Property experts say there are four property sales mistakes all sellers and agents must avoid
Sydney property management agent Ian Comyns and independent buyers agent Amanda Segers warn that vendors will lose buyers and money if they don’t avoid four common property sales mistakes.
They say that while the majority of sales mistakes are related to price, there are other small slip-ups that can prove costly when trying to sell a home.
Here are their top four property sales mistakes to avoid.
- Overvaluing the property
Segers and Comyns both agree that the most common sales mistake sellers and agents make is overvaluing the property.
Setting a price that buyers find unarguable is the best and easiest way to ensure that a property is sold for what it’s truly worth. Overpricing will always significantly decrease the amount of enquiries about a property.
As the director of inner-west property management firm Exchange Property Sales & Management, Comyns understands the importance of setting the right price at the very beginning.
“At Exchange we make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of what’s been selling around your property and for what kind of dollars,” he says.
“We look at the latest Australian Property Monitors report to get information about the prices homes of a similar size have sold for within a set radius.”
2. Ignoring ‘first offer, best offer’
According to Segers and Comyns, ‘first offer, best offer’ is usually the case when it comes to selling a property.
Comyns provides a recent example to highlight this.
“”I was talking to some people a few weeks ago who put their property on the market in Zetland with another agent,” he says.
“In the first week they got an offer but their agent advised them to turn it down and insisted that they go through to auction.”
“They ended up selling their property at auction for $25,000 less than what they were offered two weeks earlier.”
Segers says that agents and their clients should be prepared to sell before auction. In her experience – working with buyers every day of the week – if a buyer loses interest, they’ll usually go elsewhere.
“If a buyer comes into an auction campaign in its first week, they’ve got to remain interested for another 21 days before the property goes to auction,” she says.
“That’s enough time for them to change their mind about the property or find value elsewhere.”
Comyns says that the lesson for sellers is that “if an offer is presented and it’s in line with the expected price, accept it.”
3. Agents not knowing what a property is worth
Segers has found that a lot of agents appear disinterested in helping buyers or send them confusing messages about price, which only encourages them to walk.
She says that agents need to send a very clear message about price, and that they should be able to back that price up with recent comparable sales and an identified range of unarguable value so that their buyers have confidence in the whole process.
Comyns says that there are ways to pinpoint what a property should be worth.
“At Exchange we print out a list of recent comparable sales that we give to buyers, ordered in price, with the price range we believe the home to be in highlighted for all buyers to see.”
“This way, buyers can always see what we’re comparing the property to and get a good opinion of the right price,” he says.
4. Smell
The final sales mistake is not related to the price of the property – “don’t underestimate the smell of your home,” says Comyns.
He believes that a lot of buyers react in an instinctive or unconscious way to a property and the sense that works the strongest on the unconscious is the smell.
“We always encourage our clients to make sure the property is immaculately clean and smells fresh.”
And while a bun in the oven or coffee grounds roasting may be a little clichéd, making sure the home smells warm and inviting is very important.
To help vendors get a great price when selling their home, Exchange Property Sales & Management have put together a five-step real estate sales plan. Download their FREE Home Selling Guide for all the details on how they can help you sell your home, or find out more information on the Exchange Property Sales & Management website.
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