Selling your family home is not only an exciting experience but it can also be stressful, especially if it’s your first time. There can be many reasons to sell your home, regardless, you can fall into many different common mistakes, which can make your selling experience unpleasant. Here are the top 10 mistakes to avoid when selling your home.
1. Underestimating the Cost of Selling Your House
While selling your home should overall be profitable for you in the long run, many sellers forget the costs associated with selling your home. To begin, you have to budget the total cost of the real estate commission costs for both the buying and selling agents which can amount to around 5 or 6 percent in most cases. Along with the real estate commission costs, buyers can negotiate concessions into the agreement that can include you paying closing costs and more.
2. Not Budgeting for Your Move
When moving you have a couple different options. You can either do it yourself or hire a moving company. There are pros and cons to both. If you’re not willing or able to do it yourself, moving companies can cost a lot of money but there are perks to this option. Moving companies will take your stuff from your current residence and move it to the new home along with unpacking your belongings in some cases. If you’re too busy to move yourself or you just don’t want to do it, there are plenty of benefits to hiring out a moving company.
3. Ignoring major repairs and making costly renovations
Before you put your home on the market you should highly consider making any major repairs to your home before spending on renovations. Buyers will be more willing to do renovation work themselves, but when you fail an inspection or they notice large repairs that need to be done, that can be a quick deal breaker. Almost all buyers require an inspection before closing, the worst thing that you could let happen before an inspection is a failed inspection. So try and hire a professional to see where work needs to be done and then get it completed, it will pay off in the end.
4. Selling to Unqualified Buyers
Before selling to a potential buyer, it’s reasonable to expect a buyer to bring a pre-approval letter from a mortgage company or cash home buyers showing you proof of funds to verify that they have the cash necessary to buy your home. When selling, sometimes you’ll get a binding contingency offer which means that you won’t be able to close unless the buyer’s home also sells. That can put you in a pickle if you need to close by a certain date and the buyer’s home hasn’t sold yet.
5. Not Staging Your Home for A Quick Sale
Before selling your home you should highly consider staging it. Staging is meant to show the buyer what it could look like if they were living in it, this is not for you anymore. If you move out before selling, you don’t want them to be walking around an empty home, having staging furniture can really show the true potential of your home. Not only is staging your home great to show potential to home buyers, it can raise the value of your home up to 10% in most cases. If you still live in your home, consider taking your family portraits down, rearranging the furniture, decluttering, and minimizing your unique and personal style touches.
6. Forgoing Professional Real Estate Photos
As much as you love your iPhone photos, that doesn’t qualify you to be a professional real estate photographer. I know that the pictures you took last weekend could certainly be featured in the latest edition of Home & Garden, however, those photos are still not going to throw as big of a punch as having a trained professional handle your photos for you. Real estate photographers not only have top of the line equipment that far outshine regular camera phone photography, they also are able to stage your home in a certain way that sells and also take the angles that they know sell.
Now that it’s 2021, it’s almost essential to show off aerial photos of your home through drone photography. Drone views are unique, show your entire property, and can give vision to your unique views or even just show off the neighborhood. You’d be surprised how inexpensive drone photography is too! Like I said before, it’s 2021, give it a shot!
7. Not Cleaning Your House Before Trying to Sell It
Before selling your home, please make sure that it’s as clean as the day that you moved into it. Buyers hate nothing more than walking into a home that isn’t so clean that they could lick ice cream off the floor. You might think your home is clean right now, but there are picky buyers out there, go through and give it an extra scrub and find the lingering dust. If you don’t have time to clean your home, it’s worth hiring a professional cleaning company to make your home look spotless! It’s inexpensive and well worth the cost.
8. Not Addressing the Exterior of Your House
The exterior of your home can take a beating from the elements over the years. Give the exterior of your home a look over and if it needed paint 5 years ago, it’d probably be a wise idea to get that paint job you’ve been putting off done. Another exterior element that can make or break a sale is the quality of your deck/patio area or the condition of your back and front yards. Curb appeal matters, so get out there and make sure that your entire property looks great.
9. Choosing the wrong agent or the wrong way to sell
When deciding on how to sell your home, most people decide on selling with a Realtor, some like to go the For Sale By Owner option. If you decide to list with a real estate agent, you will be presented with either a flat rate or a percentage of the sale of your home. Sometimes the commission can be negotiated so don’t forget to try your hand at negotiating! Before choosing a real estate agent make sure you interview multiple agents and see if they have the proper experience in selling your area and price point. Some questions you might ask are:
Marketing plans for your home
If they require a contract to work together and how long is the contract for
What negotiating style do they have
What does communication look like? How often will you be communicating?
Do they currently have competing listings that could interfere with yours
10. Lingering During A Home Tour
Please do not be present at your home during home tours. There is nothing more uncomfortable for a potential buyer than knowing that the homeowner is present. When you don’t leave your home the buyers can feel awkward about talking about their likes and dislikes of the home and put them off buying your home at all. This also presents a problem for the buying agent because they are then unable to do their job effectively. You can go run errands, grocery shop, go to a friend’s home, and there are lots of places you can be other than your home for the tour!
