Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Home

Most property owners only own a few homes over the course of their entire lives, so they aren’t exactly experts on buying and selling real estate. But with assets worth hundreds of thousands, home selling mistakes can cost you five figures. 

Fortunately, most homeowners make the same few mistakes, which makes them easy to spot and avoid. An experienced real estate agent can also help you step around these pitfalls. 

As you look to liquidate your most valuable asset, watch out for these mistakes to avoid when selling your home. 

Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Home

You don’t need to become a real estate expert to avoid the following risks. Simply becoming aware of them can go a long way in helping you avoid these home selling mistakes. 

1. Bad Timing

Before you do anything else, stop and ask yourself: Is now even the right time to sell my house? 

Think on two different axes here, starting with the simpler question of seasonality. While some houses do sell each winter, buyer demand drops significantly. The average daily home closings drops from a high of 18,250 in June to a seasonal low of 9,630 in January, according to the National Association of Realtors.

That translates to real dollars. An analysis by Attom Data Solutions found that the average home sells for more than 10% above market value in April, May, and June. Selling in the off-season can leave your home sitting on the market for longer, with fewer offers and a lower final sales price. 

Even more importantly, is the time right for you personally? That proves a harder question to answer. 

First, review how long you’ve lived in the home, and how much it has appreciated in value. If you just moved in a year or two ago, your home may not have appreciated enough to cover the losses you’ll take from both rounds of closing costs (more on this shortly). 

Also, are you truly ready to move into a new home? Do you have the funds ready? Do you know the exact neighborhood or sub-market where you want to move? Have you found a buyer’s agent? 

Alternatively, you could plan on moving into a temporary home after selling, to give you the breathing room to find your next residence. The key word there is plan. 

Make sure you and any co-owners of the property are truly ready to sell before hiring a Realtor. 

2. Forgetting Closing Costs

Selling a home is expensive. 

No, really — it will cost you tens of thousands, likely in the range of 6-8% of the sales price. That includes real estate agent commissions, plus other closing costs such as your share of transfer taxes. And it doesn’t include other related costs such as moving expenses and the closing costs you’ll incur if you buy a new home. 

Run the numbers to make sure you’ll come out in the black rather than red ink. When you do so, use a sales price on the low end of the estimate spectrum, rather than getting optimistic. Don’t forget that most buyers will ask for a seller concession to help with their closing costs. 

You may discover that selling your home right now would require coming to the settlement table with thousands of dollars out of your own pocket, and that you’d rather stay put another year or two. 

3. Overpricing the Listing

Too many sellers shoot for the moon with their listing price, assuming they can always just reduce the price later. 

They can, of course — but it comes at a cost. 

Overpricing your home can leave you with few showings and even fewer offers, if any. The house can sit on the market for weeks and months with no activity, which takes all the urgency out of would-be buyers. They know they don’t have to move fast on your house. 

If you lower the listing price to attract more interest, some buyers read it as desperation. It can prompt bargain-hunting buyers to make lowball offers. 

The bottom line: overpricing your home can lead to a lower eventual sales price than if you had just priced the listing right from the start. 

4. Hiring a Weak Agent — Or None at All

An experienced real estate agent who knows your sub-market well can help you price your property right the first time. And help you avoid most of the other mistakes to avoid when selling your home, for that matter. 

Some home sellers try to pinch pennies by hiring a cheaper Realtor, or foregoing one altogether and selling for-sale-by-owner (FSBO). According to a 2024 report by the National Association of Realtors, the average FSBO home sold for $380,000, compared to $435,000 for homes sold with the help of a Realtor. Seller beware. 

But not just any real estate agent will do. Choose an agent who knows the local sub-market inside and out, with a long history of working in your specific neighborhood. They have their pulse on the local market, know its temperature and which direction it’s moving. Odds are they also work with plenty of buyers looking in that neighborhood, and know exactly what makes them tick. 

Start by checking real estate agent reviews. When you interview potential real estate agents, ask questions such as:

• Do you have listings that compete with mine? If so, how do you navigate that conflict of interest?
• How long have you worked as a Realtor in this sub-market?
• How many homes have you sold in this sub-market in the last year? 
• How many hours do you typically work each week as a real estate agent?
• What marketing plan would you recommend for my home? 
• How often should I expect to hear from you? 

An expert local Realtor earns every penny of their commission. A part-time stay-at-home parent who moonlights as an agent in between soccer practices? Not so much. 

5. Over-Renovating

Most home improvement projects cost more than they add in value to your home. 

Each year, the Journal of Light Construction runs a study on the return on investment for several dozen home improvements. In 2024, only three of them added more value to the home than their average cost.

Sure, you could spend $10,000 overhauling the kitchen. But it might only add $6,000 to the value of your home, which means you just dumped $4,000 down the sink disposal. 

Most buyers would rather make their own cosmetic upgrades. Leave them to it. 

6. Failing to Fix Maintenance Issues

Don’t confuse “renovations” with “needed repairs.” 

If the faucet leaks, fix it. If the walls are scuffed and dingy-looking, paint them (yourself). Spruce up the house to look and feel like it’s in good condition — without doing a full home rehab. 

When prospective buyers tour your home and spot an ignored maintenance issue, it immediately raises a question in their mind: “If the owner hasn’t bothered to fix that, what else have they ignored, that I can’t see as easily?” It makes them nervous about buying your house, which translates to fewer and lower offers. 

That said, you never want to hide major repairs that the home needs. For example, if the foundation has a structural crack, don’t just spackle and paint over it and hope no one notices. 

If you fail to disclose “material defects” of the home, you commit perjury in the contract of sale, which includes a home condition disclosure form. The buyer can sue you for damages and legal fees once they discover that you hid a major structural defect.

7. Skimping on Photography & Marketing

Everyone in the world today considers themselves an artist behind the camera lens, and thinks they’re a master photographer. They’re not, and neither are you. 

Professional real estate photographers know how to capture your home in the best possible light, from the right angles to make each room look larger. They’ll tell you to pull that ottoman out of the room for the best shot, or to clean the clutter off of that table. 

Photos are the first and most important thing that prospective buyers look at as they browse home listings online. They are your best marketing tool. Don’t skimp on them. 

Your real estate agent or photographer may even suggest emptying each room before shooting it. That allows you to virtually stage the room, using tools like Stuccco or BoxBrownie. 

A professional photographer may also be able to take an eye-catching drone video showcasing your home from above. Or they (or your Realtor) may help you create a virtual tour or three-dimensional map of your home. 

Ask any business owner: good marketing pays for itself many times over. This is not the place to get cheap. 

8. Poor Prepping & Staging

First impressions matter. You need to make sure your home makes an outstanding impression for every single prospect who tours it. 

That starts with exterior curb appeal. Keep the lawn mowed, the yard tidy, the landscaping trimmed, the garden orderly. That might require you to rake leaves more often in the fall than you otherwise would, or weed the garden more regularly. That’s the cost of making a good first impression. 

On the inside, your home should also sparkle with cleanliness. No prospect wants to buy a dirty house. Keep the kitchen and bathrooms particularly pristine. If you have children or pets, you’ll need to constantly clean up in their wake. 

To make the best impression, you’ll also want to declutter and depersonalize. Ask your real estate agent for advice on exactly what to remove from each room, but you’ll want 30-50% fewer objects in every room to make them look larger. “Stuff” has a tendency to creep into our lives and homes over time, leaving most rooms over-occupied. That makes them look smaller than they would if they’d been professionally staged. 

You don’t necessarily need to spend thousands of dollars on staging. But you do need to remove superfluous objects and much of the personalization in each room. Prospects want to imagine their own decor and family photos when they tour a home, to envision themselves living there. That’s harder for them to do when they’re inundated with walls full of your family photos. 

It’s not convenient to prep your home for sale, to keep it orderly and spotless for weeks or months on end. But it’s the cost of selling your home faster and for a higher sales price. 

9. Unavailability

Imagine a store that only opens for a few hours each week. How can they possibly make sales if buyers can’t walk in the front door?

The same goes for your house. Showings won’t always be convenient for you, prospects may want to see it during dinner time or late in the evening or early in the morning before they go to work. Or they may want to swing by at the last minute, with little notice. 

You may have to go for a stroll around the neighborhood or a drive to the local coffee shop, perhaps with your kids, perhaps in bad weather. 

Again, these are some of the downsides of selling a home. Don’t like it? Sell to a cash buyer instead, for a fast, convenient sale. Just don’t expect to sell for full market value.  

10. Letting Emotion Influence Your Decisions

Your home feels personal to you. It’s where you’ve raised your kids, hosted guests, shown off your unique taste and style. It has “you” stamped all over it. 

Until it comes time to sell, that is. From the moment you put it on the market, you should start thinking of it as a commodity. 

As touched on above, you should depersonalize it and declutter it. You should keep it far neater and cleaner than you ever have before. You’re selling a commodity, not making a personal statement of style. 

Buyers will walk through and make comments like “That wall definitely needs to go,” or “Ew, those curtains don’t match the room at all — this place needs a total overhaul.” Don’t take it personally, as hard as that is. 

Stop thinking of it as “your” house. Think of it as a collection of sticks and stones that someone else will use completely differently from how you did. 

Your family room might become a beer pong room. You can get offended and turn off the buyer, or you can smile and nod and take their money. Which serves your interests better? 

Many buyers also get offended when they receive lower offers than they anticipated. Rather than getting mad, make a counter offer. Don’t take it personally, because it’s not personal. You’re negotiating the sale of a commodity, not the treasured home where you have decades of memories. You already let that go that moment you decided to list it for sale. 

Final Thoughts

Owners tend to make the same home selling mistakes, and the ten above rank among the most common. 

If you want to sell faster and for more money, watch out for these mistakes to avoid when selling your home. They aren’t always easy or convenient; if they were, fewer sellers would make them. 

Avoiding these home selling mistakes starts with simple awareness. When you catch yourself falling into one of these traps, just stop and pull yourself out of it. Enlist your spouse or children to help you keep the house clean at all times, keep the exterior groomed, to remind you to stay flexible when a buyer wants to stop by in the middle of dinner. 

The more prepared you are, the faster, smoother, and more lucrative your home sale will be. Keep your eyes on the prize: maximum money in your pocket post-sale. All of the inconveniences along the way are simply the cost of doing business.