Common mistakes when selling your home

When it comes time to move, sometimes mistakes are made. It is all too easy to fall prey to the stress of moving to another location, picking up and abandoning the house that was once home. In these moments of stress, it is most unfortunate that one cannot experience a lapse in vigilance. To do so would open one up to the pitfalls of the real estate game, causing the seller to lose out on hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of dollars. To sell ones home, one must take on the mantle of a savvy realtor. Listed below are 5 common mistakes that make the act of putting on a realtor suit cumbersome and inconvenient.

1. NOT UTILIZING RESOURCES
Thanks to the double-edged sword known as the tech boom, almost every task in life has been made easier thanks to digital innovations. The old standbys such as Craigslist are available, of course, but sites like those are more suited for selling a bicycle or a flatscreen TV. Thankfully, there are specialized real estate sites that make it exponentially easier to reach out to the sea of people looking for a new place to call home for however long they wish. Choosing not to utilize these sites may lead to a lone local newspaper ad collecting dust for much longer than desired.

2. LACKING MATERIALS
In this next step on the transformation to realtor, one must maintain a certain level of professionalism that belies a lack thereof. The biggest mistake new realtors make is letting the client know that they're in unfamiliar territory. During the initial meeting, professional touches such as ready-to-read resources on the property as well as minutiae such as business cards instill a certain level of trust in the prospective buyer. This process is a shrewd practice, as it familiarizes a stranger with an unfamiliar home and leaves them with some sort of connection that they would have otherwise missed in their quest to find a home.

3. BEING TONE-DEAF TO THE MARKET
Location is key, and it has long been known as such when it comes to determining the success of any business worth its salt. It is important to have awareness and knowledge of the area surrounding the house. While areas such as San Francisco and New York will always have well to do people waiting to snatch up a house for a couple million dollars, less developed areas and cities will require a greater degree of patience and finesse. Don't go in expecting a quick sale when the surrounding city is in the middle of a housing crisis.

4. LACK OF CONFIDENCE
This may seem like a retread of one of the previous points, but having a confident demeanor cannot be stressed enough. Clients are like dogs, but with less teeth. They can smell fear, they can smell uncertainty and instead of a physical bite they will leave a bite out of ones wallet with time as the wasted currency. One must have faith in their house, and adequately express that faith in order to sell it. There is nothing that turns a prospective buyer off like a realtor that seems like they have any sort of doubts about this home that they are trying to sell.

5. LACK OF TENACITY
Confidence, however, is quit different from tenacity or persistence. It is easy to be confident for the first meeting with a client. Anyone can be confident for half an hour. But it is equally important to be ready to do the song and dance all over again, an indefinite number of times before the pieces of the puzzle finally click. One must be resilient, and be able to direct that same ray of confidence and faith inwardly unto oneself. One must be ready to smile in the face of defeat, in anticipation of victory the next day.

To reiterate, the real estate world can be hectic. Fortunately, homeowners can rest easy knowing that while they may have to deal with this hassle one time, there are people out there that do this for a living. Indeed, it seems certain blessings must be counted.