The market is really active right now, so you don’t want to turn off any buyer or seller, do you? Broker’s make appointments to show your home, then….nada. What gives? What is keeping an offer from appearing in your in box? Now, your home is lingering on the market, and you no longer feel that motivated to tidy up the kitchen before leaving for work…..Here are six things to keep in mind when you view a home as a buyer, or when your home is listed for sale.

Turning off a buyer: 

1.  Being home when a buyer is trying to look at your home. Lurking in the next room so you can overhear any questions and jump right in with the answer….’Oh, let me show you how the extra storage works!’  Buyers are trying to see themselves in your home and your presence makes them nervous and hesitant to speak frankly to their Broker. As soon as a buyer sees the seller in the house, it instantly becomes much more difficult for them to:
(a) envision themselves living there (it’s their house, after all),
(b) be comfortable opening up drawers, closet doors, etc., and
(c) express their thoughts about how this house might be exactly what they’re looking for, if they can knock out that wall and get rid of those cuckoo murals that were lovingly painted in the children’s rooms.

If you want to sell your home, turn on all the lights, make sure the home is heated or cooled properly for the day, pick up the breakfast dishes or any other clutter, put the toilet seat down (and the plunger in the closet) and leave the house.

2. Showing a messy house: Life gets hectic, and it’s easy for things like laundry, dishes and other house cleaning tasks to fall by the wayside. It’s also difficult to keep the home in which you, the seller, your four kids, three gerbils and two dogs live perfectly spotless for months at a time, while you are waiting for an offer. Selling your home is a process. If priced correctly, it should take about 3 months total. Make a pact with yourself and your family to keep the house as spotless and tidy as possible during the marketing time. Remember! Clean (windows too), tidy, odor free (air out the fish tacos from last night’s dinner), temperature controlled, and animal shed picked up. First impressions really count! Buyers are setting their expectations with HGTV!  Also, don’t stuff the closets. Buyers will look in those closets and drawers, so clean them out and straighten them up.

3.  Overpricing the home: Buyers already have lots to do before making the largest purchase of their lives. They have to wrangle their finances into order, jump through hoops to qualify for a loan, collect the cash for down payment and closing costs, and invest sometimes hundreds of hours into market research and house hunting. With all of this already on their plates, the prospect of trying to negotiate down a crazily high asking price is just too much work and too outside their comfort zones for most buyers to deal with. The average buyer won’t even bother looking at a property if the asking price is clearly high and off base compared with other similar, nearby homes for sale; they’d rather sit tight and wait .  The only opinion when it comes to price is the market’s opinion.  Price to sell from the beginning. Work to determine a price that is supported by the data on how much nearby homes have recently sold for. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and anguish and get a lot more legitimate bites from serious, qualified buyers.

We have a new tool to use when pricing your home that will give you very accurate information to use when making this important decision!!

Top 3 Ways to Turn a Seller Off:

1. Unjustified, extreme lowball offers: The market is on the up! And in many markets that means that what may have been okay back in 2009 is just not going to cut it anymore. Let’s be realistic, here. No seller can afford to give away their home at a price far below what it’s worth on today’s market. Lowballing a seller at a price far below the recent sales prices of similar homes in the neighborhood on the ‘let’s-take-a-stab’ plan, is highly likely to turn them off.  And that, in turn, will cause the seller to view the offer – and your buyer – as disrespectful and wasteful of their time.  That said, I will ask the listing agent how they did determine the price if I think it is unreasonably high. Unbelievable, some have said they just took a stab at what the market would bear…..and I notice that those homes linger. As for the current data on home sales, and price accordingly.

2. Buyer-side mortgage fails: Lending standards have changed frequently in the past few years. That means buyers can’t assume that they’ll be approved for the amount of loan they need to buy the house they want. A client’s inability to get approved for a home loan can create all sorts of problems not just for the buyer, but also for the home’s seller. The average seller’s worst case scenario is that  they accept an offer only to find out a few weeks, or months, later that the buyer can’t get the loan they need to close the deal. This is super frustrating and can result in potential buyers seeing a problem with the property when the house comes back on the market. I vet the buyers who make offers on my listings; it’s tricky right now, but this is an important aspect of brokering a sale. It’s not overkill to start working with a mortgage professional as far as six months or a year in advance of starting your house hunt to get pre-approved for a loan. Make sure you get a clear understanding of the amount you qualify for, then we can work together to determine the price range you should house hunt in. And whatever you do – don’t buy a new car, open new credit cards or even change your line of work before your escrow closes, unless you consult closely with your mortgage professional before you make that move For this reason, I will check with the lender to determine how strong their relationship is with the buyer, and also what changes have occurred in that lender’s underwriting department.

3. Bashing the seller’s home: Home bashing happens when buyers start bad-mouthing the place and/or the neighborhood in hopes of getting a lower asking price. Examples: Saying the house down the street just sold for much lower than the asking price on this house or saying they’ll need to rip out the entire kitchen before they even consider moving in. Clients who say any of these things to a seller who happens to be at home during the showing or the inspection are at risk for turning the seller off right away. If the home is not in the condition you expect to pay for, move on.