There are some common mistakes sellers and Realtors make when selling a home. Here are 5 of them, and suggestions on how to avoid them so you can get top dollar for your home sale.

1. Mistake #1: Poor Pictures

Your home may be beautiful, and have many wonderful features, but your home is really only as good as the pictures capture. Since more than 90% of people find a home online, your pictures will tell the story.

It is vital for a Realtor to have sufficient photography equipment, skills and know-how, or hire a service that can do this for you, in order to capture your home sufficiently.

Good pictures of a home also reduce the amount of unnecessary showings. If people can grasp the layout of your home online first, they can make the right decision if they should set up a showing or not. This keeps you and potential buyers from wasting time.

I have great equipment and skill at capturing pictures of homes, and also utilize some incredible photography services who are at the top of their field for select homes: services like spacecrafting and fly-over drone videos.

2. Mistake #2: Not Marketing Online

Their is an old school way of doing real estate marketing, and their is a clear way that people find and buy homes today: online. More than 90% of people find their next home online. It would be a wasteful mistake to spend a lot of money marketing in print, and it would be a mistake to hire a Realtor who doesn't understand the internet very well.

Younger Realtors, who have proven track records of dozens of transactions per year, and happy, satisfied clients are going to be your best bet - because they have the experience, and they know how to show your home online. They grew up speaking "internet," and it is easily a second language for most of them. 

Older Realtors are great, as long as they also have a proven track record of transactions, and show that they know their stuff when it comes to being a tech-savvy agent online. Just be careful for imposters, because most Realtors are great salespeople, and could sell premium honey to bees.

3. Mistake #3: Using an Online Real Estate Service

Because buying or selling a home is one of the most important and significant transactions you will ever make in life, the stakes are too high to not have an expert by your side.

We have a friend who used an online real estate service, thinking they wouldn't have to deal with the stress of working with a person, since they had already moved out of town. They were selling a beautiful property worth several million dollars. Month-after-month went by, which eventually grew into years of their home sitting on the market, but they became paralyzed to switch to an actual agent vs. their online service. Tragic-ly, the home fell into foreclosure, and all was lost.

Again, this is too important a part of your life to not have a trustworthy expert by your side that you meet with in person.

4. Mistake #4: Pricing Your Home Too High 

A good Realtor can research homes in your area, and tell you precisely what your home needs to be listed for to sell quickly. 

The longer a home sits on the market, the more it looks like an unattractive listing. This is why it important to price appropriately right out of the gate.

One significant benefit of pricing competitively for the market, it that it increases the number of potential buyers and showings, which can often result in multiple offers, driving up the price past what you would've hoped to list your home for in the first place. 

Find a trustworthy Realtor, and trust their expertise on pricing. Don't just push your agenda, truly listen for their wisdom on pricing - find a good middle ground between your financial needs, how soon you would like to move, and what the market comparisons are calling for. 

5. Mistake #5: Using Too Small a Brokerage

It matters how many other Realtors are in your agent's brokerage. The more Realtors, the more successful their sales training, and cutting edge their company. Having more experts in the same room, multiplies expertise and knowledge of the current market.

I am probably biased because I come from two of the most successful real estate brokerages in the world - Re/Max Results in the Twin Cities, and Re/Max Palm Realty in Southwest Florida. Both of my brokerages have received “brokerage of the year” multiple times, and have more than a thousand agents and dozens of offices between them.

The breadth of these companies gives our HQ a keen edge on what is working today. It also gives each Realtor within the company a massive advantage - we can promote a new listing to thousands of potential clients, represented by all of the many Realtors within our company. The power and ease of this cannot be understated. Real estate companies with just a few agents, have nowhere near that kind of marketing power, nor the resources to be on the cutting edge of the field. 

Michelle Brown is one of the most beloved Realtors in the Twin Cities, now serving Southwest Florida as well. She is great to work with, and the expert you need to stress less and get the best deal, so you can focus on the excitement of a new home, and maximize your life. Get in touch.