| Seller Tips
Selling a home in the Whidbey Island
Real Estate Market?
Selling a home is an experience many people look forward to with about as
much enthusiasm as a root canal or an I.R.S. audit. Perhaps it’s because
they know that with such an important investment, one misstep or wrong turn
could be more than a “learning experience.” Making a mistake in selling a
home can be a costly blunder that not only jeopardizes the sale, but can mean
hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost profit.
What many people don’t know is there’s an easy way to avoid making
mistakes most commonly involved in selling a home. In fact, many
homeowners make some of the same errors when selling their home, no matter how
many homes they’ve sold in the past. In some cases, the mistakes just make
the selling process more tedious. In others, they are fatal to the
sale. By understanding these mistakes, home sellers can arm themselves
with information and gain a better chance of achieving a profitable sale.
1. Limiting the home’s accessibility.
Buyers want to view a home when they want to view it. Jeremy and Ellen
suggest always leaving a lock box and key on your home when you are away, so the
house can be shown when you’re not around. Above all, be available and
flexible. “You never know, that showing you turned down could have been
the one that sold your house.”
2. Panic
selling. In some instances, selling quickly is
unavoidable. That’s when it pays to know the right techniques to get your
home to sell fast without looking desperate and making yourself a prime target
for low-ball bidders. Sometimes, however, panic selling is a result of
poor planning up front. By knowing all the ins and outs of selling before
you put your home on the market and working hand-in-hand with the right real
estate professional, you can make sure you don’t wind up backed against the wall
and settling for the first offer that comes along.
3. “My
home’s the nicest on the block” syndrome. Devotion is
wonderful, but blindness to your homes flaws and cosmetic problems can make you
overvalue your home, hurting its chances on the market.
4. Letting
emotions rule. In the heat of making a deal, it’s easy to
get caught up in wringing that last $500 out of the buyer, instead of backing
up, taking a deep breath, and looking at the big picture. “Sellers
shouldn’t haggle and maybe ruin a sale over a couple thousand dollars that won’t
mean a thing to them in three years.”
5. Failure
to disclose property flaws. Sellers today are required to
comply with property disclosure laws. Often it’s not just what you know
about what’s wrong with you home, but what you don’t know that can hurt
you. You should understand what the laws are for in your area and where to
find the qualified inspectors you need to help you meet those
requirements. If you risk covering up flaws or ignoring disclosure laws,
you not only risk the sale of your home, you risk finding yourself in
court.
Whidbey Island Real Estate Listings, Island County Homes
for sale
Search and save all Whidbey Island real estate.
Whidbey Island real estate is your experts for Island County homes for sale and
property on Whidbey Island.
6. Unwillingness to make cosmetic
improvements. We say that many sellers won’t lay down new
carpet, repaint the purple bedroom or mow the lawn until after their first
listing has expired. “People need to prepare their homes to make the best
impression possible.” Spending $1,500 on carpet might make you $5000 at
closing time. Get an objective point of view from your real estate
professional who can provide you with a customized list of things you can do to
make your home more salable and explain the most important things a buyer looks
for in a home.
7. Telling
your agent how to do his or her job. Would you tell you
physician, following a diagnosis, that you had to run your own tests and decide
your diagnosis was better? Unfortunately, many sellers try to tell their
agent why a home isn’t selling instead of listening to the advice of a
professional. If you’ve chosen the right real estate agent, you’ve got a
valuable team member on your side who can not only protect your best interests,
but help you make your sale as profitable as possible.
8. Doing
it yourself-at any cost. In real estate, as in life,
everything has a price. The majority of homeowners who decide to sell
their homes themselves do so because they believe they can save money by not
having to pay commission to a real estate agent. However, many times those
homeowners find that the true cost of selling it themselves is found in the
enormous amount of time and effort they must spend to do it, or worse, they wind
up paying even more money repairing a costly mistake that could have been
avoided with the right guidance. Selling a home really is a full-time
job. Make sure you’re aware of all the pros and cons before you decide to
try and do it yourself.
9. Bad
pricing strategies. We have noticed, in our years of
experience, that most homes in the Snohomish County area that do not sell during
the first listing period fail because they’re priced too high. On the
other hand, other homes may sell quickly but their owners were cheated out of
their full profit because they were priced to low. Sellers need to
understand what’s happening in the local real estate market and evaluate the
true value of their homes based on hard, cold facts, not gut instinct or
conventional wisdom. “Your agent has to do his job and tell you something
that’s in your best interest, and you have to be willing to listen.”
10. Selecting the wrong agent.
People often pick a friend or family member as their agent. What they
should be doing is choosing the most successful, experienced agent in the area
with the strongest track record of customer satisfaction. Highly
successful agents have many contacts with buyers and know the market
well.
Realestate Guidance -
For any kind of realestate related guidance you can visit this site. From
this site you will be able know how to buy or sell a house.
|
