How NOT to Sell Your Home for the Most Money

We always hear about how to sell your home for the most amount of money. But equally, if not more important, is knowing how NOT to sell your home for the most amount of money. If you don’t know, you may just make the same mistakes so many sellers do and get less money for your home than you could have.

Here’s a true story about how my buyers bought a home for over $35,000 less than what it was really worth thanks to the seller doing some things he should NOT have…

When I first came across this property, I had a feeling that it would work well for one of buyer clients. But one thing struck me…it seemed like it was priced extremely well, but it wasn’t selling. That set off a red flag to me and I started to wonder what was wrong with it.

I previewed the home on my own the following morning and that’s when I realized why it hadn’t sold.

As I pulled into the long driveway, I was greeted by three barking and overly excited dogs – a Jack Russell Terrier, a Boxer and an Australian Shepherd. They came running at me at full speed. The Boxer jumped on me while the JR Terrier and Shepherd wouldn’t stop jumping around and barking at me. Not a big deal to me, but not everyone is a dog lover nor OK with strange dogs doing that to them.

The seller told me to not let the dogs in the home. But the dogs were bulldozing there way around and through my legs as I tried to enter the home via the front door and, of course, two got in. To get them out of the house, I had to break out my Cesar Millan/Jedi mind tricks on the dogs to calm them down a bit and then physically picked up one of the dogs while holding the other by the collar. (Not recommended when you’re a stranger on their “turf”, but how else was I going to get in?)

After the “grand entrance”, I proceeded to walk-through the home and take notes for my clients. There were a lot of positives, but there were also a lot of negatives. The house was cluttered, needed a cleaning and was definitely a bachelor pad in every sense (you should have seen the man-cave). Considering my clients were totally opposite  in their personalities and the typical 2.25 kid family, these things were going to be negatives.

Well, guess what happened when they came out to see the property a few days later…

The JR Terrier and Australian Shepherd chased and barked at them and their two little children while the Boxer jumped and tackled one of their kids. (The Redskins should have taken notice to this tackle. Just sayin…) I had to leap at the Boxer and pull him off their kid by his collar.

Not a good first impression to make on potential buyers.

After we finally made it inside (which included picking up one dog and holding the other by the collar – again), the how NOT to sell your home for the most amount of money lesson continued.

The clutter and lack of cleanliness were very apparent to my clients and they had a hard time looking past it. And their initial experience with the dogs left them with a bad taste in the mouth. Despite all of this, they loved the structure and location of the house. The next morning, they told me they wanted to place an offer on the property.

But…

While discussing what to offer, my clients took a few things into consideration…

1) Their initial experience with the dogs was a negative psychological barrier

2) The cleanliness, clutter and overall condition of the property was well below their standards (as it would be for most buyers)

3) I found out that the seller was in a bind to sell his house as soon as possible because he was in the middle of contract negotiations on another house in the area (aka more leverage for us when negotiating)

After negotiations, my clients ended up paying  $35,000 less than asking price. In addition, the appraised value was even higher than the seller’s asking price. Needless to say, my clients were thrilled! As for the seller, probably not so much.

Had the seller spent a few days de-cluttering the home, a few bucks hiring a cleaning service and making sure the dogs weren’t jumping at buyers and their kids, the home would have sold long ago and for much more. I will bet money that other buyers that came to see the property were also turned off by the dogs and condition of the interior. And I’ll also bet that at least one, if not some of the buyers would have placed an offer on the property had they not had such an experience seeing the property.

So there’s today’s lesson about how NOT sell your home for the most amount of money…

Spend the time and money to clean and de-clutter your home and make the home “approachable” rather than “hostile” to potential buyers. Your efforts and money will come back to you ten-fold in the way of days on market and amount you sell your home for.

Note: I am a dog lover and have two of my own so I understand wanting to keep your dogs happy. I’m not saying you should lock your dogs in a closet. But there are other steps you can take to ensure your dogs don’t harass potential buyers while allowing your dogs to be happy.

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Home Seller Tips, Part One – “The Three C’s”

This is the first in a three part mini-series for home sellers on how to sell your home for the most amount possible in the shortest amount of time. The first part deals with the “Three C’s” – Cleanliness, Clutter and Cohesiveness.

Cleanliness

If you’ve ever been house hunting, you know how it is to walk into a dirty home. I’ve heard my buyer clients say things such as,

• “Ewwwww”
• “I can’t believe they can live like this”
• “If the house is this dirty, they must not take care of the rest of the house much either”

These are not things that you want potential buyers saying while going through your property.

Here are some of things that my buyer clients say while going through a very clean house…

• “Wow! They really take good care of their home!”
• “The carpets and hardwoods are in great shape!”
• “The house looks much newer than it really is!”

What a difference in buyer perception, isn’t it?

The cleaner your home is, the more attractive your home will be to potential buyer. And the more a buyer will perceive the house being in good shape which translates to the buyer seeing more value in the property and offering a higher price for it.

Clutter

Though your definition of clutter may be different, the definition of clutter when it comes to real estate is,

• No more than one to two items on any one piece of furniture or wall
• Having no more furniture or items in a room than is necessary to fill it up and make it look lived in

An example of the first would be one lamp on a nightstand…or… two items on the fireplace mantle…or…one item on top of the dresser…or…one painting on the outside wall of the family room.

An example of the second would be a medium sized couch in a medium sized room rather than a huge “L” shaped couch that takes up 1/2 of the room’s floor space…or… a small circular table and two chairs in a small eat-in-kitchen rather than a medium-sized square dining room style table with four chairs that takes up the majority of floor space in the eat-in-kitchen and makes it looks formal when it shouldn’t.

Clutter clouds a buyer’s mind and makes them focus on the items creating the clutter rather than property itself. The less a buyer notices the actual property, the less they will remember the good things about it let alone the property itself. This translates to less of a perceived value by the buyer and less of an offer price – if they make an offer at all.

Cohesiveness

Cohesiveness is how well everything flows together throughout the entire property – furniture, decorating, paint schemes, landscaping, outdoor decorations, etc. If things do not flow, buyers will focus more on that then the  physical property itself. This doesn’t help their perceived value of the property and hurts your chances of getting a high offer price.

For example…Buyers are thrown off when one room is burgundy and has contemporary furniture in it while the next room over is burgundy and has traditional or country style furniture.

Stick with one theme and try to make things match as best as possible.

• If you have contemporary furniture in the family room, do the same in the kitchen and dining room
• If you have neutral paint in two of the bedrooms, do the same or something very similar in the other bedroom(s)
• If you have lots of bright flowers and bushes as part of your landscaping in the front of the home, plant some in the back of the home as well

If you would like to find out how your property does in a “Three C’s” test, call or email me – danilo.bogdanovic (at) gmail (dot) com – 703.582.6900. I would be happy to stop by, give you my professional opinion and be of help.

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Home Seller Tips, Part Two – Marketing

Home Seller Tips, Part Three – Pricing (and Reality)