Top 5 Home Selling Myths

By Ryan Dosen

 

Selling your home may be the last thing on your mind this time of year.

The holidays are coming. Maybe the in-laws are coming, too. There will be presents to wrap, parties to plan, turkeys to roast and plenty of things to do other than thinking about selling your home. You’ll worry about that in the spring, right? Well, let’s take a look anyway. Maybe you’ll think twice.

 

Myth number 1: Price it High; You Can Always Come Down Later

When looking to sell a home, every seller should want to achieve the highest price possible. So, naturally, the inclination for sellers is to price their homes high and near the maximum they could conceivably achieve on the open market. They say they want to test the waters. You never know, right? I mean, couldn’t that random person come along with a giant bag full of money and absolutely fall in love with your home? And maybe they’d be willing to pay whatever you ask so that they can have that one house that will complete them and help them achieve spiritual and residential nirvana. Or maybe not.

The thing we tell our sellers is to put themselves in the hypothetical shoes of these head-over-their-heels buyers. Even if you found that house — THE house — would you pay more than you needed to in order to get it? Of course not. We have better things to do with our money than throwing it away.

A seller might also think that if they price it high, they can always accept a lower offer. The problem here is that pricing a home too high may scare off legitimate buyers. They might think that they won’t be able to afford your home or that they are dealing with an unrealistic seller. Even worse, by the time you eventually lower your price, you may have missed out on several legitimate buyers that have moved on and bought other homes.

By pricing your home correctly (at true market value) or even slightly below market value, you could actually wind up netting more money. You’re much more likely to get buyers into a bidding war by pricing your home low and allowing them to fight over your house. If a bidding war doesn’t erupt and you wind up selling for market value, then you did very well. If the bidding war doesn’t ensue and you wind up selling for under market value, you may actually be the lucky seller that has sold at the beginning of a market downturn. Homes, like anything else, are worth what people will pay. And if no one is willing to pay the supposed market value for your home, can you guess what’s happened to the market? Better to be that early seller in a downturn than the one that has to sell after the market has clearly dipped.

 

Myth number 2: I’ll Need to Make Significant Repairs Before Listing

I wrote a column about this earlier this year discussing the best return-on-investment home renovations. Bottom line: You almost never get your money back when significantly improving your home before listing. Unless you are planning on living in (and enjoying) the improved home for a while before listing, you are generally better off doing no more than repainting, cleaning the carpets, doing a little landscaping, and touching up a few eye sores around the house.

 

Myth number 3: I Shouldn’t Sell My Home Until I Find My Next Home

Many sellers are afraid of the idea of selling their home before they find their next home. “But, I don’t want to be homeless!” That has been the initial cry of many of our sellers. Back in 2006, when the market was crazy, maybe this sentiment would have been more meritorious. Everything was selling. Today, selling is far from an immediate slam dunk. Selling is your hurdle. Not buying. Get your home sold and then worry about where you’re going. If the right fit isn’t on the market at that moment, fear not. It will be soon. It’s better having to live with the folks for a few weeks than having to watch someone else get the house you want because you were scared to put your home on the market.

 

Myth number 4: My Agent Doesn’t Matter

Many sellers take their Realtor decision too lightly. They think their property is going to sell for what it’s going to sell for and that their agent doesn’t really matter. The real estate market is not the stock market when it comes to selling your asset(s). Your agent’s marketing and negotiating abilities are worth (or could cost you) thousands of dollars. Your agent does matter. If you’re looking for an agent, ask them what percentage of original asking price they get for their listings and how long they sit on the market.

 

Myth number 5: Never List Your Home Around the Holidays

It is a common misconception that the winter and the holidays are bad times to list your home. Conventional wisdom would say that people aren’t out looking at homes in the snow and in the freezing cold. It would also say that homes don’t look as attractive to buyers when the leaves are down and everything is brown.

There are always buyers actively looking to purchase a home. It is true that more buyers are looking for homes during the spring and summer in preparation for the school year, but there are also more homes that have just hit the market in preparation for those buyers.

Last year, inventory was incredibly low at the beginning of the year; by spring, inventory had skyrocketed for the “home buying season” in spring. All those new sellers had more buyers, but they also more competition.

Consider going against the grain. List your home while the competition is sitting on the sidelines. You may not have to wait until spring to get your home sold. You will have bypassed months of carrying costs as well.

 

— Ryan Dosen manages The Wayne Megill Real Estate Team of Keller Williams Brandywine Valley in West Chester. Contact Ryan Dosen for buyer or seller representation or for more perspective on the local and national real estate market by emailing rdosen@megillhomes.com or calling 610-399-0338. Please also visit The Wayne Megill Team blog at www.PAHomesAndRealEstate.com.

 

This article was published by 21st Century Media and the Daily Local News (West Chester, PA). To read this article on the the newspaper’s site, please visit the Daily Local News.

 

 

To view all of Ryan Dosen’s 21st Century Media real estate columns, visit http://www.dailylocal.com/search?text=dosen.