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Douglas Trudeau , Assoc. Broker
Prudential Foothills Real Estate
64 N. Harrison Road, Suite 160
Tucson , AZ 85748
Mobile: 520-954-2209
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Selling Your Home? - 10 Ways To Keep Your Home From Selling

10 Ways To Keep a Home From Selling, or maybe even keep buyers from wanting to see the house. We have all heard the 10 Tips For Selling a Home, 10 Tips For Staging a home, and others. Here are tips on what not to do.

Let the weeds grow high enough to hide the trash in the front yard. If buyers can’t see the trash they won’t know its there. Who cares about first impression. “I’ll get what I want for my house because I want it.”
Keep lots of clutter by the front door. If you leave a lot of junk there the buyer will have to slow down and see the house. For that matter slow the buyers down through the whole house. Leave lots of clutter, trash, dirty clothes and garbage everywhere. Dirty clothes and garbage add character.
Leave lots of dirt and dust on ledges and corners. It hides the chipping paint underneath. If it’s clean the buyer may get scared and think they are in a hospital. Don’t clean till you drop, leave dirt till you drop.
Leave furniture turned over, with broken legs, or facing in different directions. Make sure that love seat is covering the hole in the wall from the kids indoor midnight tackle football game. Trash is good, holes are bad.
Challenge the buyer. Let them guess what the room is for. Just because it has a closet doesn’t mean its a bedroom. You can rebuild your quad in that room. After all its yours. Oops, now that the quad’s all together how do we get it out the door?
If its broken, leave it. Let the buyer fix it if they want it fixed.
Leave the old appliances. They add character to the house. Especially if they don’t work. Save your money for the next house.
Cover the chipping, pealing paint on the walls with lots of personal pictures. The more the merrier.
Store boxes in the hallway. The buyer’s know you’re moving, why hide it?
Tell your friends to keep their opinions to themselves. You’re the seller, you know better than everyone else what to do to sell your home.

Bonus Points:

Leave the dirty dishes in the sink. The buyers know what a sink looks like.
Leave the mouse traps around the house to show that you are working on the problem.

This is the reverse side of what we do and what we as Realtors recommend. We would never tell our Sellers to do any of this. Sometimes though you have to be different to get the point across. It reminds me of the 6 P’s…Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Planning ahead helps to prevent mistakes or being unprepared. Those first 30 days are so crucial. You cannot get them back. Sellers who are prepared for that first buyer to come in the door before the ink dries on the listing contract have an advantage.

Know what buyers have said by researching what homes have SOLD for, not what others are asking. I always respond with, “Have they sold their home for that price yet? If they haven’t why would you want to copy their failure?” The truth is in what has SOLD. In a tough market, that may even be too much. Talk to your Realtor to make an informed decision.

So have fun, laugh, and give me a call when you are ready. I’ll help you avoid these mistakes. If you are in or near Tucson, I’ll personally take care of you. If you are outside Tucson, I will help you find a competent Realtor to look out for your best interest.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Tucson Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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