6 Key Things Not to Do When Selling Your Home

If you are like most people, you’ve read article after article about what you should do when selling your home . Equally important to what you should do when selling your home is what you must avoid. There are six key things you want to avoid when selling your home.

Don’t Display Your Day to Day Life

Your home may have worked perfectly for you the way it is set up and decorated. You may automatically assume that the same template you’ve developed for your home works for anyone who may be interested in purchasing your residence. In fact, that is not the case.

When a prospective buyer enters your residence, he or she needs to be able to imagine the home as if he or she is living in it. If there is too much clutter, too much evidence of your own day to day live, that will become difficult, if not impossible, for a prospective buyer to accomplish.

Therefore you cannot leave your residence in state that overwhelms a person on how you have gone about living in the property. Thus, you need to eliminate a good deal of what you have displayed on tables and so forth. You need to put away the personal items that make your house a home for you, but don’t have the same pull with a prospective buyer.

Don’t Raise Red Flags

When it comes to selling your home, you must not leave red flags waving. If there are even small defects that are obvious in your home, deal with them before you open the doors to prospective buyers.

For example, if there are evident defects in the carpeting in a room, even if they are just due to normal wear and tear, you need to address those before the house goes on the market. Small defects can amount to red flags among many prospective buyers. They will worry that if obvious small defects exist, are there bigger problems with a property that are not obvious.

Don’t Be Negative

You must never be negative about anything at your property when you are visiting with a prospective buyer. Of course, you do need to disclose whatever is required by law, good or bad. But, that doesn’t mean that you need to make generalized negative comments about the residence in front of a possible buyer.

This includes even making statements like you decided to move because the house was too small or any type of comment like that. These types of statements and unnecessary and are likely to prove to be unhelpful.

Don’t Carpet the Bathroom

The bathroom and kitchen are two rooms in your residence that a purchaser really does buy in a decorated and complete condition. Thus, it is very important that the bathroom make the best possible presentation possible. The bathroom must not be in such a condition that a prospective buyer will believe he or she needs to immediately go to work on changing it if the house is purchased.

One key step in this regard is not to have a carpeted bathroom. The vast majority of people do not want carpet in the bathroom. They oftentimes equate a carpeted bathroom with dampness and odors.

Related: 5 Essential Ways to Keep Your Finances on Track

Don’t Have Pets Around

Undoubtedly, your pets are part of your family. Understanding this reality, you nonetheless cannot have your pets around when a prospective buyer is going to touring the property.

Indeed, you need to take this admonition a step further. You can’t have anything that indicates the presence of a pet around when a possible buyer is going to be visiting the home.

Some staging experts contend that you should send your dog, cat, or other pets somewhere else while the house is on the market. This is an extreme position and is not a realistic approach to addressing the issue of pets in your home when the property goes on the market.

If you are like many people, you may have a room in your house that is more for storage than anything else, a proverbial junk room. Don’t leave that as wasted space when the house goes on the market.

Find another location for the junk you’ve let pile up in the spare room. Turn that space into something else. For example, redecorate it into a simple home office or guest bedroom. You’ll want a potential buyer to see how each room in the residence does have a productive use.