Home Selling Rules Are No Longer Relevant

The market is changing. While bidding wars, sky-high prices, and homes flying off the market were a reality just a few months ago, rising mortgage rates, changing economic conditions, and increasing inventory have caused a serious shift in some areas.

And if you’re selling your home, it’s important to operate under the conditions of the market the way it is now, not the way it was last year or a few months ago.

So what, exactly, does that look like?

A recent article from realtor.com outlined some of the widely believed rules about selling a home in today’s market that are no longer true (and that you’ll definitely want to consider breaking!), including:

• Pricing your home as high as you’d like. There was a time when sellers could virtually put any price tag on their home and it would sell, often for even higher than their asking price. But those days are over, and if you want to successfully sell your home in today’s market, you need to price your home conservatively and in line with its current market value.
• Don’t worry about offering concessions. At the height of the buying frenzy, buyers were bending over backwards for sellers, and that meant sellers could forgo any concessions. But now that the market has cooled, if you want to sell your home—and sell it quickly—offering concessions to buyers (like helping them “buy down” their mortgage rate or cover closing costs) isn’t out of the question.
• Home staging isn’t necessary. There was a time when just about any home would sell, regardless of how it looked. But now that buyers are more selective, you’ll want to do everything you can to make your home marketable and appealing—and that includes investing in professional staging.

Looking for a home in the past few years has been difficult for almost all buyers. Even those who have all-cash offers, waive every contingency, and offer well over asking price have been losing out on their dream homes.

It’s been so frustrating that it can bring you to tears at times…literally!

According to this Yahoo article, over half of home buyers cry at least once during their home search. Some of those surveyed claim to have cried up to four times during the process! And just because some people weren’t brought to tears doesn’t mean they didn’t find the process stressful—90% of them said at least one aspect of it was stressful.

As stressful as the recent market has been, this isn’t a new issue. Buying a home always ranks as one of the most stressful life events in a person’s life. All you have to do is search the Internet and you’ll find articles like this one published by Housing Wire in 2018 (well before the current market conditions) citing home buying as one of the most stressful events in modern life.

This is why it’s so important to hire a real estate agent who can empathize with you and help you cope with the ups and downs throughout the process.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), while home buyers have to deal with the roller coaster of emotions during the time it takes to search for and successfully close on a home, real estate agents are on a never-ending roller coaster ride. So an agent is able to help give you perspective and hope that things will work out just fine—even when there are bumps in the road—because they go through it with other clients and on a personal level every single day.

That said, not all agents are able to cope with the stress themselves, or aren’t as sensitive to a buyer who may need a shoulder to cry on (literally or figuratively). Some agents get so emotional themselves, it’s hard for them to keep their cool when things go wrong. Others are so unemotional, that they may come across as uncaring about how upset you are when things throw you for a loop. That’s not to say they’re bad agents! They may very well be great at every other aspect of being an agent…just not at helping you through the emotional moments.

The Takeaway:

No matter when you decide to buy a home, or what the market is like at the time, the chances are you’re going to experience some stress, and maybe even a few tears. So, besides everything else you want to look for in an agent (like being a market expert, great negotiator, responsive, etc.) make sure the agent you hire is able to empathize with you.

That’s not to say you want an agent who bursts into tears with you! You want one that understands and feels for you, but can stay centered and calm enough to help you work through the emotions to make level-headed decisions. That way, you can shed tears of joy when you finally close on your home!