Obstacles cause pause in a buyer.
They can be small, almost irrelevant issues and they can be large, leaking-roof issues.
Either way, they are obstacles to the finish line of selling your home. The clearer the road, the better chance for success. In your buyer shoes, how much would you be willing to overlook or endure in order to move forward on the purchase of a home? Now take your answer and triple it. Then double it.
In general, today’s buyer has expectations. Mostly reasonable but some unreasonable. Your job as a seller is to anticipate those expectations and make a decision how you are going to deal with them. Or if you are really even willing to deal with them. If your home is largely wallpapered, be prepared for that issue to come up.
Same goes for a 35 yr old furnace, leaky basement, broker ceramic tiled floor, fuscia dining room, crumbling asphalt driveway, 40 yr old light fixture and the list goes on and on. Obviously there are different levels of concern with each issue. Spending $100 on lighting vs. a $3,000 furnace for example. But again, large or small, perceived or real, these obstacles are what they are. If you see them, a buyer will likely see them.
And remember that part about what obstacles you would be willing to overlook, then triple and double? Well, that applies. “It’s just wallpaper. It’s no big deal to deal with.” “That furnace works fine. We’ve never had a problem with it.” “If someone wants to replace that tub, they can do it.” These sentiments are all fine provided that as a seller, you are willing to deal with them in some capacity.
Spending $400 to have the harvest gold tub re-glazed. Spending a week-end removing that floral wallpaper and re-painting. Or, the other way to clear those obstacles is to make the asking price reflect what is required.
Sound simple? Well it is and it isn’t. That is why we drone on and on about the importance of the pre-listing period.
Unsure about how these concepts apply to your home?
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Cheers to Dillon Winspear for the photo.