How to And How Not to Sell Your Home: Part One

Everyone wants to sell their house quickly and for the best price, yet many people keep making fundamental mistakes when putting their house on the market. Here is a series outlining what you, as a seller, should do and not do to ensure your home gets sold for the best possible price and in the best possible time.

DO:

1. List it for a price that is attractive to buyers while in the range of the house’s value. It may not be the price you personally think it is worth, or anywhere near the price you paid for it 5 years ago, but this is a buyer’s market– why would buyers pay a lot of money for a house when there are plenty of other houses that are worth as much but are listed for a far cheaper price? Chances are you won’t sell the house for as much as you paid for it, but if you are looking to sell your home quickly, list your house for a price that is closer to what it is worth today, not how much it was worth a couple of years ago.

DON’T:

1. Reduce your price over and over again. While that reducing your price may attract buyers, if you repeatedly lower your price, you are actually discouraging a buyer from making an offer for two reasons. A) why should they agree to your current listed price if there’s a chance you’ll lower it again? and B) if you keep lowering the price, they might assume something is wrong with the house, that a lot of people have seen the house and rejected it, and thus you keep having to lower the price to compensate for whatever was wrong with it. Slashing your price once is ok, but small repeated reductions may actually scare off buyers.

Good luck and happy selling!