The Biggest Mistake We Made When Listing Our Own Home
What a wild ride this has been! If you missed our last blog post, we are walking the walk of the talk we talk and purchasing an investment property that we will move into, fix up and pay off in 3 years. Just as a reminder, here is the timeline of our "Building Wealth Through Real Estate" adventure:
Tuesday, March 7th - We made an offer to the seller.
Sunday, March 12th - We executed the contract for the purchase of the house.
Thursday, March 16th - We attend the inspection and I saw the house for the first time.
Tuesday, March 21st - Pictures and Videography are taken for our current home, getting ready to go on the market.
Wednesday, March 22nd - We go live in the MLS and plan to host an Open House on Thursday evening, Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Friday, March 24th - A buyer made us an offer we couldn't refuse and we signed off! Under contract!
One of my big ahas from the Keller Williams conference we attended in February was "If you want to impress people, talk about your accomplishments. If you want to influence people, talk about your mistakes." - Matt Townsend, The Art of Adding Value
So, let's talk about the biggest mistake we made when we decided to sell our house: WE DIDN'T HIRE A REALTOR TO HELP US!
What do you mean? This is what you do and you're consistently ranked in the top 5% of real estate professionals in Austin.
True, but there is so much more to it than just the process, marketing, communication, paperwork, prep, staging, negotiation, etc. - selling a house is emotional.
Home is the second most emotional word in the english language. Can you guess what the first is? (Click here to send me your guess and the first 5 to answer correctly get a prize!) Buyers buy homes, sellers sell houses, so from the very beginning when we sit down with a client to discuss selling, we begin the transition from home to house through our language.
I have always said that our #1 job is to manage emotions despite expectation and have such an incredible appreciation for what we do as real estate professionals, because you can't put a price on helping with the emotional side of a transaction. As a Realtor, we absorb all of the emotion in a transaction on behalf of our client so that they can focus on their daily life and making plans for their upcoming move.
If you notice in the video tour of our house above, I mentioned "home" and "favorite" and "love" more times than I care to count. Naturally, we take pride in the place where we live, laugh, love, entertain and create memories. There is an art to packaging and marketing a house as a commodity in order to get the highest value for the seller.
Moving forward, our goal is to never sell another home, but if we do you can bet that we will be interviewing real estate agents to list our house. Read our blog post on the "Top Ten Interview Questions You Should Ask a Real Estate Agent" for guidance on what to ask when you are interviewing an agent.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we would like to share our resources that have helped us on this journey - The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey & The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller.
P.S. I think I found my first gray hair
