Whether it’s an investment home or your primary residence, selling your home can be a challenge. Selling your home with a traditional realtor can take a long time, leaving you waiting for the money or paying twice for housing. Los Angeles is known as a “balanced market” in 2024, meaning supply and demand are about the same. Most homes stay on the market for 50 days, and the trend is upward year over year (with a typical spike around the holiday season). That can be a long time waiting and stressing about selling your home.

So, you need to do it right. This might mean using an experienced real estate agent or going with a cash offer, but here are some common mistakes people make when selling a house.

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Emotional Attachment

If you have lived in your home for years, you might become strongly attached to it. This is particularly the case for empty nesters who choose to downsize. Letting go of the place where your children grew up can hurt, as can selling your childhood home after your parents die. The average length of time Los Angeles homeowners stay in their homes is 15 years.

This attachment can lead you to subconsciously sabotage your selling efforts. It may lead you to take a lower offer because you want “good people” to take your home. It might make it hard to market and schedule showings.

Considering the finances, you need to focus on it as a business transaction. Also, look to the future. Let yourself be excited about your upcoming move or lifestyle changes, such as having more money and time to travel.

Get a home stager. Even if you’re not working with a real estate agent, you should still stage your home. If you are, they will probably be able to recommend a good stager. A home stager will depersonalize your space, making it sell faster and help you break that attachment.

Set a timeline so you have a plan and can focus on logistics.

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Rigid Showing Times

If you have a tight schedule, it can be hard to be flexible with showing times. But if you’re too rigid, you won’t attract buyers. Typically, open houses should be scheduled on the weekend when more people are free. However, offering the occasional weekday date can help—some people’s “weekend” is Wednesday.

Make sure your home is always clean and ready for last-minute viewings. If you are very busy, you need a real estate agent you can trust to handle showings in your absence. Be particularly flexible if somebody is coming from out of town and scheduling a bunch of viewings in a day.

Also, offer virtual tours. Most real estate agents will do this now. This makes things easy for out-of-town buyers and allows you to show the property to more people with less inconvenience. Even locals might do a virtual tour before deciding to come over and see the home face-to-face.

Be ready to answer questions from people attending virtual viewings, which are never quite as good as in-person viewings.

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Not Staging Your Home

Staging your home can increase the price by as much as 5% and reduce the time on the market by 50%. Before staging, take care of any minor repairs, such as broken fixtures or appliances. Repaint your walls in neutral colors. That purple accent wall you love may be off-putting to others. If your home has a major problem, such as needing a new roof, you will need to take care of it.

Staging helps people see themselves in the space. You will need to get rid of clutter and deep clean. Personal details need to be removed. Take down family photos (which will lead people to see the home as right for your family, not necessarily theirs). Box up collections.

If you have pets, all evidence of them should be removed for showings. If possible, remove pets from the home. If not, confine them to a small room with food and water. Not everyone likes dogs or cats, and a friendly dog might be the exact opposite of a good salesman. Hide pet toys and accouterments during showings.

Make sure everything is neat and tidy. If you have already moved out, a stager will stage your home with temporary furniture, typically rentals, although some stagers use inflatable furniture. Empty rooms look smaller.

If this is an investment home and you have a renter, you will need to work with the tenant. This can cause conflict, especially if your tenant is concerned about being forced to move.

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Ignoring Curb Appeal

Too often, sellers focus on the home’s interior and forget the importance of the outside. Curb appeal is the first impression your home gives, and it gets people to notice your for-sale sign.

If there is one, mowing the lawn is the first and most basic thing you can do. Pressure wash the siding, clean the windows, and power wash all of the driveways and walkways. Plant colorful flowers. Paint your front door a neutral color.

Add outdoor lighting if you don’t have it already. Outdoor lighting is a desirable feature because it improves safety and helps showcase your home in the dark or gloomy weather.

Failing to Market

Overall, many people fail to market their homes properly. If you go through a real estate firm, they will handle all of this for you, but there will be a cost—sometimes as much as 5% of your selling cost.

If you do your own marketing, you need to make sure your home is listed on all of the real estate websites with an appropriate description and all the necessary information. Hire a photographer to take high-quality professional photos and help you set up a virtual tour. We’ve already talked about the importance of staging and improving curb appeal.

You will need to host an open house every weekend until your home sells. That can be time-consuming and aggravating, especially if you get a lot of “tire kickers.”

Social media also helps with marketing. Posting good photos of your home on social media and letting everyone know you are selling can help you sell your home much faster.

Not Considering All Options

Are you overwhelmed? Most people don’t consider every option when selling their home. Selling through an agent or doing it yourself are the only options many consider, and they weigh the cost of a realtor versus the hassle and work of doing all of the marketing themselves.

Few people consider getting cash offers. A cash offer on your home, as-is, can help you move faster. If the home you are trying to sell is one you inherited and have no use for, it can help you quickly access the equity for things you do want. It can also speed up selling a joint home to settle a divorce.

Cash offers come with no obligations and help you short circuit the entire stressful process. You can close in as little as a week without making any repairs or renovations. Another advantage is discretion. If, for some reason, you don’t want everyone to know you are moving, then a cash offer means your home is never listed and there is no sign in your yard. You don’t have to have strangers in your space.

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Why Choose a Cash Offer from Sellers Advantage

If you are worried about making these common mistakes, consider a cash offer from Sellers Advantage.

We buy all types of homes, including duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes. We will buy homes that are in bad shape so you don’t have to find the money to spend on fixing them up. We understand the market and will make a fair offer. You can pick a closing date that works for your timeline, giving you control over the time you move. Unlike some companies, we don’t make lowball offers, charge hidden fees, or put pressure on you to sign right away.

Our customers appreciate our honest, fair offers and quick and transparent process. By selling to Sellers Advantage, you:

• Get a fair offer fast.
• Don’t have to stage, make repairs or renovations, organize open houses, etc.
• You don’t have to pay high closing fees.
• You don’t need to spend a lot of time and money on marketing.
• You can get out before you get paralyzed by nostalgia.

Choose Sellers Advantage and avoid making these common mistakes when selling your house fast in Los Angeles. Let us take your home off your hands for a fair market value offer in cash, and move on to the next part of your life or regain the equity from an inherited or investment home you wish to sell.