How to Scare Off Homebuyers

Fix whatever is broken before putting your house up for sale.

When the time comes to put your home on the market, you will go from being a homeowner to a home seller. Make no mistake, the two are very different, and if you don’t want to scare away the buyers, you will need to make a few sacrifices. However, if you avoid the following dumb mistakes, and keep your eyes on the prize, your home will be sold before long.

1. Family Photos and Kids’ Drawings Everywhere

It may seem odd to think this is a way to scare people off, but look at it this way: When anyone comes to look around the home you’re selling, they are trying to picture themselves, and their family, living there. It’s very difficult to do that when the home is clearly one that belongs to another family, with personal evidence of that in every room. If you have framed photos covering every wall, drawings over the fridge and up the staircase, and other shrines to your beloved family and friends, you need to take most of them down. Don’t worry; it’s not forever. In fact, if you do it, it will take you less time to sell your house, and put them up in your new home.

2. Unusual Smells and Stains

No home can stay new-looking forever. Homebuyers expect the house to be lived in, but what they don’t want are odd smells and ugly stains. You may not notice them as you have lived with them for years, but you need to look at your home through fresh eyes. Do a walk-through, and examine every wall, ceiling, and floor in every room. Stains can easily be covered with paint, or shampooed out of carpets. If it’s very stubborn, you may have to replace the carpet or rug. Smells, well, the cause needs to be tracked down. If it’s mold in the corner of the basement, get it treated. If it’s something rotten in the garage, dump it. Your home should look clean and smell fresh. Don’t try and mask smells with air fresheners, as they will only make it worse (the sweet smell of vanilla and mold is not a nice combination).

3. Your House Is Stuck in the Past

It’s one thing to keep your home in great condition. It’s quite another to keep it in the exact same condition that it was in when you first acquired it. If you bought the home 20 years ago, it should not look that way, inside or out. Ideally, you will have performed upgrades over the years to modernize the look and feel of the place. New paint, new carpet or flooring, new appliances, updated cabinets, perhaps even a few additions or a finished basement, can all help with the appeal. Very few people want to move into a home that looks and feels dated. It is a sign that they will have a lot of work to do, and money to spend, to bring the home roaring into the present.

4. It’s Dirty and Messy

One of the simplest ways to make a used car sell for more money is to detail it, inside and out. It can literally add thousands to the value. The same is true of your home. If the kitchen is dirty, and the sink is full of dishes, you are sending the wrong message. You are also putting a barrier in front of that potential buyer, and it’s your job to remove them. You don’t want them to have to imagine how it would look when it’s clean and tidy. Show them. Every room should be clean, organized, and free of clutter.

5. You Follow the Buyer Around

The easiest way to make the buyer feel really awkward, uncomfortable, and pressured, is to be the tour guide for your home. You know the feeling yourself, especially if you’ve tried to look at a car on the lot and the salesperson is breathing down your neck. This is a huge purchase, and buyers want time and space to look at everything without a chaperon. So, if you can, make sure you’re not at home when the buyers come. If you have to be there, confine yourself to just one room, and leave that room when the buyers enter. Go out into the garden or yard, or even the garage.

6. Anything Broken

A door that won’t close properly. An appliance that doesn’t work well. A piece of tile that has come away from the wall. A cracked window. The list is endless, but whatever it is that’s broken in your home, fix it before you put it on the market. Big things, like the roof that’s a no-brainer. But it’s the little things that you may have simply gotten used to that can be really off-putting to potential buyers. If they have to jiggle the handle in just the right way to get into the garage, that’s not good. If they have to step over the broken piece of concrete in the backyard, they’re going to remember that in a negative way. Do a thorough check of the home, and get everything fixed. You do not want to send a signal that you did not do a good job of maintaining your house.

7. Setting the Asking Price Way Too High

This is the most important of them all! It may be a seller’s market, but don’t take that beyond the limits. If you start at the maximum price you could hope to get, you’re excluding a vast number of buyers from ever taking a tour. They may have a maximum amount they want to spend, and your high starting price means they cannot afford to get into a bidding war. Remember, the Internet has given buyers a wealth of information about homes for sale. They can do their own comps, and quickly come to the conclusion that you are asking way too much. Now of course, you also don’t want to ask too little for the home, because it’s possible only one buyer will bite, and you may be stuck with that asking price. So do your homework. See what homes of the same size, age, and condition have sold for in your area, and price accordingly. Seek the advice of a valuator.

8. Poor Landscaping

There is something called curb appeal, and it’s literally judging a book by its cover. Your home may be something out of Architectural Digest on the inside, but if it looks like the Addams Family did the yard work, you are not going to inspire people to come and look around. This is the first impression, and it has to count. This also applies to the backyard, too. If it’s a bunch of weeds, rocks, rusted cars, and an eyesore called an “above ground pool,” you have your work cut out. People want to see a well loved landscape, front and back, that has green grass, healthy trees, flowering plants, and clean rocks. If it’s anything less than that, you may never get the buyer through the front door.

9. Bizarre or Eccentric Features

You may have thought that decorating an entire wall of the den with hubcaps was cool, but potential homebuyers probably won’t like it. Anything that is exclusive to the point of being weird or strange is not going to help you sell the home. Maybe the kids wanted a room that was like a forest, complete with lots of fake trees and a dark green carpet. Or perhaps the gray Batcave was something that you just had to have. All well and good when it’s your own place, but you cannot expect buyers to share your passions. If you have something that is truly original, it may be time to take it out and go neutral. And in the case of this guy, who built a roller coaster through his house to try and sell it, well…that’s not recommended!