Five Big Mistakes People Make When Getting
Their Home Ready for a Sale

1. Personalized Renovations

What could be better than a personalized renovation? You spend a bunch of money you don’t have to impress someone you don’t know in the hopes that they will buy the renovation of your dreams and launch your property into the stratosphere with an over-asking price before it is even listed; what a dream. There are a number of things you can do to your home prior to selling to spruce up the place to entice the next person not to try to haggle on the price or put in conditions. If your place really needs a renovation, it might serve you well to get the place renovated, but doing it with only your personal taste in mind doesn’t usually work.

The number of times I see people buy a place that has just been renovated, rip out everything, and start again tells me that renovating to try and increase your sales price is not a good idea unless you consult your professionals. By professionals, I mean other people who have experience, knowing what is hot and what is not as well as consulting with your agent or whomever is planning on selling this place for you. This does not mean you should not renovate with your own taste in mind before you sell. If you plan to sell in 2 to 5 years, go ahead and renovate today. If the place is out of date and you need to do a renovation anyway you might as well enjoy it before you sell. Who knows you might even like it so much that you don’t sell at all. But give yourself some time to enjoy it and get your moneys worth just in case the new person doesn’t appreciate your taste.

There are a lot of people out there who over-renovate only to find out the market doesn’t care. Most of my clients that are planning to stay for 15 or 20 years can do completely custom renovations, including getting rid of bedrooms to make them into closets or any other options that might seem crazy because they will enjoy the space themselves for long enough that the next person can do their renovation however they like.

2. Selling the House = Not Having to Maintain it

This just falls under the category of laziness, and I never understand it, but when someone plans on selling their house, they always stop maintaining it. That's like being single and deciding that this is a good time to stop going to the gym or wearing make-up because if people don't like you for you, then to hell with them. This is the time you want to impress the person who is going to buy your place, not push them away because they wonder what else you haven't done. So many times, I see people selling their place, and the grass is 8 inches or a foot tall, and they live in complete darkness because they haven't changed a lightbulb in the last five years. If this is your style, I completely understand. I don't like cutting my grass either but pretend you do, and you'll make a couple of extra bucks on the appeal. No amount of exterior paint can help you sell your house if it looks like you don't care about the yard.

3. Half Measure Fixes

OMG, the amount of times I see people doing half-measure fixes makes me laugh so much. Do people really expect that you didn’t notice the fact that they just painted only one spot on the wall or the ceiling or that you just changed one spot on the floor so they wouldn’t see that burn mark? This is literally like spilling wine on your couch cushions and then reupholstering only one cushion instead of both because no one will notice the difference. Of course, they will. And they will wonder what the heck happened there and why you had to fix it – Was there a leak that I should know about? The best, by far, is the three or four coloured shingles on your roof. Clearly, you have done some work on your roof. How long was the roof leaking? Is this an insulation problem, an animal problem, or potentially a mold problem? Who knows? Sorry, I guess this is a sensitive topic for me. Lol, I’m getting fired up. Just thinking about it.

4. Not Staging

Not staging, I believe, is probably the biggest mistake you can make. When I first got into this industry, I worked with a fantastic stager who would make small improvements. It could be a new countertop or a backsplash, a paint job, or even just bringing in some furniture and some decor. In most cases, your stuff won’t sell the place and having your personal stuff everywhere will just wind up looking like clutter. Sometimes, your agent will include staging complementary, or sometimes, it will be an additional line item. Regardless, do it anyway. I’m sure the amount of money lost by not doing it is huge.

5. Take Their Advice

The last and most important thing I would say is that if you were going to pay professionals in any field, including real estate, this could also mean your lawyer in the transaction if you were paying for their advice. They have your best interest at heart, so take their advice. There are so many times that this happens while we are doing our jobs, and I am not always in a conversation with somebody looking to sell, but someone hires us as their professional who has their best interest in mind, and they deliberately choose to ignore our years of experience and advice. I always wonder why they are wasting money or if they should’ve hired someone, they actually respected enough to give them advice worth listening to.

If you steer clear of these common pitfalls, you will sell your home, you will sell it quickly, and you will make more as a result than you would’ve otherwise.