3 Common Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Home Sale

Charlotte Real Estate Podcast with Dan Jones

Over the years, I’ve noticed a few common mistakes that sellers make when preparing their homes for the market. I’ll go over three of them for you today. First of all, a lot of people hire the listing agent that gives them the highest price. You may think your home is worth a certain amount, and then this listing agent tells you a huge number. You think, “Wow! That’s really good. My home is really worth that much? I’m going with that agent.” That listing agent might not sell a lot of houses or do much marketing, but he’s offering a higher price than the other agents to get your listing. Recently, one of the sellers we had a listing appointment with decided to hire an agent who offered a higher price for their home than what they expected. We looked at this agent and found that out of their 28 listings, only one was under contract. We did a little more research and discovered that this agent’s strategy seemed to be to overprice all of his listings. So, be careful of your price. If you have an idea what your home is worth and other agents confirm that, don’t just hire the stray agent who offers a higher listing price. If you are serious about hiring an agent who offers a higher price, do your research. See how many homes they have actually sold and how many homes they have under contract. “Price your home with the market.” The second mistake to avoid is overpricing or underpricing your home. The best way to sell for top dollar in the least amount of time is to price your home with the market. Then, you are able to let the market chase you instead of chasing the market. You can’t underprice your home by $20,000 and hope that multiple offers will drive the sales price up. You also don’t want to overprice your home by $20,000 or $30,000. If you do, your home will sit on the market and you will have to do a number of price reductions, which will cause buyers to wonder what’s wrong with your house. As a result, you won’t get any offers. Finally, you need to have a checklist. We have a 75-point checklist to get our clients’ homes ready for the market. We want to make sure that every aspect of the house is cozy and up to date as best as we can. We’ll help you through decluttering, staging, and taking professional photos and videos. We also offer 3-D imaging to create a virtual tour of your home. It’s important to have some kind of checklist when preparing your home for the market. More often than not, sellers aren’t sure what they need to do in order to make their home more appealing to buyers so they can get top dollar. Make sure you avoid these three mistakes. There are 1,500 people here in the Charlotte area who have failed to sell their homes over the past few months, even though Charlotte is in the best seller’s market we’ve seen in years. Make sure that you prepare your home properly for the market. If you have any other questions about selling your home, just give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to help you!