Before selling an apartment on your own, it is recommended that you know the risks you face, since many times, the lack of experience and knowledge of the sector can make you make some mistakes that, with good sales advice, you can easily avoid.
What mistakes are we talking about? Setting the wrong price, not being available to make all the visits or committing legal confusion, are usually some of the most common risks.
In this article we explain what are the main risks that you must take into account to sell a flat on your own without problems.
1. Set the wrong price.
It is no coincidence that it is the first risk that we are going to explain to you, since it is the most common mistake. Many times, we value the apartment to sell taking into account what the next apartment we want to buy costs us.
That is why we forget to make a correct and real valuation of the home. Not only must the expenses and taxes generated throughout the buying and selling process be calculated, but also all the aspects that will make it increase in value must be taken into account.
Not knowing the real value of the home can cause you to end up losing money, especially if your intention is to sell the apartment quickly.
2. Do not control the volume of calls.
Most likely, you will receive many requests, through calls and e-mails. This added to the hustle and bustle of day to day, in which we do not already have a lot of time, can make us lose valuable offers.
Many experts recommend establishing a call schedule to receive them and be able to manage them correctly, but you should bear in mind that these hours are probably outside the office, since it is usually when the people who work have availability to contact.
In any case, do not be overwhelmed. Just get organized to answer all the requests you have.
3. Receive unwanted visits.
Without wishing to be alarmist, we want to inform you that you can receive visits from people who are not thinking of buying your apartment (squatters, thieves, curious …).
For this reason, we recommend that you maintain a certain control of visits, requesting personal data and recording them in a medium that you will later delete (as established by the Data Protection Law).
4. Filtering profiles
Following the line of the previous point, we recommend you do a good filter of profiles before planning the visit calendar.
For this you need to know what type of buyer you are addressing and define what requirements they must have to guarantee that they can assume the cost and / or sufficient financing to carry out the transaction.
For example, the real estate agency Tajarat properties has enough experience to know how to filter these types of profiles taking into account your own needs as a seller.
5. Make mistakes in documentation.
The most logical thing is that you do not have the necessary legal knowledge to be able to manage the sale of the property on your own. That’s why you might unknowingly make some mistakes in the documentation.
What types of errors are we talking about? From the drafting of purchase and sale proposals, reservations and deposit contracts, to obtaining the certificate of occupancy and the energy certificate. There is a lot of paperwork involved, so don’t rule out getting advice from a professional from sky marketing
6. Losing potential buyers due to lack of time
As we have already commented, do not discard any offer or request. That is why you may not have enough time to attend to all the people interested in your property.
Before getting down to business, running the risk of losing a potential buyer, organize well the time and days that you will be able to dedicate to managing the sale of your apartment.
7. Post an unattractive ad.
When you are not used to posting apartment ads, you may make some mistakes. The most common? The quality of the images. Not having a professional photographic report, which extols the benefits and qualities of the apartment, makes the ad go unnoticed.
Important details for the future buyer are also often forgotten in the description of the apartment. They are elements that, without a doubt, can make a difference when it comes to being interested in one or the other.
8. Use personal data
This is a great risk that you have to be very careful with. The most logical thing is that you only have one phone number, the staff, so that they can contact you.
But it is not recommended to use it, since anyone could get in touch, whether or not they are interested in buying your apartment. The same goes for e-mail. The fewer risks the better.
9. Have poor visibility.
If your idea is to publish your ad on all the portals for the sale of apartments, you are making a big mistake. In these, most of the ads are for real estate and your ad will probably get lost in the multitude of offers.
Why will you have poor visibility? because you will be competing against sellers much more experienced than you, and who have more than one apartment for sale. After all, having low visibility means having few sales opportunities.
10. Little information about the market and the competition
We also want to highlight how important it is to stay up to date on trends in the real estate market. As you know, it is a changing sector, influenced by several factors to take into account. That is why it is advisable to always have the help of a real estate expert, so as not to miss any opportunity and to be able to sell your apartment in the best conditions.
Now that you know the risks you may run into if you decide to sell an apartment on your own, it’s time to decide what you will do.
To know how to sell an apartment quickly, we always recommend you go to a real estate agency, where they can advise you for free on what are the options that benefit you the most to sell your apartment quickly.
3 mistakes to avoid if you are going to sell your apartment between individuals.
Many sellers choose to sell their apartments from individual to individual to avoid paying the famous real estate commissions. These, in general, range between 3% and 7% of the sale price of the property, which makes them a significant expense that some do not see necessary to pay. After all, it is our home! And nobody better than us to sell it.
But, although it is totally possible to sell a home between individuals successfully, there are a number of mistakes that we should avoid so that the sale does not become a headache. Here we explain the most common ones.
1- Go over the price.
Price is the key to getting the house sold fast. If we set an amount that is above the market value of the house, it may take too long to find a buyer or worse, we may never be able to sell it!
In this sense, it is vital that we take the pricing of our apartment very seriously. But how do I know what the market value of my house is? To do this, we must value our home as many times as necessary and through different sources. For example:
We can use the many online home appraisal tools that exist. These are free and usually give us an instant price or a range of estimated amounts for our property.
Also, we can ask the opinion of several real estate agencies that work in our area (both online and traditional), although we have decided to sell our apartment between individuals, we must not underestimate the deep knowledge that the market agents in our neighbourhood have.
They can value our house for free and without any obligation, so we are not obliged to hire them!Another thing we can do is look at the prices of apartments similar to ours (located in the neighbourhood) published on real estate portals.
This way we can know at what price other sellers in the area sell and what amount we should set so that ours is more competitive. Thus, with this price cloud, we already have enough information to elaborate a price range, removing those very extreme values (high and low) to decide a starting price for our house.
The interest that the floor arouses and the offers we receive will be the indicator that will tell us if this price is attractive or if, on the contrary, we should adjust it.
2. Not promoting the sale enough.
If buyers do not find out that our apartment is for sale, it is very difficult for us to be able to sell it. In this sense, it is vital that we strive to carry out an effective promotion of the sale of the house and this goes beyond just placing a simple advertisement.
That is, the ads on real estate portals are key, but they must attract the attention of buyers. For example, our advertising must include quality photos (bright, with good resolution, angular, etc.)
They must contain all the information that the person needs about the apartment, the property and the neighbourhood (does the house receive natural light? Is the farm old or recently built? Are there bus and metro stop nearby?).
In addition, the more multimedia and audio-visual resources we include, the more likely we are to capture the attention of buyers and the more motivated they will be to make a visit. So, it is convenient to add videos, plans and the virtual visit of the house in the advertisements.
But on how many pages should we advertise our house? It depends on our availability to manage the ads, but it is advisable to do it in at least two of the most visited real estate portals.
3. Sign a deposit or reserve contract lightly.
Price, amount of the reservation signal, date to sign at the notary, distribution of expenses between the parties and, more importantly, the possible penalties that the buyer or seller can assume for backing down with the operation.
That is to say, this document is very important, since it has legal weight and can protect us against a possible fault of the buyer, but as it is a private contract, it is a free agreement.
In other words, if we do not include any clause or any relevant information, such as the penalties or the date of the signature, we may find ourselves in trouble to claim if there is a breach.
When selling our apartment between individuals, we will be the ones who will have to draft the contract. There are many free templates on the Internet that we can use as a base to write our own, but we must bear in mind that each sale is particular, so we must be careful not to leave us any data that could later harm us.
Although, if we want to go on safe ground, we can also hire a lawyer or legal expert to do what he does for us.
