Top 10 Mistakes When [Listing] Your Home For Sale

Often people tell me they are thinking of selling their home or want to start preparing to sell their home in the near future.

They asked me what they should and should not do in preparation.

Here are the top 10 mistakes that people often make when preparing to list their house for sale.

1. Selling your home before you are ready.

Selling your home isn’t just a quick call to your Realtor, pick a date, put a sign on your lawn, and sit back and wait for offers.

There is a proper and detailed process to follow if you want the entire experience to flow smoothly, not backfire, and if you want to illuminate stress and costly mistakes.

As the saying goes … if you fail to plan then you should plan to fail.

2. Entering the market with false or unrealistic expectations and knowledge.  

I have posted several videos recently on how media headlines and articles can be misleading for the public.

I have also posted a video on the difference between a property assessment versus a property appraisal versus a comparable market analysis.

I highly recommend you watch those videos because there is really important information and details in those videos about this topic.

3. trying to sell your home privately without doing the proper research or altering your expectations as to how easy it might be just so that it seems more logical and convenient for you.

While you are focused on saving money you have to really explore if you will actually be saving money or not.

For example, what if doing it yourself saves you a 5% commission fee but a Realtor who is a highly skilled and trained negotiator would have gotten you 10 or 15% more for your sale then you were ultimately able to negotiate with a buyer on your own?

And of course … what if you make a very small error on the paperwork or disclosures that ends up costing you thousands of dollars?

When trying to save commission many people don’t realize the mistakes and loss of a higher sale price but can’t in fact cost them much more than the savings itself.

4. Not hiring the right Realtor for you, who is not only qualified but what many people forget to consider is looking for a Realtor who is the right FIT for you.

Remember, when you hire ANY professional, WHO they are and their personality, ethics, empathy, integrity, and things they can’t learn in a textbook or a marketing course, are just as important as WHAT they know

Five years ago I wrote a Canadian best seller called “Choose Your Realtor Carefully.”

That book was not about self-promotion or why you should hire me. I wrote it so that people who read it in any location, in any market place, would avoid the biggest hiring mistakes people make when hiring a Realtor.

In that book I provided a bonus section with 18 important questions you should ask any Realtor when you interview them.

Questions that most people would never think to ask.

Then I also provided a section on what would be some good answers and also what would be some answers that should cause red flags for you.

It’s not just about who has the most signs in your area, or hiring a friend or relative by default because they have their Real Estate license.

It’s not just about who has a fancy listing presentation.

It’s about you finding out their qualifications and skills, and also their personal styles and services which they offer, that may or may not be the perfect FIT for you versus someone else.

If you would like a free copy of my book just sent me an email or call me to say you saw this post and I will be happy to send it to you.

5. Hiring a friend or relative by default.

I’m not trying to say that your friends or relatives are not qualified.

But you also should not use them by default alone or out of guilt if they are not the right fit for you or most qualified to sell your type a house in your area.

It’s one thing to have someone over for dinner and then they go home.

But hiring someone to sell your home is a huge life-changing event that can either be a very positive experience or a very negative experience when it comes to your emotions.

It’s also very likely your single largest asset and worth a lifetime of your hard earned money.

For example, a driver who is 16 years old and inexperienced at driving might not be the best choice to hire as your chauffeur for your very fancy and expensive car.

Where do you feel compelled to choose someone out of obligation or guilt, or you have a long-standing rule that you will never work with family or friends, my advice to you is to seek out and hire whoever is most qualified and the best fit for you.

In other words, I always tell people that emotion is the killer when it comes to selling your home.

Emotion is a killer when it comes to negotiating and making important decisions.

You have to remove all emotion. The best way to do that is to treat it like a business decision and a business transaction.

You can certainly interview your relative or friend if you want to.
But also interview other candidates according to the interview questions such as those that I offer in my book.
Then after you’ve interviewed more than one candidate you should hire the best fit and most ideal candidate.

And by the way, if you prefer to not work with a relative or friend and don’t want to hurt their feelings but don’t know how to tell them, in my book I offer some great ideas on how you can tell that relative or friend that you have hired someone else without you hurting their feelings.

Just get in touch with me if you would like me to share those ideas with you.

6. Overspending on re-modeling before selling so that you try to add value.

Somethings might absolutely have to be updated or repaired.

Other things might not get you back the return on your investment that it cost you to do.

That’s where having an experienced Realtor who is familiar with each upgrade and it’s perceived value to potential buyers in your area is worth it’s weight in gold.

7. Pricing your home based on unrealistic expectations, how much money you actually need to make, or want to make, vs. what the market deems realistic or the market will bear.

See my post called “are the risks of under-pricing your home when you list“ where I outline three different pricing strategies along with the pros and cons to each of the three strategies so that you know what is right for you.

8. Letting your emotions rule your decisions and negotiating.

Like I said earlier, emotions are the root of what drives anyone to do anything.

Selling your house or condo is an emotional experience.
But it is also a huge financial transaction and like I said earlier, it is therefore a business transaction.

Emotions often lead to impulsive or unrealistic decisions and choices.

That’s why having a third-party who has the expertise that you need.
And even better if they are specifically trained in negotiating will most definitely keep the most money in your pocket.

By the way, another misconception that many people have is they automatically assume that every Realtor or every lawyer is trained in negotiating because you would think that it’s part of their business.

Well every Realtor and every lawyer should be trained in negotiating because it is a huge part of their business.

But unfortunately many are not specifically trained in negotiating and they simply push offers back-and-forth like it’s a tennis match or a ping-pong game.

There are strategies to negotiating that are proven successful by those of us who have invested time and money into our training and our certification and negotiations so that we can keep more money in your pocket.

9. Trying to sell your home before it is physically ready.

Quite honestly there are so many items I could talk about just on this point alone. I’m going to highly suggest that after this post you watch my video called “top 10 quit staging fix as you can do yourself to prepare your home for sale for top dollar.”

In that post and video I explicitly outline many areas of reference and what you can do to get them ready before you list your home for sale.

10. Staying home and being present in your home during showings to potential buyers.

Sometimes sellers want to stay home for two common reasons.
Either they don’t trust having strangers or other people in their home, or they think that because they know the house better than anyone else they can do the best job at selling it to potential buyers.  

When potential buyers come into the home they feel pressured and uncomfortable if the seller is home.

They don’t know you so it feels very awkward for them. So what ultimately happens is the buyers will do a quick run through of the home and then dark for the exit so that they can talk to their agent outside the home near their cars.

This is bad because you want the buyers to spend more time in your home so they can actually picture of themselves living there.

Picturing themselves and their kids or pets or significant partners living there during the holiday season and celebrating or special occasions is what they feel like home to be.

Since buying a home is driven more by emotion than analytic reasoning you want potential buyers to feel like it’s their home already.

So the best thing you can do is put away all of your valuables so that you have nothing to fear about people possibly taking anything.

And please remember that nobody can come into your home unless they are accompanied by a licensed Realtor. So putting away anything small and valuable that can fit into someone’s pocket is always a good idea.

However, worrying about vandalism or people taking anything big shouldn’t be a concern because their Realtor would see them and stop them. Realtors are insured and responsible for their clients while in your home.

And finally, while you think you can sell the home better than anyone else then that suggests that you’ve hired the wrong Realtor.

First of all if you’ve hired the right Realtor then they not only have more experience selling homes than you do, but they are also not emotionally driven.

Just like buyers make an emotional decision to buy, sellers can also be clouded by emotion.

If you come across as being too pushy or too desperate or somehow make buyers feel uncomfortable, then even if that was not your intention, if that is how your good intentions might have been perceived then buyers will run for the hills.

I hope these top 10 have helped you understand more about getting ready and preparing to list and sell your home.