The Top Costly Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Home

You might hear plenty about the things you must do to sell your home, from the advice you should take prior to selling through to the instructions about which rooms to spruce for maximum impact. However, what you might hear less about is the flip side of the coin – the mistakes that can cost you dearly if you don’t take notice of them during the process of putting your house on the market and selling it.

What are the Common Home Selling Mistakes to Avoid?

Every property has its own quirks and issues, but these are some common problems that we’ve encountered when a homeowner is struggling to sell:

1. Setting unrealistic asking prices. While you might hope that setting the bar high will encourage higher bids, there are some pitfalls to this. Buyers often search within price brackets which could put your property as apparently out of their reach, plus you need to be realistic about the property market in your area and what other houses are selling for.
2. Jumping in before you’re ready. Having all your documentation in order and knowing what to expect from the selling process means you can accept a quick offer with confidence if one appears.
3. Small fixes are ignored as too trivial to bother with. For instance, a broken door handle that you’ve lived with for 20 years could be the tipping point between someone loving your home and them thinking that it needs too much work. Avoid the temptation of ignoring those small issues and fix them before viewings start.
4. The garden is neglected. Remember that the exterior of the property is the first thing a potential buyer will notice when they arrive for a viewing. It doesn’t make a great impression if it has all the debris from your kitchen renovation stacked in the corner, nor if it’s full of weeds and brambles. If you’re not green-fingered, hiring a gardening service to clear the space up could be the difference between making a sale quickly and the potential buyer deciding against purchasing before they even walk through the door.

Of course, several of the points above can be turned around and viewed as common mistakes that home buyers are making instead of sellers. After all, being unable to see past a messy garden could be blinkering them to the best property they’ve seen in their price range. However, while you can’t change their perception, you can change how your own property is perceived.

Top Tips for Selling Your Home

There are many great ideas to increase your property value. If you want a quick checklist to see if you’re ready to sell and what might get you some higher offers, have a look at these:

• Fix the focal rooms of the kitchen and bathroom
• Give anywhere that needs it a fresh lick of paint
• Hire a gardener to spruce the outside of the property
• Fix small issues like broken taps and skirting boards
• Declutter early to allow viewers to see the full potential of your home
• Make sure you’ve got all the documentation in place and practice full disclosure to ensure that a sale will go through
• Be willing to negotiate

How Do You Know When It’s Time to Sell Your House?

There are several natural dips in the housing market. Everything slows down around Christmas and in the period immediately afterwards as few people want the difficulty of moving then. Equally, summer months can be slow if buyers are juggling childcare or holidays with the possibility of moving.

Even so, much depends on how your home looks and how it’s likely to be perceived by buyers. Rushing to list your property in the spring can have a negative impact on the offers you receive if the house isn’t up to scratch yet. As well as taking care of the major selling points like the bathroom and kitchen, make sure that the whole house is looking its best before you set a realistic asking price and get it on the market.

Why Don’t Some Houses Sell?

Like it or not, there are always some house listings that potential buyers see and scroll right past without booking a viewing, even though it theoretically meets their criteria. Based on our experiences, these are some common reasons:

• The listing photos don’t do your home justice
• Asking prices are too unrealistic and sellers are reluctant to negotiate
• Buyers are getting a bad first impression from the garden or the house itself
• It’s the wrong time to sell that type of property

Before you even put your house on the market, try walking through it as a buyer would. Notice everything as if for the first time and consider how it might appear to fresh eyes. If you find this difficult, ask a friend or family member to try it – they can often be relied upon to criticise!