Video:How to Avoid Selling Mistakes

Transcript:How to Avoid Selling Mistakes

Hi I’m Nick Jaynes for About.com and this is how to avoid making common selling mistakes. I’ll be providing information from the About.com Home Buying Guide. For folks selling their homes, there are a lot of things to think about. In the process of preparing your house for sale, showing, and finalizing the deal, there are many opportunities for mistakes to be made on the part of the seller.

Pricing Real Estate Correctly Depends on Many Elements

When the average seller sits down to interview real estate agents, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement over choosing a sales price. More money means more financial opportunities for the homeowner. Unfortunately, uninformed sellers often choose the listing agent who suggests the highest list price, which is the worst mistake a seller can make. The truth is, it doesn't really matter how much money you think your home is worth. Nor does it matter what your agent thinks--or ten other agents just like him or her. The person whose opinion matters is the buyer who makes an offer.

Pricing homes is part art and part science. It involves comparing similar properties, making adjustments for the differences among them, tracking market movements and taking stock of present inventory, all in an attempt to come up with a range of value. Homes sell at a price a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to accept. If a home is priced too low, priced under the competition, the seller might receive multiple offers to drive up the price to market value. But this might not happen, so there is danger in pricing a home too low. Not only do you risk harming price values for the rest of the homeowners in your neighborhood but also you risk giving your house away. Not to say that there isn’t danger in pricing your house too high either.

Be Sure the Real Estate Agent is Familiar with the Neighborhood

You want to find an agent who has a good sense of property values in your area. You and your agent can go over comparable sales in the recent past for your area and neighborhood and base your asking price on those figures. Some sellers pick the first agent they find because they look “nice.” In reality, an agent who advertises in your area might not actually know your area. In some cases, not knowing the area and its price history can lead to an exorbitantly high asking price. When your price is too high, your home can sit for months without any buyer activity. Eventually these over-priced listings will expire.

Expired Listings Cost the Home Owner

There are agents whose basic real estate practice is comprised of calling sellers of expired listings and re-listing them at market value. These agents can make a pretty good living by repackaging overpriced homes. The final question is: how much money have expired listings cost the sellers? The financial loss often exceeds the extra mortgage payments made and goes beyond the uncompensated hassle of trying to keep a home spotless during showings. Old listings can cause buyers to offer less because it has become a stale, dated, a market-worn home that was overpriced for too long. Don't let it happen to you.

Thanks for watching. If you’d like to learn more, please find us on the web at About.com.