, they typically have resources and you want to make sure to utilize those. If you’re experiencing a life-changing event- a divorce, a death, a job loss, foreclosure, you need to short sale, that Realtor is going to have great resources for you, and can help you navigate those situations. That’s a big big benefit and it helps de-stress the situation, because it’s already going to be stressful, that’s going help you out. Anytime you can de-stress a situation is good.
All right, the next issue that I see a lot are negotiation blunders. Sometimes seller get really offended at lowball offers. They’re going to come, depending on the market you’re in. If you’re in a hot market, or if you’re in a balanced market, or a buyers market it just sort of depends, but most of the time you’re going to get one or two people are going to submit a very low offer. Don’t take it personally. This is a negotiation tactic. Don’t be concerned. You can respond a couple different ways; you can either not respond at all, respond back at the list price, or counter with what you want, it just kind of depends on the market. Sometimes buyers don’t know that what they’re submitting is offensive, they’re just trying to make sure they’re getting the best deal. So don’t take it personally, just try to work through whatever the offer is.
The next is being flexible. It’s important to be flexible, especially if you’re selling your home to go buy another one. You want to be flexible with your buyer because you want flexibility is shown to you by the seller that you may be dealing with very shortly. So being flexible is very important.
The next one is to be responsive. Sometimes people put their house on the market and they go out of town, and the Realtor doesn’t realize that all of a sudden, they’re going to have five offers in their inbox the next day. So you want to be able to set a date for you to review those offers if you’re going to leave, or notify the listing agent that you are taking off and you’re going out of town. Sometimes sellers leave if it’s the weekend of their open house so that the Realtors have access to everything, people are paraded through, it just kind of makes it easier. In that event, you want to make sure to say all offers will be reviewed after the open houses, and that way everybody knows it’s understood since it’s communicated to the potential buyers out there.
All right, so another issue and we’ve talked about it before, it’s decluttering, cleaning, presenting your house in the best light, and possible repairs. So declutter all your personal items; if you have a ceramic frog collection, it’s a good time to go ahead and take them down and box them up. Get them out of sight, it can be distracting to buyers. Clean up, make sure everything’s dusted and put away, clean counters, and then of course, you want to present your furnishings in a way that accents your home, and we’ve talked about that too. You want to make sure that you’re taking advantage of every single attribute that your home has, so that you can get top dollar.
Okay, so say you have an item that needs repair; you’ve got a stain on a carpet, you’ve got a hole in the ceiling, the roof needs to be done, all that needs to be addressed by the Realtor when you price it, and the strategy to sell your home. You may include it in the pricing of your home, you may not. You may offer a credit, you may not. It just kind of depends on what the market is around you and what’s going on, and that’s where a Realtor is really gonna be key and to help you understand how to price and incentivize your home to attract buyers.
Okay, last but not least, lingering. Don’t linger during the showing. I know it’s tempting, sometimes you want to hang out, you want to hear what they have to say. Or maybe you have valuables that you want to protect, but lingering actually makes the buyers uncomfortable, and we don’t want to make them uncomfortable, we want to make them very comfortable. We want them to imagine living in that home, and seeing it and being excited about it, and opening the drawers and making sure you have soft-close doors in your kitchen, or opening that great stainless steel refrigerator. Those are things that you want to give them the opportunity to do freely. If you have items in your home that are of value that you would be concerned about, go ahead and remove them before the showings ever start. This way, you have peace of mind. And please don’t linger during the inspection. I know that’s tempting too, you kind of want to “defend” your property, but by and large, the buyers and the inspector need as much room and time to go ahead and understand the property, and what’s going on there so that they can build an effective report, so the buyer can make a good decision. If they want to move forward, if they need to address a few things, whatever. We want to give them as much space to do that as possible.
Okay, I think that’s it. I’ve covered the top five. Please leave a comment below, like me, subscribe, text, email, or Facebook Messenger me, and I’ll respond as quickly as I can. I’ll see you again. Thanks!
