The Property Line: Avoid These Costly Home Selling Mistakes

It's a seller's market in real estate, which means that buyers have much to feel anxious about. But sellers have reasons to lose sleep, too. What if they make an expensive mistake?

It's easy to find lists of common homebuying mistakes, but home selling errors are harder to describe. They're subtle, often involving mindset and attitude.

Here are six home selling mistakes and how to avoid them.

Thinking of it as your home

Even if you still sleep and shower in your house while it's on the market, it’s not really yours anymore.

"A mistake is still thinking that their home is a home when they're putting it on the market for sale. It is now a product," says Terri Robinson, a real estate agent with Re/Max Select Properties, in Ashburn, Virginia.

Part of Robinson's job is persuading sellers to showcase the house to appeal to the masses, the way a model home in a new housing development is designed to do, she says.

Ideally, she says, home staging will:

• Depersonalize the property "so that persons are not getting enamored with your baseball collection, but they're enamored with the house."

• Make the dwelling a blank slate so buyers can imagine putting their own imprint on it: "That wonderful mauve that you put on the walls of the living room may not be as appealing a product to potential buyers."

Robinson believes some buyers will continue to prize adaptable spaces that can be set up as bedrooms, dens, offices or for remote learning, so it might be advantageous "to lightly stage a home to show a place that can be an office space — if you don't have a dedicated office in your home."

Selling as-is without an inspection

You're more likely to sell your home as-is, without paying for repairs or renovations, when you're upfront about its condition.

Sherry Chen, a San Diego-based Realtor with the Kappel Realty Group at Compass, recommends getting an inspection before you list the home. Share the report with prospective buyers "so then there's no surprises during escrow. We can tell them, 'Hey, offer a price based on these issues that the home has.'"

Smart buyers will get their own inspection reports. If your inspector did a thorough job, the subsequent inspections shouldn't uncover anything major. "If we do end up accepting an offer, they can't really tell us, 'Hey, I want a $10,000 credit for this item that I already knew about,'" Chen says.