In this episode of the At Home Podcast, Jenni and Monique draw upon their years of experience as listing agents and talk about some major pitfalls they see sellers making when listing their homes. From failing to make minor repairs to shadowy iPhone photos to leaving a humid bathroom or the smells of cooking just before a showing, they have seen it all. The bottom line? Thoughtful preparation and maintenance of your home, while it’s on the market, can, and likely will, make a huge financial difference in the sale of your home.
MONIQUE “Welcome to the At Home with Monique & Jenni Podcast where we discuss all the ways investing in real estate can help create the life that you want to be living. I’m Monique. “
JENNI “And I’m Jenni.”
MONIQUE “Alright, today we want to talk about how to properly prepare a home for sale and what you can do to make it look its best and to get the best results. And also what mistakes people make when they’re listing their home.”
JENNI “Yeah so one of the biggest mistakes in my opinion, and I saw this last week at a showing, I went to a home, it was an amazing location, a mid-century modern home, that was dated but with a little bit of staging, like modern staging, professional photos, it really could have looked almost 100% better. The photos that were online made it look dark and unappealing and that means that buyers when they’re clicking on things, or even their agents, they’re just kind of like, ‘Oh, nope, that one doesn’t work.’.”
MONIQUE “Well then when they drop the price and it pops back up again, they’re just like, oh, this one’s dated and yucky, and who cares? So literally, you blow it if you don’t get it right from day one.”
JENNI “Exactly, we see iPhone photos a lot, especially right now, I think people are hesitant to spend money on photos. We include professional photos for all of our listings, that’s something we pay for. But I think sellers and maybe even agents are afraid to spend that money right now. And the person that I was showing that home to said that their partner didn’t even want to come to tour the home because the photos were so bad. When we both got into this house and all we could see was potential, like things that could be changed, such as paint, and furniture would make the house so amazing. And so I feel like that’s a story of really dropping the ball. Thinking that a house is outdated or that the buyers will just update it anyway so why bother?”
MONIQUE “I completely agree, for example, it was almost two years ago now if you remember, there was this beautiful mid-century modern home up in the high Avenues of Salt Lake City that we sold. It was definitely dated, it was almost completely original from 1966 or somewhere in there. The space was beautiful, it had 270-degree views, it had floor-to-ceiling windows, and it was just an incredible home. So, what we did is we took down the 50-year-old curtains that looked gross, and we had to deep clean. We staged it with really beautiful modern furniture and it just completely changed the look of the home. And, you know, before we went on the market and before we staged, there was a neighbor who wanted to purchase the home for about a million dollars and they opted out and decided not to buy it. We literally had lines of people go through that home because it was so amazing once we put it on the market. And someone ended up paying a million and a half, a half million dollars above the asking price because the product was presented and marketed correctly. So it’s just incredible what the correct staging and cleaning and preparation will do.”
JENNI “Yeah, I remember going into that property the first time and knowing it was a cool property but there were these heavy dark curtains over those big beautiful windows and it was dusty and they used to smoke inside and there was some furniture and random stuff that needed to come out. We spent well under $10,000 for everything and the result of that investment was phenomenal. I remember agents talking about that listing and saying, ‘Oh my gosh that was the coolest listing we have seen in months.’”
If you could say, these are the top 5 mistakes not to make when listing a home, what would those things be?
MONIQUE “So, if you have any minor repairs, fix them. If you have a ding in the wall, get it patched. If your paint is really messed up on a lot of the walls, at least spot-paint or touch up some of the rooms. Cleaning, deep cleaning, is so important. People perceive that the house is not well maintained and that it’s dirty and yucky if there are hairballs in the corner. So a deep cleaning goes a long way just in terms of making someone feel good about a home I think. The other thing, watching pets. So, you know, ideally, like if you have a cat box for example, or dog bowls, ideally they are out of the way for a showing, and clean and emptied. Because people don’t want to be thinking about that and some people are nervous about pets living in the home that maybe they’ll feel allergic or that there will be a smell that comes up or something like that. So I think that’s really important. And also basic landscape cleanup and first impressions are so important. Stage the front of the home. Make sure the lawn looks good. You can’t have it overgrown and looking yucky. It’s just not the way to provide a good first impression period. Is that four or five, Jenni?”
JENNI “I feel like I counted five! We could go on forever, but I feel like those are the most important things. And I guess ongoing would be, I think sometimes sellers can get, I mean they are doing all this work to get their house decluttered and ready to go on the market, but if you know the home doesn’t go under contract the first weekend, which is really common right now, we have longer days on the market, being just as diligent for every home showing, right?
MONIQUE “Exactly, because, just because you’re tired of it doesn’t mean that the next buyer that comes through is going to be forgiving because it’s been on the market for a month. Actually, it’s the opposite. They’re going to be that much more scrutinizing of your home because they’re going to be wondering why it was sitting on the market still. So it’s going to be more amazing that it looks just as good every time. And it’s also important that you don’t deny showings because often people don’t come back if you turn them down. And that’s a mistake that I see happen a lot, unfortunately.
JENNI “Yeah, I do too. I want to talk a little bit about picking a listing agent and making sure that agent knows what they’re doing, you know, they know the market well, they understand the neighborhoods and they’re also going to put in the hard work on the backend to make sure that the product looks amazing.”
MONIQUE “Having a really good listing agent is different than just hiring a buyer’s agent. You know, when we are listing a home for sale, we’re marketers, we have a full marketing team, we have stagers, we have so many people because it takes so much more than just putting someone in your car and taking them around to see houses. A listing agent is very different than a buyer’s agent and the skillset is very different so keep that in mind when you go to hire an agent.
What’s different about a buyer’s agent is that I mean, they vary, right? I mean some are brilliant, and some are less experienced. But a buyer’s agent primarily will take you to see homes, will teach you about the neighborhood, will help you to negotiate a deal, will guide you through home inspections and appraisals, and kind of the loan process, and get you through closing. A listing agent generally is doing months of prep work, guiding you on how to prep your home for sale to get the highest price and the best results, arranging home staging, arranging repairs, and properly pricing your home which is a skill that it takes years and years to get good at, it really does. There are so many nuances in real estate and that’s why some of the big websites I won’t mention just can’t hit the nail on the head because homes vary so much in terms of quality, layout, and street location. There is just nothing automatic about pricing a home for sale.
JENNI “So some of the things that we as listing agents include in our turnkey service are staging of the home, um, coordinating and paying for a deep clean of the property, we help coordinate paint touchups and repairs and a lot of that will vary by property but we will help a seller navigate those things and coordinate vendors because that can be a stressful process, figuring out who can come out to do paint or minor repairs. “
MONIQUE “And you know it’s really stressful for people and you are amazing at it.”
JENNI “Oh, coordinating one million calls a day? Haha.”
MONIQUE “Yes, you are SO good at it. It’s amazing.”
JENNI “Calling everybody until I can get an answer?”
MONIQUE “Yes, exactly, you’re persistent.”
JENNI “Persistent, and having good vendor relationships, like I, you know, I appreciate people that are out there doing service work. That’s a hard job and it’s skilled labor. I try to appreciate those vendors so when I give them a call, they’re happy to come out.”
MONIQUE “Well and that’s the other nice thing about having these established relationships is that you know, they’ll prioritize us because we send a lot of work to them. And because we’re kind and we pay on time and, you know, all these things. So, treating your network and your vendors really great is a good way to sustain a good listing business if you ask me.”
JENNI “I 100% agree. Sometimes it can, you know, be the make or break for being able to get a property on the market in a timely manner to know you have all these people you can call who are going to do a good job and come out quickly.”
“And then I think one of the most important things we do is professional photos, for luxury listings that can be videography as well, and what we offer on the backend in terms of marketing. We have a full marketing department that is, you know, taking all the details of your property and highlighting it to the right markets and even pushing for out-of-state buyers, because we’re seeing a lot of that.”
MONIQUE “Yeah, I think most agents just take the shotgun listing approach, right? You’re not marketing to somebody, you’re marketing to everybody. But the reality is that we sell fairly specific custom homes at times, but I think those require a very special marketing plan. For example, for the luxury lot we just sold, our marketing department figured out how to make a great custom website and then pushed it out to other markets and almost all the inquiries we got were from out of state. So the very targeted, specific marketing really, really worked. So it’s above and beyond just prepping a home for sale, or pricing it correctly.”
JENNI “Yeah. So there’s a handful of weird, small details that can become really big turnoffs for buyers, so I want to talk about a few of those.”
MONIQUE “Well my current issue right now is just because it’s spring and it’s wet, people haven’t cleaned up their dog poo in the yard. We want to go out and see the yard and we’re avoiding land mines everywhere. And it’s not really appreciated. People need to go through the effort and just clean up after their animals before showings.”
JENNI “Before EVERY showing, I mean that’s such a huge deal. Because then buyers don’t want to go into the yard and they might miss something really amazing about the yard or the home.”
MONIQUE “Or they’re going to track poo into the house and that’s not good either. Oh, and tell me about the shower thing you were mentioning earlier, haha.”
JENNI “I think it’s my biggest pet peeve when I go into a home and it’s occupied and maybe the seller, they’re rushing out the door. I get that they’re busy and it’s hard to coordinate showings, but they’ve just showered and you walk into the bathroom and it’s humid. It just feels kind of weird and gross. So planning to maybe do that at night or very early in the morning, opening windows, turning on the fan just to get the air moving.”
MONIQUE “Exactly, we want it to be fresh and clean. And that also kind of pertains to cooking. People that cook really pungent meals right before a showing or a couple of hours before. Then you’re thinking about what they cooked today instead of this beautiful home. We just don’t want to have any distractions if we can and that’s a big distraction.”
JENNI “Well and it’s funny how much of a turnoff that can be for the majority of buyers. If it smells like bacon or garlic, sometimes I’ve heard buyers say, ‘Oh, it smells weird in here.’ and that’s it for the house.”
MONIQUE “Yeah, because they’re no longer paying attention to the house at that point.”
JENNI “Yeah, and they think that it’s something they can’t remedy, right?”
MONIQUE “It’s all about perception, and we need to create the best perception of the home by having it clean and fresh and smelling good. People can definitely make mistakes when they over-scent a home. If there are fragrances, they should be light and citrusy but no crazy florals and potpourri. That can just give people a headache and they are out of there fast. Or temperature issues are another one. People forget to leave the AC or the heat on and you are so cold or hot you have to immediately fly out of there. You’re probably not going to buy that house. So it’s all about those impressions.”
JENNI “I had a buyer once touring condos, and there was one that was truly a better condo. And they had left the heat at like 50. And my buyer was like, mmm, it’s really cold in here, I don’t like it in here.”
MONIQUE “So it’s all about perception. It doesn’t matter what you think or believe, it’s all about trying to create the buyer experience.”
JENNI “Yeah. Thank you for joining us today, you can find more information on how to prepare to list your home for sale on our blog at marketsourcerealestate.com. And you can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook at @marketsourcrealestate.
MONIQUE “Thank you for joining us.”