Mistakes When Selling Your Home

Overpricing your home

One of the most important steps to selling a house is determining the right price — the price that will let you sell in a reasonable amount of time, for a profit that you’re comfortable with

GET A CMA FROM AN AGENT

A comparative market analysis (called a CMA for short) is an estimate of your home’s value, prepared by a local real estate agent. They base their analysis off of similar recently sold homes, and they’ll often provide this service free of charge to earn your business.

COLLECT COMPS ON YOUR OWN

If you’re not working with an agent, you can do your own comp research. Using Zillow’s Recently Sold filter, identify homes that are similar to yours that have sold in the last three to six months, using the following criteria:

 Selling at the wrong time

The timing of your sale can make all the difference in the price you’re able to get. In most places, the best time of year to sell is the first half of May. Homes listed during this window sold six days faster than average — and for $1,600 more, compared to average points in the year. Weather can be a factor in your city’s selling window, so keep that in mind when researching the best times to sell in your area

Skimping on repairs

Even small defects can turn buyers off. If they walk through your home and find loose doorknobs, leaky faucets or wall dings, they’ll wonder if you’ve been neglecting bigger issues in the home as well.

Letting emotions interfere with your home sale

To successfully sell your home, it’s important to separate your emotional connection to the home from the details of the transaction. It can be hard to negotiate with buyers when you love your home, but acting like a professional is important.

Failing to prep and stage

Making the effort to help your home look its best before listing is time and money well-spent. A clean, uncluttered and bright home is what buyers are looking for. And, according to the Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report 2018, 48 percent of recent buyers said that having a house staged was somewhat, very or extremely important to their home-buying decision. Use the following home-selling tips to clean, prep and stage your home.

Skipping curb appeal

When a potential buyer arrives at your home for a showing, the outside is the first thing they see. Don’t spend so much time prepping the inside of your home that you forget about the exterior. According to the Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report 2018, 29 percent of sellers spruce up their landscaping in some way before listing. Common landscaping tasks can include: