Londonderry News

Selling a home is an experience many people look forward to with about as much enthusiasm as a root canal or an I.R.S. audit. Perhaps it’s because they know that with such an important investment, one misstep or wrong turn could be more than a “learning experience.” Making a mistake in selling a home can be a costly blunder that not only jeopardizes the sale, but can mean hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost profit.

What many people don’t know is there’s an easy way to avoid making the mistakes most commonly involved in selling a home. In fact, many homeowners make some of the same errors when selling their home, no matter how many homes they’ve sold in the past. In some cases, the mistakes just make the selling process more tedious. In others, they are fatal to the sale. By understanding these mistakes, home sellers can arm themselves with information and gain a better chance of achieving a profitable sale.

These are ten of the most common errors committed by home sellers:

1. Limiting the home’s accessibility. Buyers want to view a home when they want to view it. It’s important that you are flexible and your home is prepared to show on a few hours notice. You never know, that showing you turned down could have been the one that sold your house.

2. Panic selling. In some instances, selling quickly is unavoidable. That’s when it pays to know the right techniques to get your home to sell fast without looking desperate and making yourself a prime target for low-ball bidders. Sometimes, however, panic selling is a result of poor planning up front. By knowing all the ins and out of selling before you put your home on the market and working hand-in-hand with the right real estate professional, you can make sure you don’t wind up backed against the wall and settling for the first offer that comes along.

3. “My home’s the nicest on the block” syndrome. Your home is your pride and joy, but blindness to your home’s flaws and cosmetic problems can make you overvalue your home, hurting its chances on the market.

4. Letting emotions rule. In the heat of making a deal, many sellers get caught up in pulling the last $500 out of the buyer, instead of backing up, taking a deep breath, and looking at the big picture.  I’ve seen both buyers and sellers blow a deal up over less than a thousand dollars and regret it after the dust has settled.

5. Failure to disclose property flaws. Sellers today are required to complete a property disclosure detailing the condition of the home.  You can hire the same type of home inspector a buyer will use to conduct a pre-inspection prior to putting your home on the market.  This way you can either disclose the issues in advance or better yet, fix the problems at your cost and avoid renegotiating or worse having your sale fall apart.

6.  Unwillingness to make cosmetic improvements. Today’s buyers are looking for move-in condition.  The wallpaper you don’t want to remove or the bedroom your daughter painted hot pink won’t show well in photos and buyers won’t even schedule a showing.  If you don’t want to spend weekends taking down wallpaper neither do buyers especially when there are plenty of other homes out there. Hopefully, your REALTOR utilizes the expertise of a Staging Professional who can provide you with a customized list of things you can do to make your home more salable and explain the most important things a buyer is looking for.

7. Telling your agent how to do his or her job. Would you tell your physician that you had run your own tests and decided your diagnosis was better? Unfortunately, many sellers try to tell their agent why a home isn’t selling instead of listening to the advice of a professional. If you’ve chosen the right REALTOR, you’ve got a valuable team member on your side who can not only protect your best interests, but help you make your sale as profitable as possible.

8. Doing it yourself–at any cost. In real estate as in life, everything has a price. The majority of homeowners who sell their homes themselves do so because they believe they can save money by not having to pay a real estate commission. However, many times those homeowners find that the true cost of selling it themselves is found in the enormous amount of time and effort they must spend to do it, or worse, they face the legal ramifications of not doing it correctly. Selling a home really is a full-time job. Make sure you’re aware of all the pros and cons before you decide to try and do it yourself and remember this is even a challenging market for real estate agents with a full set of tools at their disposal.

9. Selecting the wrong Realtor. People often pick a friend or family member as their agent. What they should be doing is choosing the most successful, experienced agent in the area with the strongest track record of customer satisfaction and sales. Highly successful agents have many contacts with buyers and know the market well.

10. Over pricing your home. I saved this one for last because at the end of the day, in this type of market, it’s always about the price! Your best opportunity to sell your home, for the highest price, is in the first 2-3 weeks of listing. This is when the most serious, but most educated buyers will see your home.  If priced slightly under market value they’ll feel the sense of urgency and make an offer.  If priced too high, you’ll get what I call “nice house syndrome” where every buyer that comes through thinks your home is “nice”, but never makes an offer. Six months later buyers will wonder what’s wrong with this house and why is it still on the market. Most likely, you’ll need an aggressive price reduction and your final sales price will be much lower than if it was priced correctly in the beginning.

These mistakes kill thousands of sales each year or cost sellers a good portion of their proceeds.  Choosing a experienced REALTOR to guide you through the process is critical in today’s challenging market.

David Nease has always made family priority #1, both in his life as well as his business. That’s why more and more families trust his expertise as one of Londonderry’s leading real estate professionals. David lives in Londonderry with his wife Jodie and three young children. He’s a full time Realtor with Prudential Verani Realty specializing in the Londonderry market. For more information on David or his Real Estate services visit www.davidnease.com