House selling: A little inconvenience goes a long way

The most important thing to understand when your house is on the market is that you will be inconvenienced.

Showing times must be flexible

There are so many ways you can deter a prospective buyer here. Make showing easy. Such as, "call first then go." If you are a seller, please, make showing easy for prospective buyers. Work from home? Well, camp out at Panera or somewhere else with free WiFi please when you get a call. Inconvenient - yes! But you must leave your house when buyers come. Buyers cannot stand to have a chatty seller walking them through the house talking about how much they love this and that. And you sitting in your office, looking inconvenienced is also a big deterrent to buyers. Buyers are trying to picture their life in the home, not yours. Please do not say "no showings during 1-3, kid napping" or "no showings after 7:00, dinnertime." Again, as a seller you might think "But what about my child's routine? What about my home life?" Well, I am a mom of small children, and know how you never wake a sleeping child, but if you are inconvenienced for a week or two and do it all right, you can get back to your normal routine sooner. When buyers have to try too hard to get into your house, it sends off a very poor impression to both them and their agent. They all think - "If it's this hard to see the house, how inflexible are they going to be on price and terms?" You don't want to send the message that you are stubborn and unmotivated.

If you hold steady to your life exactly the way it is, you are not going to move very fast and you will end up being one of those houses that sits on the market for 100 plus days rather than selling within a 45 (which is the average for Solds in N. Arlington in the past 30 days). One of my sellers this year was a stay at home mom, and she handled this problem brilliantly - she went with her kids and cat to stay in Texas with her parents while her house was on the market and guess what? She was not gone long because we got an offer in the first week on the market! A little bit of inconvenience really pays off when selling your house.

Pets, and smelly houses

I love pets, I have two darling little kitty cats and love dogs and animals in general. But if you have a pet, you probably have an odor problem in your carpeting. I do, my cat has gotten mad at us and peed on our carpet and no we did not rip it out right away. Steam cleaning does not usually get it out enough to not turn off a non pet owner.

I showed two houses this weekend that had this problem: In one house, the plug in air freshener knocked us over when we walked in the door, immediately making us think "what are they masking?" and another had a big ole dog barking in the backyard, and the basement carpet reeked and was in terrible condition. We could not go in the backyard because of the barking dog, and not to mention the fact that the barking dog was really annoying the buyer while trying to visualize their new life in this home.

The best advice for pet owners trying to sell their house - replace all of your carpeting and take the pet to doggie or kitty daycare for the first few weeks. Add it to your home selling budget. It will be better for your pet and for you and your house will sell faster.

These two errors are commonly made by home sellers and can make or break a sale. Yes, price and condition are the most important (and that's for another blog), but these two factors I think are less obvious to more sellers and critical to your success. Arlington, Virginia is a strong seller's market, and if you are sitting on the market for over 100 days, odds are you are making one of these mistakes.