The Unknown-But-Influential Secret To Selling Your House

When buying a house, there is usually a mental checklist of things we will accept. Without even realising we’re doing it, we partition off our preferences into three categories:

The Non-Negotiables: The things we can’t do without, such as having the requisite number of bedrooms for our children and outdoor space for our dog. These are the areas we can’t compromise on, even if we wanted to.

The Like-To-Haves: The aspects of a house that we’d like to have and would put high on our priority list. This might be an en-suite bathroom for the master bedroom or space in the kitchen for both washer and dryer.

The Negotiables: The fantasy selections we would love if we had but know we will probably have to do without, such as space for a pool in the back garden or a double-garage when we’re on buying a small house.

The above probably sound familiar to you – they are fairly universal, and most of us make decisions about the houses we buy based on them. We’ll look to satisfy the Non-Negotiables category, and then see how much we can scoop up from the other categories within our price bracket.

It’s therefore no different when it comes to selling your house. You’re going to have buyers with the same criteria, and it’s going to be your job to try and satisfy it. However, it can take awhile to get to the point where you’re able to erect the coveted “sold” sign in front of your house – and there might be one simple reason for it.

You see, there is something that trumps all three of those categories. It’s not something practical, but then again, many of our decisions in life are based on intuition. Many of the selling guides you read will base their philosophy on satisfying those three categories – forgetting the single most important aspect of all: intuition.

We go by our intuition more than most of us would be comfortable to admit. It’s the same when buying a house. If potential buyers walk up to your property and suddenly have a bad feeling, almost nothing is going to be able to overcome that. You can satisfy all of the Non-Negotiables and a good chunk of the rest of the standardised criteria for buying a home, but if your buyers have a “bad vibe”, then you’re doomed.

So how do you combat it? In some ways, you just can’t – there’s always an element of chance involved in any property selling endeavour. What one set of buyers loves, another won’t, and vice versa. All you can do is give yourself a fighting chance, and the best way to do that is to make sure the front of your property contains no red flags.

You don’t want a potential buyer to arrive and immediately see a roof in desperate need of new architectural fibreglass mouldings, work you knew you should have done, but have neglected to do in favour of revamping the interior. Similarly, you don’t want dead plants in the garden – you might think it doesn’t matter as your buyers are here to see the house, right? But it does matter; it nudges that impression, that gut feeling, in the wrong direction.

So go and scrutinise the outside of your house for any such issues and be cruel on your home. Only with an open set of eyes can you truly begin to counter that innate feeling in your buyers.

*affiliate links may be used