A List of Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Snohomish County Home: 2024
Selling your home can be a time-consuming and emotionally challenging time. It can feel like an invasion of privacy when strangers enter your home open your cupboards and poke around. You may hear much criticism about your home and your decorating abilities, and the cherry on top? You may get an offer of less money than you think your home is worth. The best way to sell a house comes down to a few basics:
Keep your emotions in check and stay focused on the business side of selling your home.
Hire an agent to take the guesswork out of the selling of your home.
Set a reasonable price.
Keep the time of year in mind, and avoid winter months.
Prepare for the sale, your home must look its best to compete.
Take time on your listing and add high-quality photographs, inside and out.
See more below for the mistakes to avoid when selling your home in Snohomish County
1. Too Much Emotion
It is an emotional time when selling your home, especially if it is your first one. You may have spent a great deal of time and effort to find the right home, saved up for a downpayment and furniture, and created memories to fill your home. It can be a trying time to keep your emotions in check when it comes to saying goodbye. When deciding to sell your home, think of yourself as a businessperson and salesperson rather than just the homeowner. It can help to look at the transaction from a financial perspective, as it can help you distance yourself from the emotional aspects of selling the property.
2. Not Hiring a Real Estate Agent
Hiring a real estate agent can indeed command a hefty commission, typically 5% to 6% of the sale price of your home. If you have never sold a home before, it is not the best idea to sell your home by yourself. It can be tempting when seeing "for sale by owner" signs on people's lawns. But does it pay to hire an agent? Agents tend to have your best interests at heart, helping you to set a fair yet competitive selling price for your home, increasing your odds of a quick sale. Agents have experience negotiating home sales, helping you get money worth more than you could on your own through fine negotiation skills. Agents are also very familiar with all the paperwork and pitfalls involved in real estate transactions and can help make the process smooth.
3. Setting an Unrealistic Price
Whether you choose to go the route of working with an agent or selling your house yourself, setting the right asking price is key to getting your home sold. Buyers will cross-compare a comparative market analysis on your home, the same as you or your agent should have done, to ensure the asking price is fair. You should stay one step ahead of the buyer at all times. Overpriced homes don't tend to sell for the actual asking price, as they sit too long on the market. This causes the price to be driven down over time. Setting an asking price on the low side can generate multiple offers and bid the price up to the home's actual market value.
4. Expecting the Asking Price
Smart buyers will negotiate, that is a given. If you want to complete the sale, you may have to play ball. Most will list their homes at prices that will attract buyers while leaving room for negotiations—the opposite of the underpricing strategy we discussed above. This can work to your benefit, as it allows the buyer to feel like they are scoring on a good deal, while also allowing you to get the amount, or close to, of money you need from the sale.
5. Attempting to Sell During Winter Months
There is always a right time to sell during the year. Winter, especially around the holidays is not it, unless you want low competition. This time of the year is slow as far as home sales go. Potential buyers are busy with social engagements, and the cold weather that sweeps across the country makes it more appealing to stay indoors. Fewer buyers are likely to look, and it may take longer to sell your home. You can, however, take consolation in knowing that not many active buyers means not many competitive selling.
6. Poor Listing Photos
In the age of technology we live in, as well as the convenience associated with it, buyers tend to look at homes online, and many of those homes have photos. You would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't upload high-quality visuals in abundance of your home. There are many poor photos of homes for sale, and if you do a good job, it can set your listing apart from others to generate interest. Photos should be crisp, clean, and clear (the 3 C's). They should be taken during the day to optimize natural lighting, and should ideally be taken with a wide lens. It can work best in your interest if you hire a professional real estate photographer to get top-quality results instead of letting your agent take snapshots and upload them on a phone.
7. Bad Insurance
Your lender may have required you to acquire a homeowners insurance policy, you may want to make sure you are insured in case a viewer has an accident on the premises and tries to sue for damages. It is important to make sure there are no obvious hazards on the property, and take steps to mitigate them.
8. Hiding Problems from Agents & Buyers
Don't think you can get away with hiding major problems with your property. Any problem, big or small, will be uncovered during the buyer's inspection. There are typically three options for dealing with these issues:
Fix the problem ahead of time.
Price the property below market value to account for the problem.
List the property at a normal price and offer the buyer credit to fix the problem.
If you don't fix the problem in advance, you may have to eliminate a fair number of buyers who want a turnkey home. There are disclosure rules you may run into, with many requiring sellers to disclose known problems about their homes if asked directly by buyers.
For information about mistakes to avoid when selling your Everett home, refer back to this article.