What Will Stop a House From Selling?
Some sellers have difficulty selling their homes even in a strong seller’s market.
Sellers will often ask what stops a house from selling.
It is not uncommon for homeowners to ask themselves, “why isn’t my house selling?”
As a homeowner, you have a right to be involved in every aspect of its sale. At the same time, it is surprisingly easy to get in the way of your transaction.
Often sellers will unintentionally repel buyers without even knowing why – especially if they have an agent who is afraid of upsetting them or are such strong personalities that they are immune to constructive criticism.
Take a long hard look at yourself and make sure that you are not doing any of the following – and sabotaging your home sale.
Top Home Seller Mistakes
It is effortless for home sellers to make mistakes if they are not given the proper guidance from a professional.
After all, it’s not like most homeowners sell their homes every year.
These common home seller mistakes can be easily avoided when selling real estate. Take a look and ensure these things do not hold up your sale.
1. You’re Making Showings Challenging
Your Realtor is a professional that should know what he or she is doing. Selling is part of the business, and showing a home is where Realtors should shine – but only if you keep out of the way.
While pride of ownership is essential, it’s not when it comes to showing your home. Hovering over the agent and the buyer pointing out things you think are important are not what will sell your home.
Let the real estate agent you hired do their job. They get paid for doing this, so make it easy for them!
Avoid making it difficult to show by not allowing scheduled showings, limiting showing times, and asking the listing agent to attend the showing. Remember that your home will not sell unless people can see it.
You want to make it as easy as possible. The more qualified foot traffic, the better. Every missed showing is a missed opportunity! Don’t assume that if you don’t let a buyer in to see your home, they will automatically agree to reschedule. If fact, often, they never do!
They see something else they like and put an offer in before ever returning to look at your property. Recently while selling Milford Real Estate, this exact scenario took place. The owner refused a showing from a relocation buyer who was only in town for a couple of days and needed to purchase a home. They saw something else they liked and made an acceptable offer.
This is the perfect example of a lost opportunity! Who knows if this buyer would have liked my client’s home better?
2. Not Staging Your Home Properly
There are few things more essential than staging a house adequately. No, I don’t mean hiring a professional home stager! You can get your property looking great without a professional. It isn’t rocket science to make your home presentable to home buyers.
Leaving your home looking like a mess can stop it from selling. Cleanliness can mean different things to different people.
You should ask your real estate agent what’s needed to get the house ready for showing. Staging starts by decluttering your home correctly.
If your home is loaded with “stuff,” you should consider hiring a junk removal company such as 1-800-Got-Junk. The cost of removal will be well worth the money.
For the belongings you no longer have any use for but have value, consider donating to a charitable organization. The last step to getting the house ready is doing a deep cleaning. You can do it yourself if you are ambitious or hire professional cleaners.
Once your home is spotless, get your agent’s opinion on whether renting a storage unit for any remaining clutter will be helpful.
There is a good chance you don’t even notice some of the problems. Take your Realtor’s advice and make the home perfect for showing. It will pay off in the end.
Cleaning is one of the lowest-cost home improvements you can make. This is one of the top home seller mistakes that are so easy to fix! When you want to sell a house fast, these steps are necessary.
3. Failing to Make Necessary Repairs
If your agent tells you that certain repairs need to be made to sell your home, make those repairs.
While spending as little as possible on a house you will no longer live in is understandable, you also have to make the home desirable to buyers.
No one wants to buy a home with a blown-out water heater or carpet that has been stained and soiled.
There may be buyers for such a house. But they are looking for a fixer-upper and paying accordingly.
Make the repairs that will make your home sell or cost you more with the lower offers you will receive.
You should also have an understanding of what some of the most common home inspection problems are when selling a home.
If possible, you should take the time to investigate and remedy these issues before putting your home on the market.
If not, you could cost yourself a sale and also have to disclose these issues to potential prospects if the deal falls through.
4. Marking Your House As Being Sold-As-Is
There is nothing that screams “I have problems” than a house being sold as-is. It is a mistake to market your home in this fashion. Technically all homes are sold as-is. Sellers are never required to make repairs or improvements to their homes.
Rather than advertising the property as-is, wait until you get an offer and make it clear that you will not be making repairs or offering seller concessions. There is a time and place for the desire to sell as is. It is not upfront!
5. Not Having Professional Photography
Using bad pictures on a real estate listing can be a kiss of death. First impressions are vital for selling homes. Potential buyers will be looking at properties on home-buying websites. They will decide in under a minute whether they want to view a home.
If the photography is awful, they will skip to the following listing. You will have lost your shot at a showing.
Poor quality pictures, unflattering pictures, pictures of a dirty and cluttered home – none of these are appealing to buyers. Bad photos will make them move on to other listings with better visuals.
Asking the Realtor, you are considering hiring who will take the photography is vital. Will it be them or a professional?
Some Real Estate agents do an exceptional job with their photography, and others will make you want to vomit. Photography is one of the most critical elements to selling a home, so don’t take this home-selling facet lightly.
It would be highly recommended to check out the Realtor’s photography on other homes they are listing. As a Real Estate agent looking at photography daily, it astounds me how bad some of it is.
Many home sellers do not check up on what their agent is doing! Here are some excellent Real Estate photography tips that are worth considering.
Your job is to make sure to spiff up the place before you start taking photographs.
6. Failing to Write Adequate Property Descriptions
While photography is king in real estate sales, property descriptions are queen! It is vital to ensure your real estate listing descriptions are written well. The strengths of your property need to be emphasized.
Excellent photography will draw a buyer in, but how you convey your property’s great attributes will lock them in. See these excellent tips on how to write property descriptions that sell.
7. Overpricing a Home Stops it From Selling
Do you know the #1 reason that stops a house from selling? You guessed it – the price! You can do everything else ideally, but if you get the price wrong, the rest of your marketing won’t matter.
The correct asking price will be as much as eight percent of the marketing.
There are few possessions more personal than a home. You may have raised your children here, spent endless hours perfecting the landscaping, doing remodeling projects, and enjoying yourself. These facts can make it difficult when it comes time to price your home accurately within the current market.
It doesn’t matter what you originally paid for the house or how much you love it. Your agent will tell you to price the home competitively so you can sell it.
If you overprice it instead, it can sit on the market for months and even years, gain a reputation as unsalable or undesirable and eventually sell for far less than the Realtor’s original recommendation.
Overpricing a home happens frequently. Every seller should understand how to price a home before putting it on the market. The damaging effects of overpricing a home are real. They will cost you money that otherwise would have been in your pocket!
Sellers need to look over the comparative market analysis through the eyes of a buyer. Comps never lie; people do. Hopefully, your real estate was honest and didn’t mislead you about the value.
8. Picking The Wrong Real Estate Agent Leads to Home Sale Failure
Speaking of real estate agents, did you pick the right one? Picking a bad real estate agent happens frequently. It doesn’t take much to get your real estate license.
If you don’t take interviewing Realtors seriously, you could easily pick the wrong one. Being sold a bag of goods is not unusual. Overpromising and under-delivering happen all too frequently in real estate sales.
Having the wrong real estate agent stops a house from selling frequently.
9. Don’t Take Negotiations Personally
In the U.S., we are unaccustomed to negotiating. Most of the things we buy are priced and sold in environments where negotiation is not an option. You don’t haggle with the grocery store checker on the price of your milk – you pay it and move on.
With homes, though, there is an art to negotiation. Buyers will offer low prices to determine what you want for the home. It is a back-and-forth process that takes practice to become familiar with.
Do not take a lowball offer on your home personally and reject the buyer outright. Through negotiations, you may get precisely what you want.
There have been numerous times over my thirty-seven-year Real Estate career where the seller was convinced there wasn’t a chance in the world that the sale would come together based on where the buyer started their negotiations.
Some sellers fail to understand that it’s not essential where a buyer starts but where they end up! Don’t sabotage your home sale by getting too emotional.
10. Trying to Sell For Sale By Owner
Selling as A FSBO often leads to failure.
Trying for sale by owner is usually not the most effective approach to selling your home. Yes, you can work through the selling process and save on commission, but a lot of work is involved.
Owners often sell homes for substantially less than those sold by Realtors.
Homeowners don’t have the network, marketing ability, and negotiation skills to get the highest price for their homes.
Hiring a Realtor gets better results and is much less work and stress than going it alone.
If selling as an FSBO is something you must do based on the fact you can’t afford to pay a commission, make sure you read the tips on how to sell a home for sale by owner. This will give you some sound advice on how you can improve your chances when you need to sell without the assistance of a Real Estate agent.
11. Trying to Hide Problems From Potential Buyers
If your Realtor has not already told you, the last thing you ever want to do is hide problems with your house from buyers. This is the perfect way to find yourself in a lawsuit somewhere down the line.
When selling a home, some states require you to fill out a disclosure statement about what you know about your home. If, for example, you know that every Spring, the basement floods and you live in a disclosure state, letting the buyer know this would be important.
Even in non-disclosure states, if a buyer asks you a direct question and you don’t tell the truth, you would open up the possibility for a lawsuit. Understanding the seller’s disclosure responsibilities is essential.
The buyers will discover everything eventually, so don’t leave anything off the disclosure statement if your Realtor asks you to fill one out. There is no point in selling your home dishonestly, only to pay back all your earnings in legal fees.
12. Making Open Houses a Focus of Marketing Activity
Some Realtors love to push an open house. They hoodwink sellers into believing they are necessary to sell a home. If your real estate agent is making open houses a focus of selling your home, you probably have one of the agents mentioned above.
The best buyers schedule home showings. You know they are vetted and serious home buyers. Anyone can come to an open house. If you are lucky, it won’t be a criminal.
In the digital age, an open house is entirely unnecessary for selling a home.
When to Worry About a House Not Selling
A common question real estate receive is whether I should worry about my house not selling. It is time to start worrying when your home has been on the market longer than the local market average.
Days on the market can be a challenging thing to overcome in real estate. Buyers will start to question why it is not selling. Having a candid conversion with your real estate agent is crucial when your market time has grown.
Why is My House Not Selling in a Hot Real Estate Market?
If everyone else is selling their homes and you’re not, the likely reason is one of the twelve mistakes mentioned. When everyone else is getting offers, and you’re not, there are likely multiple problems.
Final Thoughts
If your home is not selling, it’s time to look in the mirror. You’re likely making a combination of these mistakes that stop a house from selling.
Look over the list carefully and see if improvements can be made to what you or your agent are doing. You could need a completely different game plan.
Are you in the Metrowest, Massachusetts area? Is your home not selling? If so, reach out when your listing expires. I welcome the opportunity to let my experience turn things around for you.
Additional Helpful Home Selling Resources
- What problems you should avoid when selling a home – learn what you need to know via Forbes.
- What are some of the top examples of intelligent home-selling tips? via Maximum Real Estate Exposure.
Use these additional resources to make sound decisions when selling a home. Avoid some top home seller mistakes, and you will sit at a closing table reading to enter the next stage of your life!
About the author: The above Real Estate information on what stops a house from selling was provided by Bill Gassett, a Nationally recognized leader in his field. Bill can be reached via email at billgassett@remaxexec.com or by phone at 508-625-0191. Bill has helped people move in and out of many Metrowest towns for the last 37+ Years.
Are you thinking of selling your home? I am passionate about real estate and love sharing my marketing expertise!
I service Real Estate sales in the following Metrowest MA towns: Ashland, Bellingham, Douglas, Framingham, Franklin, Grafton, Holliston, Hopkinton, Hopedale, Medway, Mendon, Milford, Millbury, Millville, Natick, Northborough, Northbridge, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Sutton, Wayland, Westborough, Whitinsville, Worcester, Upton and Uxbridge MA.
