Making mistakes when you sell your home can cost you a lot of time, effort, and maybe worst of all; a lot of money. When it’s time to sell your home, make sure your strategy avoids the following five pitfalls if you want to ensure you get the best deal. Don’t have a home seller strategy yet? Don’t worry, we can help with that.
1. YOUR HOME IS PRICED INCORRECTLY
One of the biggest mistakes made when selling a home is pricing it incorrectly. Price it too high and your listing will languish on the market no matter how many buyers there are. Price it too low and you’ll be leaving money on the table.
Solution: Before your property hits the market, work with your Realtor on the Goldilocks approach; getting the price just right. Talk to your agent about buyer demand, market conditions, similar recent sales, and current competition. Carefully review the Comparative Market Analysis they’ve prepared and come up with a plan everyone feels good about.
2. YOU AREN’T EMOTIONALLY READY TO SELL YOUR HOME
We all know the old saying “home is where the heart is”, and for most of us, this is very true. You’ve got an emotional attachment to your home and the things in it, this is where memories happen, this is where life is lived. Trust us, we’re right there with you on this.
But, this emotional attachment can cause problems if your buyers aren’t able to envision a place where they can make future memories. If all they see are your irreplaceable mementos, they have no room to picture themselves.
Solution: Before your home hits the market, take one last look around, drink in the fond memories that fill your space, then go into business mode. Start depersonalizing the property so that anyone who sees it can easily picture themselves living there. The home shouldn’t look uninviting, but it shouldn’t be decorated so that a buyer can’t imagine their own photographs on the wall.
3. YOUR HOME ISN’T MARKETED PROPERLY
You’ve listed your home for sale, but the message isn’t getting out to the community, specifically to the right buyers at the right time about what a great opportunity your property is. Putting an ad in the newspaper doesn’t cut it anymore when it comes to aggressively marketing your home.
Solution: Work your real estate professional to create a strategic, creative, and well-thought-out marketing plan to reach the right buyers. Brick & Corbett takes pride in our unique marketing process, from high-quality photos and video to leveraging the right channels (like email and Instagram) to deliver the messages that are going to entice buyers to take the next step on your property and get your home sold quickly.
4. YOU AREN’T PREPARED FOR SHOWINGS
We get it; showings can be inconvenient. It can be a real production to keep the house spotless, pack up the kids, the dog, and the goldfish and go drive around the neighborhood. But, real estate experts like the Brick & Corbett team will all tell you; showings go a heck of a lot better when nobody is home and buyers can feel free to explore the property and ask their agent the questions necessary to having a great showing.
Solution: Come up with a game plan for showings with your Realtor. If you’ve got a lot of troops to muster out of the house, require a 24-hour notice for all showings. You’ve got to be committed to making showings work the entire time your home is listed for sale, so to make that easier, work closely with your agent to make sure the plan in place serves your household.
5. YOU AREN’T NEGOTIATING WITH A “WIN” IN MIND
So often, sellers go into a real estate negotiation with the idea that they are going to get a minimum dollar value for their home. This makes sense; you bought the home for a certain amount, you put a certain amount of money into repairs, maintenance, and renovation, add those things together and you should get your price, right?
Unfortunately, wrong. The majority of home repair and renovation projects don’t yield a 100% return on their investment. Even though you spend $20,000 on a new kitchen, you are likely to only see about 75% (or less) of that investment in a return at sale.
Solution: Remember why you’re negotiating and what a win looks like to you. For example, if you get an offer for $300,000, but you think your home is worth $305,000, don’t walk away from a negotiation because of that discrepancy. When you walk away from the negotiating table, you aren’t leaving $5,000, you are giving up $300,000. Is the chance to get an extra five grand worth the risk of losing 300?
Bringing It All Together with Brick & Corbett
Common seller mistakes can cost you, and that’s why we have your back. Get in touch with the Brick & Corbett team today to see how we can help you through the home selling process.