How to Help Sellers Better Understand Buyers
Helping Sellers Understand Why Their Home Isn’t Selling
Selling a house can be an emotional experience for some of your clients. They may have accumulated years, or even decades, of happy memories inside their beloved home. This nostalgia can make it difficult to assess the home from a potential buyer’s perspective.
Sellers can benefit from touring open houses to get ideas on staging and put themselves in the buyer’s mindset. Here are a few ways you can help your sellers better understand what potential buyers are looking for, especially if their home has been sitting on the market for some time.
Emphasize the importance of curb appeal
If a home doesn’t looks great from the outside, few potential buyers will feel inspired to tour the inside. Getting your sellers to devote resources to things like the lawn, exterior paint and other essential outdoor features can make a big difference in how long it takes to sell the home.
Share these home staging tips for better curb appeal with your clients to help them understand the importance of landscaping and outdoor maintenance.
Make sure the house is really clean
Ask your seller to be honest with themselves — is their house clean enough? Potential buyers want to see a home at its best. The home should be neat, tidy and immaculately clean before every showing. Of course it isn’t easy to maintain a show-ready home, but as a real estate expert you know that it’s worth the time and investment. One great solution is to suggest that your seller invest in a cleaning service or storage unit while the home is for sale.
Encourage sellers to attend open houses
One of the best ways to show sellers what buyers are looking for is to encourage them to attend open houses. With any luck, the homes they tour will have excellent curb appeal and thoughtful home staging, which further emphasizes your points about spending time and money making the house look great from the inside out.
To get the most impact out of this tactic, help your clients find listings that are similar to their own home. If they decide to host their own open house, you can help them prepare the home for success (and then use some of these strategies to ignite a bidding war.)
If the home is priced too high, sit down with your seller
Ultimately, the seller decides the final listing price of their home. However, you still have an obligation to educate sellers on the benefits of choosing a fair listing value.
If you have a seller client who is set on trying to get a certain price, even if it’s above fair market value, be sure to follow these tips for taking on overpriced listings.
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