What I’ve Learned From Watching Sellers Leave Money on the Table

The things that cost homeowners money when they sell aren't always the things you'd expect.

I've worked with a lot of sellers over the years, and one thing I've learned is that the decisions that cost homeowners money aren't always the obvious ones.

Of course, pricing matters, but I've watched sellers lose equity because of decisions that seemed relatively insignificant at the time.

• A listing price designed around what they hoped to get instead of getting the market's attention.
• A house that wasn't quite ready when it hit the market.
• A showing that was inconvenient, so they turned it down.
• Maintenance that was deferred for “just one more year” … and then another.
• Or a seller who became understandably frustrated with a buyer and allowed the emotion of the moment to influence a much bigger financial decision.

Most of these aren't catastrophic mistakes by themselves.

Many people think of selling a home as a single decision, but selling a home is actually a process made up of dozens of decisions, and those decisions have a way of compounding.

And there's something I've learned about today's real estate market that underpins the result of every seller's decision.

Today's market is extraordinarily efficient at identifying which homes represent value.

Buyers see new inventory almost immediately. They can almost instantly compare your home side-by-side with every competing property, evaluate the differences, and move on just as quickly when something doesn't add up.

For sellers, it means you have less room than ever to rely on time, hope, or the idea that eventually the “right buyer” will come along.

You can't control the market. You can't control interest rates, how much inventory is available, or what buyers are willing to pay.

But the one thing you can control is how well your home is positioned within that market.

And that's really what the decisions below translate to.

1. Your listing price is a STRATEGIC PRICE... not necessarily the price you're willing to accept.

Hands down, I think this is one of the most misunderstood parts of selling a home.

Your listing price has one job—to get the market's attention.

That means the best strategic listing price isn't necessarily the highest number you think someone might eventually pay. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the lowest number you'd be willing to accept, either.

I want you to think of it like going fishing.

If you keep the bait where the fish aren't swimming, it doesn't matter how good the bait is.

Keep that bait too high, and buyers are likely going to swim on by in favor of better-priced, yet equally compelling competition that is more within their reach.

Using your list price as a strategy doesn't mean giving your house away.

It means positioning your home where buyers will see it, compare it, want to experience it—and potentially compete for it.

Because here's the thing: You can't negotiate with a buyer who never considered your house in the first place.

Which leads me to another reason that getting pricing strategy right matters so much:

2. The internet has dramatically shortened the life cycle of a listing.

I don't know that sellers always understand just how much the internet has changed the speed of the real estate market in the last several years.

Ten or fifteen years ago, a seller could reasonably think:

“Let's put it out there for six months and wait for the right buyer to come along.”

Today, that's a much riskier strategy.

Because here's the thing: if your agent is marketing your property effectively, the available buyers—and the agents representing them—who are searching for a home like yours can know about your listing within the first 24 to 48 hours.

Along with every other home competing for their attention.

The internet has compressed the market.

Today, waiting longer rarely exposes you to substantially more opportunity. It often just means your listing is getting stale.

And buyers notice.

When they see a home that has been on the market longer than the average home for that price range, the first question I get from buyers and agents is:

“What's wrong with that house?”

That's why I don't subscribe to the idea that we can knowingly overprice a home and just “wait for the right buyer to come along.”

It's very likely the market will move while we're waiting.

And if it moves away from us, we can find ourselves chasing it downhill instead—a proposition that is expensive and slow.

3. Buyers are comparison-shopping your house before they ever walk through the door.

Think about the last time you bought a laptop, television, or phone.

You probably didn't drive from store to store hoping to stumble across the right one, did you?

I'd wager that you went online, and there—from the comfort of your living room and pajamas—you compared prices, compared features, and eliminated options before you ever got off the couch.

Today's homebuyer is doing this same exact thing with your home.

With a couple of clicks, they can pull up your property and three competing homes side-by-side.

They can see it all.

Square footage. Lot size. Age. What the competition has updated. What you haven't gotten around to yet.

They can zoom into every picture and study things you didn't even realize were visible.

Which means your first showing doesn't happen when the buyer walks through your front door...

Your first showing happens online.

If you don't get their attention on the screen, you may never have the opportunity for your home to wow them in person.

In this market, your home is simultaneously in a price war and a beauty contest, and only the finalists ever get the chance to wow the judges... er, buyers... in person.

4. You only get one chance to be the “new listing.”

I think sellers dramatically underestimate the power of the first couple of weeks on the market.

In nearly every case I've seen lately, those first two weeks represent your greatest opportunity to protect—or lose—equity in your home.

When your property first launches, every buyer who's been waiting for a home like yours suddenly sees something new.

That's an opportunity you can't recreate down the road.

And all of your listing history becomes available and stored online for everyone to see.

Withdrawn? They see it.

Expired? They see that too.

$5,000 price drop every two weeks? They see that—and they're busy shopping other, more competitive homes while they're waiting on the next one to come around.

Your initial launch into the market is an opportunity you can't recreate later.

Which is why, in a market that is contracting, I'm not a fan of:

“Let's just put it out there and see what happens. We can adjust later if we don't get any offers.”

You can do that.

But you'll never be the new listing again.

5. Presentation and preparation aren't fluff. They're part of your pricing strategy.

Sometimes sellers think staging, photography, landscaping, and cosmetic preparation are simply about making a house “pretty.”

They're not.

These things translate directly to your perceived value.

Buyers experience a home emotionally before they analyze it financially.

Ideally, when a buyer walks in, you want a home to be welcoming, comfortable, clean, and inviting.

I often describe it as walking into a hotel lobby.

You know that feeling?

You come in and it feels warm and friendly, and it feels like they are expecting valued guests.

Buyers are evaluating the home by how it makes them feel.

They're thinking: Does it look worth the asking price? Can I imagine myself living there? How has it been cared for?

Two very similar houses can create completely different levels of urgency depending on how they're presented.

And that's why preparation isn't something separate from your pricing strategy—the preparation helps support your price.

And in a market where buyers can compare your house with every competing property from their sofa, presentation matters before they've ever decided whether your home is worth seeing in person.

So sellers... clean the baseboards. Round up the dust bunnies.

Start pre-packing, decluttering, and depersonalizing.

Put up the pet bowls and beds.

Pick up the toys, the laundry, and the dishes.

Touch up the dingy paint and replace the light bulbs.

Show the buyers that you value the home every bit as much as you're asking them to.

6. Every showing you turn down could be the buyer who would have written the offer.

This one is a doozy!

I understand why showings are hard for sellers.

You've got work. Dinner. Dogs. Maybe kids. Guests. Events.

You've got a life.

And keeping a house ready to show isn't fun.

But friends, I've watched sellers prioritize what's most convenient for them over creating opportunities for buyers to actually buy their home.

And in a market where buyers have plenty of choices, they are likely not going to rearrange their entire Saturday because your home isn't available at 2:00.

They may simply go see the other four houses.

And one of those houses may become the one they buy.

Of course, sometimes we can move a showing by 30 minutes or work around a genuine conflict.

But I encourage my sellers to shift the mindset from:

“They're lucky I'm letting them come through my house.”

to:

“I'm grateful for another opportunity to show someone why they should buy my house!”

Every showing is an opportunity.

And every showing you decline is an opportunity you may not get back.

7. Deferred maintenance doesn't become an “upgrade” when you finally replace it.

This one comes up more often than you might imagine.

A 20-year-old HVAC system gets replaced because it finally bit the dust.

The rotting wood windows have just been updated with premium insulated vinyl windows.

A 19-year-old roof finally gets fresh shingles.

And understandably, the homeowner thinks:

“We just spent $15,000 on that. Surely our house is worth $15,000 more.”

Unfortunately, that's not how the market usually sees it.

There's certainly value to the buyer in having a newer roof or HVAC system.

But replacing something that has reached the end of its useful life is often bringing the property back toward what the market expects, rather than creating a dollar-for-dollar increase in value.

Think about someone trying to sell a car with bald tires.

If the tires are unsafe and threadbare, that's going to negatively affect what someone is willing to pay for the car, right?

If the seller puts a fresh set of tires on it, does that mean buyers are suddenly going to pay thousands above market value because the car now has tires that are safe to drive on?

Or does that seller now just have a much better chance of selling that car at a fair market value because it doesn't have a problem that the buyer immediately needs to address?

Maintenance protects value. It doesn't necessarily create new value.

And postponing maintenance can make the eventual problem considerably more expensive.

8. Emotion can be very expensive.

Friends, this could be one of the biggest lessons I've learned.

As a seller, a buyer criticizes something you love about your house, or the inspector produces a report that makes your well-maintained home sound like it's falling apart.

Someone submits an offer you consider insulting.

A buyer asks for something you think is ridiculous.

That is hard to hear.

It can be downright upsetting.

And the hurt is very natural.

It's your home.

You've lived there. Maybe raised a family there. Celebrated holidays there. Invested money there. Taken care of it.

It's part of your journey.

But, as sellers, we have to remember that the buyer isn't evaluating your memories.

They're making a financial decision about an asset—a major one—they're considering purchasing.

And so, Mr. or Ms. Seller, it's my job to remind you in these moments that sometimes the decision that feels oh so emotionally satisfying in the moment isn't the decision that gets you where you ultimately want to go.

That's one of the reasons I think the relationship between a seller and their agent matters so much.

You need someone in your corner that you trust enough to say:

“I know this is frustrating. Let's pause for a moment and look at what decision gets you closest to your goal.”

One of the most valuable things I can bring to that moment is that I don't have to be emotional about it.

I can look at the buyer's request, the inspection, the offer, or the situation objectively and help keep you focused on YOUR bigger picture.

My job is to help you separate the instinctual response of:

“How does this make me feel?”

from:

“What decision puts me in the strongest position to accomplish what I ultimately want?”

Sometimes those answers are very different.

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After years of studying homes and which ones sell fastest and for the most, and which ones languish on the market... and watching some sellers make the process much harder and more expensive than it needed to be... I've come to the conclusion that sellers don't usually leave money on the table because of one big mistake.

It's usually the accumulation of smaller decisions that you don't appreciate the impact of in the moment.

Today's market is remarkably good at sorting through the options and identifying value.

So the goal isn't to outsmart the market.

It's to position your home so well that when the market compares it to everything else available, its value is easy to recognize.

As sellers, you can't control the market, the interest rates, the competition, and most certainly not the buyers...

But you can control how well your home is positioned within the market you're actually in.

And when you're selling one of the largest assets you own, getting those decisions right is critical.