Selling a house can be one of the most stressful things you will ever do. It’s not just about selling your house but also getting it ready to sell and finding potential buyers who are willing to pay top dollar for what you have to offer. Many mistakes can be made along this process, costing you thousands in lost profits or, worse, losing money on your investment property. Below are 6 costly mistakes sellers often make when selling a house and how to avoid them.
1) Not Hiring a Realtor
If you do not know how to market your home, hire someone with experience to help you out. An experienced real estate agent knows exactly what needs to be done when selling a property so they can get more offers than if you were doing all the work yourself. They’ll make sure everything from staging the interior to advertising online is done correctly. If you’re looking at buying a new place, consider hiring them as well. You won’t regret it.
2) Overpricing Your House
When listing your property, try your best not to overprice or list your home for more than what it is really worth. This may seem like a good idea because you may want to make a bigger profit on the sale of your house. However, overpriced properties tend to sit on the market for a very long time without any takers. The ideal way to determine what your home is worth is by getting a realtor to provide you with a market analysis report (CMA) or use a website like Zillow.com. By comparing your asking price against other properties sold nearby, you can see where you stand compared to others. Once you’ve found out where you need to improve, you can use these tips to lower your prices:
3) Neglecting Maintenance Issues
When homeowners decide to sell their house, they often neglect maintenance issues such as fixing leaky faucets and broken windows. These problems add up quickly and can cause significant damage to the home’s value. To avoid these problems, take care of minor repairs before putting your home on the market for sale. Fix anything that might affect its resale value, like cracked walls, damaged ceilings, leaky roofs, and worn-out appliances. Also, keep track of all repair costs and consider factoring those into your final asking price when possible.
4) Ignoring Online Marketing
It would be best to always advertise your home through multiple channels, including social media sites (Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, FaceBook Marketplace), real estate websites (Zillow, Trulia, ForSaleByOwner.com, Craigslist, Redfin, HomeFinder), etc. Start off by creating a free listing for your home on Facebook Marketplace and upload pictures. Don’t forget to create a short but descriptive description about your property and what makes it awesome or better than the other houses for sale in your neighborhood. If you have the budget you can even go as far as running paid Facebook ads to a more target audience in addition to Facebook Marketplace free listing. Did you know that Facebook ads alone can increase sales? According to Business Insider, “Facebook Ads generate $10 billion annually.” So make sure that you are taking advantage of these powerful platforms.
5) Being Unresponsive
Being unresponsive during the entire selling process isn’t going to win anyone over. Even though you may think no one wants to look at your home right now, prospective buyers still check their email regularly. And once they start receiving messages back from interested parties, they’ll assume something must be wrong with your home. In addition, being unavailable means you miss out on opportunities to negotiate better deals with potential buyers. So, try your very best not to let this happen to you. Schedule showings and open houses weekly or as often as possible and also quickly respond to potential buyers the same day or within 24 hours.
6) Not Taking Enough Pictures
If you are trying to sell a house, it only makes sense to include a lot of pictures of each room. You don’t necessarily need professional shots; make sure you get enough pictures so that everyone knows what they are looking at when viewing online listings. If you decide to hire the services of a photographer, ask them to shoot several angles of each room. Then, upload the images onto your website and post them on real estate portals.
Conclusion
These are just some of the costly mistakes homeowners often make when trying to sell their house. In this article, we covered a handful of things you should be avoiding to ensure that your home sells faster and for a good price in your current housing market. So, please take note of these commonly overlooked mistakes and try not to repeat them when you get ready to sell your property. Sellers that may be in a time crunch to sell their home and avoid these costly mistakes can benefit by selling to a sell my house fast cash home buyer. Their focus and expertise are helping homeowners looking to sell a property quickly that needs work.
