Top 3 Home Seller Mistakes
What is the biggest challenge for home sellers?
When I asked ChatGPT "what are the top 3 mistakes home sellers make?" - answers were good, but missed the #1 tip for sellers which no one (including AI) tells you!
#1 Tip - Emotionally Detach From Your House
This is THE most powerful step towards success when selling your home. AND it's the hardest for most of us. There's so much heart and soul in our homes - history, memories, our private refuge.
Switching to a mindset of a seller is going to be uncomfortable. You've probably heard to "depersonalize" your home, taking down family photos, etc. Many sellers I meet were offended by that advise.
Often very expensive and thoughtful interior decorating choices were made and are well worth being proud of.
Add years of memorabilia and photos that warm the heart. Those are the very things that make it feel like YOUR home.
Buyers feel that too. When they tour your home, they can feel like they are intruding, and they also get distracted with the details of your life (books, awards, family photos, etc). It blocks their ability to see the home as theirs.
This happens first online, and then on a deeper level at the first showing.
We literally have 5 seconds to make an emotional connection with your potential buyers, helping them to fall in love with your home.
At my seller consultations, I walk through the home with my clients starting at the front door coaching them on what a buyer sees. This becomes the foundation for our staging plans. And that's where it can get emotional.
It's not that there's anything wrong with your personal choices, staging is literally theatre. We want your home to tell a story your ideal "audience" relates to and sets stage for them to visualize it as their home. To do that, we need to neutralize the environment - making it more like a "model home" in new construction developments. Attractive, clean and not personalized.
Top 3 Seller Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
- Overpricing - sometimes the blame here can lie with bad advice from an inexperienced realtor. Guiding a home seller through market data takes knowledge, experience and the astute ability to offer advice, even if its not what you want to hear. When we meet I'll explain in more detail how this actually costs you money.
- Poor Marketing - The first step is preparing the home to sell, then how it's presented. Marketing matters! It will directly affect the outcome on your net proceeds. Good marketing highlighting the positive aspects of your home creates a dynamic where you'll receive higher, competitive offers. AND the buyers are going to feel more comfortable and confident about the home's condition - reducing nervousness during negotiations.
- Negotiations - An experienced agent will help guide you through negotiations, due diligence to present all the facts associated with not only the price but the terms and help keep emotions in check. Home owners who haven't taken that first step of emotionally detaching often get personally offended by price and/or terms of an offer. Those emotions can block negotiation and can cause a loss of opportunity with a qualified buyer ready to purchase. You need an agent skilled at negotiations.
For more information on how to sell successfully in today's market - let's talk!
