How Thinking Like a Home Buyer Helps You Sell Homes

Not all Sellers are Making the Most of the Home they Desire to Sell

It’s easy to lose track of who your audience is when selling multiple homes. Here’s how you can get yourself into the mindset of a home buyer and sell homes more successfully.

First, you have to listen to current or recent home buyers. Spend some time listening to friends or family who are thinking about buying a house. What you’ll find is that even though there is a seemingly endless list of homes for sale, not all sellers are making the most of their homes. The problem faced by most homeowners is that they think the house they live in and love is the home they’re selling. Instead, it is important to distance homeowners from their house, allowing them to consider what aspects will be most attractive to home buyers. Your clients, and you as a real estate professional, will see better results if you think like a home buyer first and like a seller second.

One change that is clear is that shows like HGTV, Bravo and Discovery, as well as online apps like Trulia and Zillow, have changed the way that home buyers think about their potential homes. What they want is something that has personality, is in good shape, is move-in ready and can easily be adapted to their own specific lifestyles. At minimum, this means giving the home a good coat of paint inside and out, as well as reducing the personal touches inside the home.

However, that’s just the beginning. If a house is for sale and it doesn’t meet the needs of today’s home buyers, no matter how attractive the price, you’re going to have a hard time selling it. Homes that require massive improvement might be sold at a deep discount, but that still doesn’t mean a major improvement project like unifying the living room and kitchen will happen. Buyers don’t want to take on expensive improvement projects in the wake of the recent recession; there are too many houses for sale where the layout and flow is already adaptable. That means that problem houses languish on the market as more attractive properties get snapped up. If your clients’ potential property needs a major improvement or refinish, it might be worth the investment in the long run for the current owners to complete the work prior to putting the house on the market.

If you struggle with thinking like a home buyer, here are a few other suggestions:

• Visit a few open houses in your client’s neighborhood and price range to get a sense of what other sellers are doing to present their homes for sale.
• Try to imagine what you would want in a house if you were a different person. What would you want as a young family with children? What would you want as an experienced couple with no children? What if you were a single person? How do you want to live?
• Talk with other agents about what kinds of properties and amenities he or she is looking for on behalf of their buyers.
• Talk to other buyers who are not your clients to get a sense of what others are seeing out during the process of buying a home.
• Visit model homes to get a sense of what features builders and developers are trying to showcase.

Remember, the trick to selling a client’s home is to remove any potential objections a buyer might have to purchasing it. Share some of your ideas for thinking like a home buyer with us in the comments!

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