What Not To Do When When Selling Your House

For first-time home owners, selling their house can be challenging and daunting.

Apart from ensuring that your house is in tip-top selling condition and trying to find prospective buyers, you also have to deal with strangers coming into your home and poking around. With all the stress that goes into selling your house, new home sellers often make wrong decisions to appease buyers and clinch the deal. If you’re thinking of selling your home but have little or no experience, fret not! We’ve come up with a list of common mistakes that first-time home sellers often make. Continue reading to find out more! 

Here is some more great advice: Sell my house fast Louisville KY. 

1. Getting Emotional 

Most people spend years living in the same house, some even decades. Many even view their house as an extension of themselves. The furniture you choose as well as the memories that you’ve created all play a part in making a house your home. As such, selling your house is an emotional process. However, the number one pitfall many first-time home sellers fall into is letting their emotions get the better of them.  

When you choose to sell your house, the first thing you need to do is to change your mindset. Instead of viewing yourself as the owner of the house, you should regard yourself as a salesperson. Once you’ve detached yourself emotionally, you’ll be able to view selling your house from a purely financial perspective. 

On top of that, you should also put yourself in your buyers’ shoes. Buyers aren’t just looking for a piece of property — they’re looking for a place they can relax and rewind after a long day at work. They’re looking for a house that reflects their lifestyle and image. Thinking of all these points will help you in making slight changes and improvements to your home so that it’ll appear more marketable and appealing to prospective buyers. 

2. Choosing Between Hiring or Not Hiring An Agent

For many home sellers, it’s tempting to save money and sell their houses themselves. After all, property agents usually charge high commission fees which eat into a home seller’s potential profit.  But, if you have no experience selling a home, you’re better off hiring an agent to do the job.  

Good property agents take into account their client’s interests. They won’t just sell your house to any random buyer and they definitely won’t entertain any offers that are below the asking price. Property agents are there to guide you throughout the home-selling process and help you decide on a competitive yet reasonable selling price. Hiring a property agent to help sell your house is also a good choice if you’re worried about getting emotional. They’ll be the ones handling prospective buyers and filtering out those who have no interest in purchasing your property.  

In addition, property agents are experienced at selling houses. They know how to negotiate with buyers, so you may even end up getting more than the asking price. If any problems surface during the process, they’ll also be there to help resolve them so you don’t have to go through the stress of doing it yourself. 

Last but not least, property agents are familiar with all the legalities and procedures that need to be followed when selling a house. For home sellers, this ensures peace of mind and you won’t have to worry about any hiccups occurring during the process. 

So, should you get an agent or sell your house yourself? The answer’s up to you. 

3. What to Do If You Don’t Use a Real Estate Agent

Many people have successfully sold their houses on their own. So it’s not impossible to sell your house without enlisting the help of a property agent. If you decide to sell your house without using a property agent, there’re a few things you need to remember before putting your house up on the market. The first is to do some research on the houses that have been sold and are up for sale in your area. By doing so, you’ll be able to get an estimate of the price range you should sell your house at. One thing to note is that if a seller hired a property agent, the commission fee will usually be factored into the listed price so you may need to lower your asking price. 

As you don’t have an agent doing the work for you, you also need to think about how you’re going to market and advertise your house. Putting your house on a multiple listing service (MLS) is an efficient way to reach a wide audience. Furthermore, you must also be ready to put in time and effort into contacting buyers and scheduling viewings. 

Getting a property lawyer is a good choice if you choose not to hire a real estate agent. Property lawyers help clients with the legal procedures that need to be done when selling a house which can be very helpful if you’re not familiar with such processes.  

4. Setting An Unrealistic Price

The key to a successful sale is picking a good asking price. From a seller’s point of view, setting a high asking price seems like an easy way to make more money. But, this could be the reason why you won’t be able to make the sale.  In a survey, more than half of the property agents that participated said that overpricing is the most common mistake that home sellers make. When you are selling your house, don’t be worried about setting a lower price. Buyers are attracted to lower prices so you’ll usually get a lot of offers. From there, interested buyers can put in their bids and you’ll slowly be able to increase the asking price. As buyers bid up the price, you may even be able to sell your house at a price that’s higher than what you had in mind.  

Conclusion

Selling your house is a time-consuming process. You need to be prepared to wait months to make the sale, this is especially so if the economy’s bad. However, if you follow our suggestions and avoid the mistakes we’ve pointed out in this article, you’ll be one step closer to selling your house.