10 Mistakes Home Sellers Make

1) Pricing your home improperly

The most common mistake home sellers make is improperly pricing their home: overpricing and underpricing. The damage of underpricing is taking an unnecessary loss on your home. With overpricing, it becomes more complex. An overpriced home will be neglected by buyers and their agents. A seller who lists their house over the local market value will have to drop the asking price eventually. By then, the interest on the property will have fizzled out and the freshness and appeal are lost. You may also have to settle for a listing price that is significantly less. Another major downside is that by overpricing your home, comparable homes that have appropriate listing prices will look like a bargain. You just gave competing home sellers a free boost.

How can you avoid this mistake? Do your research on your local real estate market. Use a tool such as a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) to analyze how much comparable homes in your area are currently selling for and have sold for in the past. Take it a step further by reviewing a CMA with the expertise of a local real estate agent that specializes in your market and home type.

2) Rejecting the 1st offer. Rejecting ANY offer.

You might assume that if you received a decent offer on your home immediately after you put it on the market, then it means buyers with higher offers are on their way. So, you reject the offer. However, this kind of assumption will work against you because you may not receive a more competitive offer than the first one. Granted, there is always the chance that someone will sweep in and offer your asking price or higher, but you won’t know until an offer is submitted to you.

How can you avoid this mistake? It’s good practice to respond to every offer–even the ones that are way below your desired listing price. If you haven’t received an offer yet and someone low balls you it’s worth it to see if you can negotiate the price up before rejecting it. Entering negotiations will also pressure other buyers to bid before it’s too late. If you reject the first bid to wait for a better offer you might end up settling for a significantly lower offer.

3) Getting offended by something a potential buyer says or does

If you’re getting offended by a low ball offer or criticism a buyer may have of your house, you are letting your emotional connection to the house get in the way of selling it. Keep in mind that the buyer isn’t attacking you personally. Instead, the buyer is feeling out the market and trying to get the best deal possible.

How can you avoid this mistake? Yes, this is your home, but if you are trying to sell it you have to stop thinking of it as home. From now on it is property. Once you’re thinking like a seller instead of a homeowner, potential buyer criticism or low ball offers are just part of the process. Any opinion, whether it’s positive or negative, is a good sign because it means they are looking proactively at your home and use their constructive criticism to improve showing your property. If it’s the criticism that is rattling you, remember you are dealing with a person. Naturally, people have opinions about everything, so what makes your house different? To you, a lot. To the buyer? Nothing.

4) Hovering around your home during showings

As people walk through your property and try to figure out if they want to make a bid, the last thing they want to do is guard their tongue in front of the current owner. No one wants to feel crowded, least of all home buyers scoping out a possible purchase. Trust that your agent has done their work properly and that the buyer’s agent is well prepared to advertise your home. Hovering can alienate a buyer that could have been submitted a bid for your home. You don’t want potential buyers continuously thinking about you while they inspect their future home, and you don’t them and their agents to feel like they can’t communicate with each other honestly.

How can you avoid this mistake? Let the potential buyers feel like they already live there while they walk through. They will be able to be taken by the house (or not taken with it) in comfort. Give the buyers’ agents interested in your house the freedom and privacy to advertise your property.

5) Personalizing your home

Have you ever tried to remember the lyrics to a song while a different song was playing? It’s practically impossible. Everything gets jumbled. Think of viewing a home in the same way. If all of your personal touches, knick-knacks, and photos are in the way the buyer won’t be able to imagine their life in each room and on each wall. This goes for every part of the house, even the bedrooms.

How can you avoid this mistake? Give buyers and their agents visual silence to work with. Temporarily put away the bits of your personal life in your home so that potential buyers can picture their life in their future home instead.

6) Believing your home has inherent value and ignoring the importance of appearance

Pictures of every house of your room will be posted online and people are going to be driving by and walking in. If your house is cluttered, your bushes overgrown, and your driveway coated in oil stains, you’re reducing the chances of selling your home. Flaws that may seem superficial to you, can be viewed differently by potential buyers and their agents. If your carpet is stained and your faucet is leaky, buyers will start questioning the rest of your house. They will be driven away for fear of getting a lemon or if they still want to buy the house they are going to submit a bid that is lower than your asking price.

How can you avoid this mistake? Take care of the trimmings. Properly staging your home will dramatically improve your selling price. Give your home a heavy duty cleaning and primping. Take flowers you trimmed from outside and put them in a vase on your kitchen table. Get rid of excess furniture and keep your pets out of the house while you are opening it for walk-throughs. Make it smell nice, make it look pretty!

7) Ignoring proper lighting

Homeowners will often make the mistake of not taking into consideration the appropriate lighting in their home. The colors, the feeling, and the ambiance of the home can drastically change with different lighting types. Low lighting can hide important highlights of your home and this is the opposite of what you want when a potential buyer steps into your house.

How can you avoid this mistake? You want a buyer to walk into an environment that allows them to see every angle of the house. There are three main types of lighting to consider: general lighting, task lighting, and drama or accent lighting. Use a combination of the three to create a conducive viewing environment. Consider using stronger lighting and placing light sources at strategic locations of the house. Voila! Your home is now fresh and bright.

8) Limiting your marketing opportunities

Don’t make the mistake thinking that your house will sell itself. Sticking a for sale sign on the lawn and having your agent put it into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) will leave you waiting for calls that may never come. Limiting your listings from being marketed on various sources means you will be missing out on a large population of buyers. Some sellers understand the importance of online listing photos, but post pictures of a cluttered living room, a messy kitchen, or sloppy landscaping. This will do more to repel buyers than to encourage them to make an offer.

How can you avoid this mistake? The majority of buyers are looking for their homes online and that is where you need to be. But it’s not enough to just have a your listing submitted to an online real estate search portal. You will be competing with hundreds of listings, so it is important do all of your repairs, cleaning, trimming, and decluttering before taking pictures of your home. Which house would a buyer prefer to visit? The one with a for sale sign on the lawn with pictures of unkempt rooms or the house with pristine, beautiful photographs in a variety of online and print locations?

9) Skimping on necessary improvements

Sometimes, sellers forget that the problems they no longer notice are going to be glaring defects for potential buyers. A leaky faucet, stains on the carpet, and a loose doorknob get the buyer thinking about more serious problems like foundation or termites. If you are trying to sell your home quickly, rushing to put it on the market before it’s ready will have the opposite effect.

How can you avoid this mistake? Have someone come in and help you look through it. Your local real estate agent is a great resource here. They have never lived in your house so they can provide an objective perspective. Make a list of everything that needs to be fixed and touched up. Only after you make all the necessary adjustments should you have your agent list your home.

10) Being inaccessible and making your home difficult to view

Home sellers have to maintain the appearance of being accessible. You can miss out on opportunities with potential buyers and their agents if they have to call you multiple times or if they can’t view your home at times that work for them. Keep in mind that home buyers have various work schedules and if your house is not accessible at times when they are available, they may skip out from viewing your house and visit other houses that are more readily accessible.

How can you avoid this mistake? If no one is home during the day, consider leaving a lock box with the house key in it attached to the front door. Only agents will be able to gain the access code or key for the lock box so you are not compromising your security. Be willing to show your home in the evening and on the weekends to accommodate buyers. If you really want your house to sell, you, or at least your home, will have to be available as much as possible.

As always, if you are in the market and would like help either getting pre-approved for a mortgage or would like help finding a home, please give me a call at 630 981-1629 or email me at 3cornersre@gmail.com

Russ Wiora

Charles Rutenberg Realty