5 Rookie Mistakes Knoxville Sellers Often Make (& How To Avoid Them)

Selling your Knoxville home isn’t easy.

Setting the price.

Getting it staged to sell.

And, picking the right agent, are just a few of the decisions that you have to make when you sell your Knoxville home.

If you’re not careful, there is a lot that can go wrong when selling your home. Don’t make these rookie mistakes when selling your home.

Hiring A Freak Off The Street

There is an art to selling a Knoxville home. Not every realtor specializes in selling homes. And, not every realtor comes armed with the tools to help you sell your home fast.

You may love the fabulous realtor that sold you your house. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean they should be the one to list your home.

Before signing a realtor to list your home, do a bit of research to ensure the realtor is has the following qualities:

• Strong knowledge of your market area
• Marketing plan
• Tried and true strategies to market your home
• Ability to take professional level pictures (or knows someone who can)
• Multiple platforms to market your home

Selling your Knoxville home is more than your realtor sticking a sign in the yard and putting the house up on the MLS. A realtor with experience homes selling homes in your area will make a huge difference. They will know the marketing and pricing strategies to help get your home sold fast.

Using A Band-Aid To Cover A Bullet Wound

If you’re serious about selling your home, it’s important that your home is market ready for potential buyers.

If you cut corners, buyers will be able to tell that you’ve done so. Ignoring potential issues like stains on your carpet, marks on your walls, and leaky faucets are just a few of the items that buyers will spot. They will also wonder what other potential problems you’ve ignored in your home.

Before putting your home on the market, it can be important to take a close look at your home. Take care of doing the simple fixes like getting your carpet cleaned and touching up paint.

If you’re concerned about any potential selling issues with your home, it can also be helpful to come have your realtor take a look. Realtors are able to identify potential selling issues and let you know what may need to be done to sell your home.

Are You Listening?!

You love your home. It’s understandable. You’ve spent countless years making memories there, so no one blames you if you let emotions take control when it comes to pricing your home.

Still, time and time again, your realtor has experience successfully pricing homes so they sell for the best price possible.

When it comes time to price your home, it’s important to take what your realtor has to heart. Your realtor will look at homes that are for sale in your area or that have sold recently in your area to recommend a price for your home.

These pricing recommendations are based on facts, not emotions. When you hear the price that your realtor recommends, you may feel like your home is special and should be priced for more. No one blames you, it’s a common response for many sellers.

Just don’t allow yourself to be controlled by emotions, it can significantly hinder your ability to sell your home quickly. Buyers are not going to waste time looking at homes they feel like are overpriced. Eventually, you’ll be forced to drop your price to get an offer, so it’s best to do it from the very beginning.

Refusing To Negotiate

It can be pretty offensive to get a lowball offer.

If you’re like most sellers, you may want to outright reject the offer from the start. After all, you feel offended and don’t want to work with a buyer who can be gutsy enough to write such a low offer on your beloved home.

Before you allow yourself to quickly dismiss an offer, it’s important to consider that many lowball offers can be worked into respectable offers for both parties. Some buyers will go in with a lowball offer to see how a seller reacts. It can be important to try and see if an offer is workable before outright rejecting it. If you can’t get an offer that works out, you don’t have to agree to it.

If you don’t see how something works out, you may be kicking yourself later on. Your house may spend more time on the market and you may end up accepting an even lower offer.

Are You Letting Your Feelings Get Hurt Too Easily?

Showing feedback is very, very important when selling your Knoxville home.

But, that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. When you get negative feedback, it can be easy enough to think that a buyer doesn’t know what they’re talking about or that they’re just not able to appreciate your fabulous home.

And yet, this feedback is coming from a living, breathing buyer.  This buyer has walked through other homes in your price range and likely a similar area, so their feedback can be very important. It’s not what your neighbor, friend, or family member has to say about your home, but someone who has been out there looking at homes. You can’t get a better, more honest opinion about your home than that.

As you hear feedback, take it with a grain of salt and give it the necessary opinion. If one buyer says your home is overpriced, that’s one thing. But, as you hear to time and time again, it may be something to consider.

Are you thinking about selling your Knoxville home this year? If so, do not hesitate to give us a call. Rick can be reached at 865-696-9002 or via email at [email protected]. Kati can be reached at 865-696-1888 or via email at [email protected].