Selling Your Home

Here are the top 15 reasons why people sell and move:

• Home is too small
• Upgrade
• Fix purchase error
• Job transfer
• Personal Relationships
• Neighbourhood changes
• Empty nest
• See family more often
• See family less often
• Retirement
• Health problems
• Deferred maintenance
• Home improvement perfection
• Cash in equity
• Lifestyle change

The Worst Home Selling Mistake

There's a great saying in the estate agency business. To succeed in life, you want to be:

• The First Child
• The Second Spouse
• The Third Estate Agent

And like with most sayings, there is some truth in that statement, as agents who pick up listings after sellers have made major mistakes will attest.
 
But We Want More Money
When the average seller sits down to interview 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. Perhaps it means the seller can afford to buy a more expensive home, help pay for a child's education or take that greatly overdue holiday. Unfortunately, uninformed sellers often choose the agent who suggests the highest list price, which is the worst mistake a seller can make.
 
Establishing Value
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. 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, an educated opinion. This method is the same way an appraiser evaluates a home. And no two appraisals are ever exactly the same; however, they are generally close to each other. In other words, there is no hard and fast price tag to slap on your home. It's only an educated guess and the market will dictate the price.
  
Is it Too Low?
Homes sell at a price a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to accept. The danger lies in pricing it too high and selecting your agent solely on opinion of value.
 
How It Starts To Go Wrong
The seller of a Spanish home didn't even interview her estate agents. She plucked the first one off the Internet because, "He looked like such a nice guy." He priced her home at £1.3 million. This agent never heard the local agents chuckling behind his back because he worked in a different city. After 90 days, the listing expired.
 
Continues To Go Wrong
The next agent, also from another town, listed the home at £1.1 million. Months passed. Eventually the price dropped to just under £900,000. Still no takers. A few looked, but no serious buyers.
 
More Than a Year Later
By the time the last agent was hired to list this home, the seller had grown weary and exhausted. It was now 12 months later. Together, the seller and her agent priced the home at £695,000. It immediately sold for cash. The sad part is the comparable sales in the neighbourhood fully justified a price of £835,000, but the home had been on the market for   too long at the wrong price, potential buyers had gone stale, and now the market had softened.
 
Protect Yourself
The question is how much money have those listings cost the sellers? The financial loss often exceeds the extra mortgage payments paid and goes beyond the uncompensated hassle factor of trying to keep a home spotless during showings. It affects the value that a buyer ultimately chooses to pay because it's not a fresh listing anymore. It's now stale, dated, a market-worn home that was overpriced for too long.

Don't let it happen to you. Don't be that seller of an expired listing.