Home Sellers: Don’t Make these 3 Common Mistakes

Published On: February 27, 2020|Categories: Home Sellers, Jasper IN Real Estate, Pricing your Home, Sellers, Selling Tips|Tags: Home Sellers, home selling, Home Selling Tips, Selling Mistakes, Selling Your Home, selling your house|

When it comes time to sell a home, there are a lot of things to be done. It can feel overwhelming. Chances are, you’re shopping for your next home yourself. Chances are, you are wondering how quickly and for how much money your existing home will sell, and you want to know what you can do to make it sell as quickly as possible and for top dollar. You’re trying to keep your house white-glove clean for potential buyers, and you might have more than one real estate professional in your ear on any given day.

When things are that hectic, mistakes can be made. Selling a home can be a pressure-packed experience, and pressure is often what causes missteps. With that in mind, home sellers might consider taking a step back (and a deep breath) and be sure to simply avoid these three common mistakes sellers make.

Mistake No. 1: Missing on the listing price

One of the worst, if not THE worst, problems of a home for sale occurs when it’s listed at the wrong price. If it’s listed below market value, it might sell fast but cost the owners thousands of dollars. If it’s listed too high, it will attract fewer potential buyers and languish on the market. When that happens, price drops are the only recourse, and price drops tend to cause red flags to go up for buyers, as in: “What’s wrong with this place?”

Home sellers often ascribe to the idea of setting the sales price high, then negotiating down. It seems logical, but higher asking prices reduce the number of interested buyers from the start, and only worse things happen from there. A home listed for sale should be priced right at the outset.

Mistake No. 2: Over-improving

When you are ready to put your home up for sale, the temptation is to make it as perfect as you can in the eyes of potential buyers. That means fixing its flaws and updating it so that it can compete with similar homes on the market.

The problem: No home improvement project is going to return a dollar-for-dollar value when the home sells. In other words, spending $50,000 on a large kitchen renovation isn’t going to result in a $50,000 difference in the sales price. So large-scale projects just aren’t worth it.

Any home that’s been lived in for a while is likely going to need some repairs or updates. When you’re going to sell, it’s probably best to focus on quick, inexpensive remedies such as paint, light fixtures, cleaning, and yard work. If major renovations are needed, let the new owners take care of them; you won’t ever get the money back if you take them on yourself.

Mistake No. 3: Ignoring professional advice

You could live until you’re 100 years old and only sell a home a few times in your entire life. Meanwhile, there are real estate agents who sell dozens, if not tens of dozens, of homes in a single year. They know what they’re doing, so listen to them.

You wouldn’t go to your doctor and tell them what medicine to prescribe. You wouldn’t go to your mechanic and tell them what’s wrong with your car. So why would you tell the person who’s been put in charge of selling your home how to do it? Trust the professionals. Take their advice on pricing, improvements, staging, and scheduling. They know.

Again, selling a home can be stressful. It can be even more stressful and costly if you make the same mistakes a lot of home sellers make. Avoiding those mistakes is key to a more profitable and smoother home sale.

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