The 2 Big Mistakes I Made Selling My House, According to Real Estate Pros
Ahead of getting married, my now-husband and I both sold our individual homes and bought a new one together. In the midst of our “summer of real estate,” our phones were constantly pinging with Zillow and Redfin notifications, we could rattle off interest rate data, and we had near daily calls with our real estate agent. In the end, we completed three home transactions in under three months — and, overall, things went smoothly. We both accumulated lots of equity in the homes we sold, and we put a full-price offer on our new-build home the day it hit the market because it had lots of green flags.
But, as the expression goes, hindsight is 20/20, and there are a couple of things we could have done differently when we were selling and buying, the experts on my real estate team would later tell me.
We did do a lot right — my husband and I both did pre-inspections on our homes, fixing everything that came up before we listed our properties, which cleared the path for easy closings. We also bought our new home when interest rates were high, a strategy that we agreed to because we expect home prices will shoot up when interest rates can drop, and, if that happens, we’ll refinance. We negotiated one free refinance with our lender.
Here are the two mistakes I made that, if I could turn back time, I would have done differently.
1. I Listed My Home Too High
My Realtor gave me a range that varied by $50,000 that he thought my home could sell for, and I opted to go for the higher list price. The problem: At the onset of summer, the buyers market in my metro area surprisingly stalled. I also had pretty high homeowners association dues ($330 a month) so I think when potential buyers were looking at my home compared with others in the price range, they were discouraged by the high monthly HOA dues. Even though my dues covered things like water, trash, and snow removal, it made apples-to-apples price comparisons a little more complicated.
As it turns out, the first week your home is on the market is the most important timeframe in the life of any listing, says Robert Washington, broker with Savvy Buyers Realty in Florida.
“Since it is when the listing will likely get the most views and saves on major listing sites, it is certainly the most important time to get the price right,” Washington told me. “It’s human nature for a seller to want to get the best value for their home and want to price on the high side initially. But the reality is that they could be shooting themselves in the foot if they hit the market with a price that is outside of market expectations.”
Indeed, I ended up dropping the price of my home for $25,000 after a couple of weeks, falling in the middle of the range that my real estate agent expected my home to sell for, and I went under contract soon thereafter. Overall, my home went under contract in about a month, closing a month later, but if it had gone under contract earlier, I would have saved a little bit of money by not paying the mortgage, HOA dues, and utilities on my listed home after I had moved into my new place.
“I would shout from the rooftops if I could … overpricing does not work, period,” says Cindy Schneider A. Kief, licensed associate real estate broker at Corcoran Legends Realty in New York.
That’s partly because you limit the number of showings by pricing out those buyers who might have come if it were in their range, but will not come if it’s a stretch before they walk in the door, she says.
“Human nature generally allows people to spend more when they are in charge — the ‘I really love it’ stretch can sometimes be as high as 10%-20% above the buyer’s initial budget,” Kief says.
2. We Should Have Asked To Leave (And Keep) Appliances and Amenities
Since I was combining homes with my husband, we were pretty generous in what we were willing to leave behind to our buyers. I left a new grill, as well as some already installed curtain rods and a Ring doorbell.
The builders of our home had staged it well, and they left behind some extras for us, like string lights above the bar, extra paint for touch-ups, and some custom ladders in our pantry and our primary bedroom’s closet, which has built-in storage reachable by ladder. But there were a few things we should have asked the sellers of the home we bought to leave behind — and I wish we had offered to do the same for the folks who bought our respective homes.
TV mounts were the one thing I wish we would have offered to leave behind (and also keep at our new house). I have a Samsung Frame TV (which doubles as art) and we used it for staging and took it down a few days before closing. When we removed it, we had lots of last-minute patching and paint touch-ups to do — a ton of work for us, and work that might have been undone within days of the people who bought my home wanted to put their TV in the same spot.
Similarly — or because of that — we wish we would have asked for the mount to stay at our new home because once it was removed, it was harder to find studs to mount a new TV.
What sellers leave behind is negotiable and buyers can look at the seller’s disclosure to glean what they’re planning to leave behind. This document includes details about fixtures, appliances, and window treatments, says Jeremy Smith, a real estate adviser at Engel & Völkers Atlanta. Often, items like alarm systems, cameras, or surround sound systems may also be left behind.
The disclosures can also specify for things like built-in cabinets, shelving, and TV mounts to stay, Smith says. Asking for these items after an agreement is reached often leads to additional costs, as the seller may request payment.
“If certain items, like TV mounts or sound systems, might cause damage if removed, it’s wise for buyers to request them up front in their offer,” he says.
In the end, I doubt it’s possible to ever buy or sell a home without any regrets (small or big), so I’ll count these small would have/could have/should haves as part of the learning curve!
Further Reading
I Tried the 90/90 Rule and My Closet Is Now Fully Decluttered
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