3 key emotions around selling property and how it can cost you

It is important to real­ise that listing your prop­erty for sale will prob­ably be one of the largest mon­et­ary trans­ac­tions you will ever be part of.

When selling your property you should take it seriously and choosing an agent should be done carefully, so do your research.   

One of the biggest things to keep in mind is to not let your emotions overtake you while you are in the process of selling your home, as you might allow yourself to make an unnecessary hasty decision, which could cost you money.

It is essen­tial to sep­ar­ate your love/emotion for your home and start look­ing at it as Real Estate.

This one tip could save a lot of heartache, stress and most of all THOUSANDS of good old aus­sie dollars.

Here are sev­eral guidelines to help you, the home seller, avoid mak­ing decisions based on your emotions:

1. Avoid pri­cing your home — based on where YOU find value

It is every seller’s dream to get top dol­lar for his or her prop­erty, and sure it is pos­sible, how­ever find­ing a buyer who is will­ing to pay above mar­ket value for fea­tures that you value is not feas­ible if they don’t value those same things. 

Home sellers tend to put a high price on their home due to their emo­tional attach­ments which is com­pletely under­stand­able.

Buy­ers on the other hand do not yet have this emo­tional con­nec­tion to the home and will base their value of the home in com­par­ison to oth­ers they have seen and what it offers them.

It is cru­cial to com­pre­hend as early as pos­sible that your home is placed on the mar­ket in COMPETITION and not ISOLATION.

If your prop­erty is priced above mar­ket value it becomes a ping pong table as it will attract buy­ers due to its stun­ning fea­tures and then bounce them off to sim­ilar prop­er­ties that are priced in line with mar­ket value.

It can be a chal­len­ging situ­ation to be in, and if you decide to hold out for the highest price, you will likely face one of two res­ults – you could find it dif­fi­cult to move on, or the poten­tial buy­ers may think there is some­thing wrong with your prop­erty.

Then buy­ers may then end up offer­ing at lower levels as time passes by.

Think about it, if you were a buyer and you had seen a home that has come on the mar­ket for a high price which has then had to lower that price every 2 weeks for 2 months, what would your opin­ion of that home be….? 

We see this all the time in selling real estate and it is more com­mon than you think.

I’m sure you can already think of sev­eral examples of prop­er­ties like this that you have seen..

The longer the prop­erty sits on the mar­ket, the lower the offers tend to get.

Typ­ic­ally, when a prop­erty is released to the mar­ket, it will receive the most expos­ure and interest in the first two weeks.

Buy­ers who have been search­ing for a home will pos­sibly view any new homes that appear on the mar­ket. If the price is right, you will get bucket loads of people to your open home, which is the per­fect storm for a well-informed buyer cre­at­ing an emo­tional attach­ment with your home.

It is at this point the fear of loss kicks in, with all the buy­ers at your open home this quickly breeds com­pet­i­tion which we then use in your favour in order to secure the best price for your home.

2. Sellers attend­ing at the open house – This will make it dif­fi­cult for buy­ers to be open and honest

There are many reas­ons why you would prob­ably want to make an appear­ance at the open house. 

How­ever, being there could make it dif­fi­cult for the poten­tial buy­ers to be hon­est about their opin­ions on your house which is what you want!

Whenever we start work­ing on a new prop­erty going on the mar­ket, we explain to our sellers why it is not a good idea that you are present dur­ing an open house.

It is a lot easier to obtain hon­est opin­ions from poten­tial buy­ers when the owner is not around.

It also cre­ates a pos­sib­il­ity that a buyer may approach you in order to nego­ti­ate you down on the price.

Leave it up to your real estate agent to do their job, and trust them when they give you advice, it is out of many years of experience.

3. Tak­ing poten­tial buy­ers’ com­ments per­son­ally – bear in mind that neg­at­ive feed­back is good feedback

As the homeowner, you are likely to take it per­son­ally when buy­ers point out every pos­sible flaw con­cern­ing your home.

You may think that each view or com­ment is a com­plaint against how you have main­tained your home over time, which is just nat­ural.

The truth is that each obser­va­tion from the buy­ers, while it can be harsh at times, has noth­ing to do with you, as the home seller.

There­fore, you need not take any­thing they say per­son­ally. 

There have been cases where sellers declined some offers, because they took things too per­son­ally after receiv­ing neg­at­ive com­ments about their home.

While it is some­times easy to take things per­son­ally when selling some­thing that you own, doing so should be avoided as far as pos­sible.

As soon as you decide to put your home on the mar­ket, it is essen­tial to start detach­ing your­self from it on an emo­tional level.

Real estate trans­ac­tions are often aggress­ive and chal­len­ging given that sellers want the highest price, while the buy­ers want the low­est price possible.

For all the above men­tioned reas­ons, home sellers should use exper­i­enced and reput­able real estate agents to pro­tect them from the entire pro­cess (this is how good agents earn their money).

Real estate agents are able to fil­ter rel­ev­ant inform­a­tion, dis­tin­guish the genu­ine buy­ers form the tyre kick­ers and meet with the buy­ers only when they have received a ser­i­ous offer.

This helps take the stress and emo­tional drain that hap­pens dur­ing this pro­cess (believe me this can become an emo­tional roller coaster all in one day, just ask any agent).

————————Warn­ing!——————

Emo­tional things to be aware of as a seller:

• Early bids can often spook you and make you think that you under-priced your property.

• The prop­erty is cor­rectly priced when an early offer is close to the ask­ing price, as long as the ask­ing price is sim­ilar to the mar­ket price.

It is coun­ter­pro­duct­ive to wait for a bet­ter offer, as it can lead to a property lan­guish­ing on the market.

• Nego­ti­ations will nor­mally include buy­ers point­ing out each flaw of your property. 

While it is certainly disheartening to hear the comments, it is a very a good sign.

It typically means that the buyers are serious about the property.

It is essential that you accept that there will sometimes be criticism and recog­nises it as a valuable negotiating tool.

At the same time, you should avoid tak­ing it too per­son­ally and pre­vent your­self from walk­ing away from a pro­spect­ive sale due to any type of emo­tional reac­tions that you may have.

As real estate agents it is our job to medi­ate the entire selling pro­cess so that it is as smooth and com­fort­able for you as pos­sible, how­ever as an owner we under­stand that you are selling what may be your greatest asset and there­fore there will be emo­tions and chal­lenges you will have to face.

That’s why we insist on work­ing as a team with our vendors to achieve a com­mon goal and share the load for the jour­ney to come.

About Jhai Mitchell Jhai is the Internet Marketing Business Development Manager for Elders Toongabbie and Kings Langley. He has been consistently quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald and Real Estate Business online. Visit his blog at www.realestatesevenhillsnews.com.au