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Should sellers stay or leave?

by Kim Cooper
| July 27, 2014 9:00 PM

Selling your home is trying at best. There is the constant picking up, re-arranging, cleaning. It can make it hard to enjoy your own home when you never know who will be coming and when. Although buyer/visitors should be welcomed, perhaps it is best not to welcome them in person. After all, this is your home, not just some box full of your things that you are ready to dispose of, so it is natural to want someone to love it the way you have.

Therein lies the problem. You have loved your home and undoubtedly taken painstaking steps to make it your own. It is only natural then to feel compelled to share those efforts and the wonderful outcomes. The problem is that the prospective buyers don't really care in most circumstances what the house was - only what it is. Your enthusiastic endorsement of your sweat equity may be perceived as over selling. Too much information can make buyers wary, causing them to wonder why you were trying so hard to get them to focus on improvements. "What aren't they telling us?" may be the unasked question.

The properties buyers have previously seen while shopping for homes are what they have to compare yours to. They can see incomplete projects and needed repairs just as they can see when those items are absent. If your house is pristine it shows and no-one needs you there to point it out. You may think that your painstakingly installed electric dog polisher is an attribute, but for whom? Not for someone who has never heard of one, doesn't see the benefit and is pretty sure they don't want one. Yet, because you have determined that this is one of your homes best features, you may take the buyers' eye off the ball and cause them to overlook something they really wanted to notice.

Usually, sellers who guide tours through their homes are perceived as a distraction. Even worse, they can be perceived as security guards who bar access or peer over shoulders to see what the prospective buyer is looking at, probably to see the buyers' perspective, but buyers likely feel that they are being policed. Worse yet are those who travel lockstep with the buyers and their agents, hoping to overhear a comment they can grasp and run with to espouse the benefits of this home they have loved. Some would say they felt they had been stalked on a tour like this.

Buyers too, should be wary in the presence of a seller. Too many favorable comments out of a compulsion to be polite and personable will give the seller a false sense of value and weaken your negotiating position. It is likely that most buyers are aware of this, so they make no comments nor do they ask questions in the seller's presence, making it hard for their agent to observe and discuss details of the home. Buyers are not likely to criticize a particular feature when the seller is within earshot which gives their agent zero opportunity to propose a solution or easy fix. No one wants to blurt out that they think the dog polisher is the dumbest thing they have ever heard of if the seller has just belabored the luxury of the aforementioned item.

If you are selling your own home, more power to you. This column is meant to help you. If you have an agent and you absolutely must stay home, be kind, be welcoming and be quiet unless spoken to.

Trust an expert ... call a Realtor. Call your Realtor or visit www.cdarealtors.com to search properties on the Multiple Listing Service or to find a Realtor member who will represent your best interests.

Kim Cooper is a real estate Broker and the spokesman for the Coeur d'Alene Association of Realtors. Kim and the Association invite your feedback and input for this column. You may contact them by writing to the Coeur d'Alene Association of Realtors, 409 W. Neider, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83815 or by calling 208-667-0664