7 red flags that scare home buyers away from your listings

The process of buying a home is incredibly overwhelming not just for homeowners but practitioners. There are so many aspects that potential home buyers are investigating when they enter a spot that’s for sale.

Without realizing it, many sellers can be hurting their chances of selling by overlooking simple things, so let’s make sure your clients aren’t throwing up any red flags.

We all know the market is hot right now and houses are selling like hotcakes, but there are certain things that just cannot be ignored.

1. Listing an unrealistic price: Be realistic about what a house is worth and don’t be misleading. People can easily search the worth of the houses nearby and do some digging to find out if what you’re listing is representative of what the house is worth.
2. Skipping the deep clean: This is never a good idea – especially this year. The cleanliness of your house is akin in the buyer’s mind to the overall upkeep and maintenance of the house. They assume that if you don’t clean, you don’t care.
3. Personalization: Since you’re moving, try and pack up some of your family photos and leave up less “personal” items (or color choices) to better help the potential buyer envision themselves living there.
4. Expecting payment for features that are high maintenance: Things like pools and hot tubs don’t always return their value. Many home buyers aren’t interested in keeping up with that maintenance and it’s unreasonable to charge them for the assumption that they’ll keep up with it.
5. Believing “It’s okay if this doesn’t work”: If a shower head is broken, the A/C is messed up, or a ceiling is cracked, owners should do all they can to replace or repair it before listing their house. If they refuse, they should be coached to not expect anyone to pay the full listing price unless they’re in one of the zones seeing bidding wars.
6. Being nose-blind: Like those Febreeze commercials tell us, it’s common that we go nose-blind to our surroundings simply because we’re so used to them (i.e. a smoker doesn’t notice their house or clothes smell like smoke). Go back and check off deep cleaning, and then be honest with your client about their house’s need for smell help.
7. Leaving pets home during showings: Due to the unpredictability with strangers – or the potential allergies the strangers may have – it’s best to make arrangements for a client’s pets to be elsewhere during showings.