You have put your home up for sale or for rent, on your own or through a real estate agency, but you are not receiving the answer you wanted... What is happening? What goes through your head in those moments?
"Joo, but if my house is great, anyone would want to live here, I don't know why no one calls or they don't stop making me low offers"
Or perhaps "perhaps the commercial has forgotten to put the ad and that's why no one calls me".
It is useless to blame the agent, let alone lose money putting a value much lower than what your house really costs. Behind all this, when you see that the phone does not ring, in 99% of cases, these 5 errors that prevent you from selling or renting your home. Take note. How many are you committing?
In most cases you will hire an expert in the real estate sector who will advise you on the value of your property. In this case, you should pay attention to it. On many occasions, our emotions and relationship with the house do not allow us to accept that it does not have the price we would like, but if we value it more than adequately, our chances of receiving visits and offers will plummet.
To get the market value right, we will study similar homes in the area, our direct competition, the services found in the environment (schools, transportation, health center, green areas), the square meters, the age of the home and its current state everything influences.
In addition, the importance of energy savings depending on the facilities, the enclosures, your heating system, is an increasingly important factor for buyers or tenants that you cannot ignore. Don't be skimpy and decide not to pay for the certificate. If it does not appear in your ads, it will give you food for thought, and mainly in the negative.
All these factors are responsible for adjusting the price of our property and we must count on them.
You know that concept of empathy that is so fashionable right now? Well, it's time to put it into practice.
We have to see our home as a product, and the product has to attract attention and enter the eye of potential buyers, not ours. The future owner is looking for a home where he can invest his savings and he wants it to be perfect, so he will carefully observe every inch of the house and will be able to see defects or elements that he does not like. For this reason, we must detach ourselves a bit from our home and think like the future client.
What customer profile is going to settle in my house? What needs does it have? Does my home meet them? What can I do to make it comply? What would you like to find?
The answer to the last question is simple: everything is perfect, clean, arranged with a comfortable, bright, fresh, up-to-date aspect… and a long etcetera.
This is a consequence of the previous error. When we decide to buy a car, how do they show it to us at the dealership? clean, spotless, smells new, well lit. We must do the same with our home.
Although we are delighted with everything that surrounds us in our home, and we have an emotional bond with the sofa rugs, the family lamp, our children's stuffed animals, travel memories, wedding photos or communion... and a very long etcetera, the future owner clearly does NOT have that link with any of that. In fact, in 90% of the cases, it will generate negative feelings that encourage you to decide "this house is not for me" or it will make you uncomfortable even visiting the house.
For this reason, we cannot present the house with all our things, although sometimes it is a bit difficult if we continue to live in it, but we must make an effort. If not, we prevent the client from visualizing the potential of the home, he will only see your things and will not be able to get used to the idea.
Outdated furniture, personal decoration, excessive objects, too personal colors on walls and textiles, and not to mention everyday objects such as mops or cleaning products, used towels, toothbrush, your daughter's princess quilt or blanket leopard, all out.
We may be doing all of the above points right but screwing everything up at the last minute.
Attention: the photographs are the showcase of your home. If the photographs do not highlight the positive aspects of your house, no one is going to call you, let alone visit the house in person.
Many homes with a good price, and well presented, do not pass the first screening because the photos are too bad and give the wrong image. It takes us 2 seconds to unconsciously decide what we like and what we don't like and there are no second chances for a first impression, especially in the age of images and networks. Your ad on real estate portals may have many visits and very few contacts. If so, there is something you are not doing right.
Some keys: No crooked, blurry or dark photos. If your home is bright you have to show it in the photos, nobody wants to live in a cave. Turn on all the lights or find the right time when you think everything looks the best. You can change a bulb and put more power or another tone so that the photos do not come out too dark or orange.
If the photos are taken by your real estate agent, review the images they have taken and decide if you want them to repeat them, after all, it is your home that is selling and it deserves the best possible appearance and if you take them, invest some time in doing it, place everything before shooting, take care of the light and what you focus on.
Finally, show your home thinking about what the buyer or tenant wants to see where you can show the space of each room to the maximum.
You have put your house up for sale, you have looked a little on the internet and surely Home Staging has come up in some search and you have said: “I don't need this”, “This is surely very expensive”, “I can also put it a little pretty”…. and you may be making the last mistake on our list.
When we sell or rent our home we are not objective with the image it projects. Many times, even the real estate agent is not going to tell you things like, "you can't show this like that", "you should remove or put this piece of furniture", to avoid confrontations.
For this reason, you need an expert to help you prepare your home as a product with an image marketing plan, so that it can be liked by the greatest number of potential customers, through depersonalization, redistribution, cleaning, and placement of elements that Give that image you need to stand out from similar properties in the area.
Finally, a good photographic report, as we have seen before, will be the final showcase and the first impression that potential buyers or tenants will have, which Home Staging is also responsible for.
It is not decoration, it is not customization, it is marketing together with a quality photographic report. Each house is a new concrete project in which we think about who the client can be or who we want it to be in order to adapt its image to this market segment that interests us. Later, changes are made in the distribution to better present the rooms spatially, in the lighting, it is emptied if necessary, a prop made up of furniture and decoration appropriate to our objective is selected in a personalized way for the house, with a color palette and composition of images and spaces thought, and a long etc.
Do not miss the opportunity to get in touch with a Home Staging professional in your area and ask about their rates without obligation and without fear, the investment may be much less than you may think and the benefits are many.
You can also ask your real estate agency if they offer the service or have a Home Stager that collaborates with them. If it is an up-to-date company in its sector, it should have it.
To the question we asked at the beginning, how many mistakes are you making? If your answer is Zero, you are an expert in real estate marketing and you have a good eye for selling your house, surely you will succeed. Otherwise, you need to apply certain changes if you don't want to have to request price drops or get stuck for months and months without results.
What are you waiting for to get started?
