5 Secrets you SHOULD keep from buyers when selling your home

As a Professional Home Stager, home staging consulting is something I do for clients on a regular basis.  In recent weeks I have been reminded that there really are some secrets sellers should be keeping from buyers while selling a home.

And I’m not talking about the structural integrity of the home or defects my friends. Let’s make that clear from the start.

Home buying and selling is an emotional process for all parties involved. 

There are reasons why you are selling and reasons why someone is buying. 

However, as a seller it is important to try and keep the upper hand when it comes to getting the most profit from the sale of your home.

How can you potentially lose the upper hand if you’ve priced your home right, it shows great and you have an interested buyer?

Think of it as a game of poker and everyone wants to win big. 

Try putting on your poker face, but you’re not around to show your flat response. 

But your house is giving your hand away for you!

Yikes! You’ve already started to lose.

How you ask?

Your house is giving away your secrets.

What secrets could your house possibly be revealing to your buyers you say? Houses can’t talk!

You’d be surprised just how much your house is saying about you and the secrets you’d rather keep.

Here are 5 of the most revealing secrets your house may be giving away:

1.    How much money you make or what you owe through pay stubs & other financial information frequently found in home offices.

2.    Your physical or medical conditions or that of other family members with medical equipment left out of any kind.

3.    The medicines you take for what ails you through prescription medications found in the usual places.  People are also aware of what certain medicines are prescribed for. Remember buyers will snoop in your cabinets!

4.    The state of your emotional well being through self-help books or other reading material on bedside tables and bookshelves. From divorce recovery, depression to addiction, books you read reveal a lot to your buyers.

5.    The fact that you may already have bought a new home or have your hopes set on one with photos or documents of the new place on display.

Can you see how potentially all these common household items can reveal something about you that you may not want a buyer to know?

All of these things can be used against you when it comes time to negotiate.

Your financial, physical and emotional state and a host of many factors can and will be used to determine how “low will they go” in the price of the home.

Buyers will ask themselves;

·        “Are they desperate to sell?”

·        “In a hurry to get out?”

·        “Paying two mortgages?”

·        “Dealing with issues or loss?”

·        “Sick?”

Maintain the upper hand when selling your home and make sure your house isn’t revealing secrets you’d rather keep.

Keep these items secure while showing and your house will never tell.

Copyright © 2009 Karen Otto, Home Star Staging, A Real Estate Staging and Consulting company, Plano, TX