I received an editorial submission on this topic, and it’s a good one, but I have my own points to make. The subheads below are his, but the paragraphs are mine.
Overpricing Your Home: We all make this mistake at times. The important thing is to take quick action. You know it’s overpriced when there are few or no showings and no offers. Don’t wait—reduce the price immediately or risk it becoming “stale.”
Neglecting Necessary Repairs: But what’s necessary? A furnace at the end of its expected life may be needed, but it’s not going to generate more showings or offers. Leave it as an issue to be brought up at inspection. Call it “lipstick on a pig” if you want, but I favor spending money on making your home more appealing visually to buyers, starting with your lawn care/landscaping and the exterior look of your home.
I focus on what I call “eyesores”: things that draw negative attention from a visitor to your home — carpet stains or noticeable wear; hardwood that badly needs refinishing; damaged countertops, peeling paint, etc. Note: the further the eyesore is from the front door, the less serious it is. The buyer has already fallen in or out of love with your house by the time he or she notices the shag carpeting in the basement bedroom. They are not going to change their minds by then.
Poor Home Staging / Presentation: I provide a free home staging consultation because this is so important. Decluttering and thinning your possessions is the one improvement that costs almost nothing. If you don’t want to do this, I’ll refer you to another Realtor and get a referral fee! I want my sellers to appreciate the importance of “looking good.”
Mistakes in Marketing/Listing: This is why you should use Golden Real Estate! We don’t skimp on marketing, as you have probably noticed. We do only magazine quality HDR photos using a professional photographer. We do narrated video tours with drone footage. Our “for sale” signs are classy and have solar powered lights. (And we make sure our signs are vertical.) We purchase a website URL for every listing. And we do all this whether it’s an inexpensive condo or a multi-million dollar home. Oh, yes, we also have a full-page weekly newspaper ad in the Denver Post plus three weekly newspapers which puts our listings in front of over 200,000 people who still read! (That’s a great demographic, but millennials are becoming an important demographic too, and we reach them through the blog posts and social media presentation of every article and listing that appears in our full-page ads.)
One piece of marketing that costs the agent only time, not money, is to complete ALL MLS data fields, not just the mandatory ones. Some of those optional fields, such as descriptions of each room, add a great deal of information for buyers. We complete those optional fields.
Ignoring Local Market Trends: We are currently in a “balanced” real estate market. The “seller’s market” of last year is over, but some sellers and their agents price their homes at a wished-for price that isn’t reflective of the slower market that we are now in. I like how Megan Aller of First American Title puts it in her market presentations: “Sellers think it’s 2020 and buyers think it’s 2008.”
Above all, remember that all real estate is local — it can be rising in one neighborhood and falling in another. And real estate is also emotional; sellers and buyers don’t always act rationally in the decisions they make about their home. Personally, I utilize three different valuation models when creating a market analysis for a prospective listing.
Keep in mind the mortgage market, not just the real estate market. Yes, the interest rates are high right now, and no one can accurately predict when they will be lower. But there are programs for first-time homebuyers (defined, by the way, as someone who hasn’t owned for three years), for first responders, teachers and others. And there are ways to buy down the interest rate for one or two years in hopes of refinancing when rates are lower. If you don’t have a knowledgeable and hard-working loan office on your side, we have a couple we can recommend.
Jim Smith's Blog 