Scared of Selling Your Home? Common Fears Home Sellers Have

It's fall, and we’re headed toward that time again—Halloween, with the spooky pumpkins and skeletons and plastic bats. But then again, deep in the heart of the property owner, a different fear might be growing – the fear of selling your home!

If you're thinking about accomplishing a real estate sale this fall, don't get spooked. With the right assistance from a professional real estate agent, you can move into this process with confidence, knowing that you're in good shape to sell your home.

As with those skeletons and other scary creatures, you can deal with a lot of your real estate seller fears by facing them head-on and shining some light on them. Here are some of the ways that real estate agents can help you settle your nerves before you go forward with a real estate sales process.

Hot markets always make people on both sides of a real estate sale feel nervous. Although hot markets may be great for sellers in some scenarios, there is the fear that a certain seller is going to lose out by moving slowly, or that the competitive process is going to be stressful and require snap decisions.

In any case, your agent can help you plan for this market by looking at seasonal trends, local market trends, and more to understand what's happening so that you don't feel like it's going to disrupt your sales process.

Interest rates moving are probably more scary to buyers than they are to you if you're selling. However, one fear around interest rates is that they will rise so much that buyers will be scared off, and your house will continue to sit on the market.

Again, though, many of these fears are somewhat unrealistic. Interest rates tend to tick up and down around a general value—they don't just spike overnight and then continue to soar. Regardless of the activity, with a common-sense sales process, you should be poised to move forward regardless of what's happening with base interest rates at a given time.

This is another problem that may be scarier for a buyer than it is for a seller. Low inventory means that there's not a lot of stock available, and so there's more market interest. In general, low inventory levels help sellers get where they want to go more quickly.

But let's talk about the corollary fear that many sellers might have: the emotional investment that you make in your home.

In short, if you're looking to sell, that means you’ll have to move somewhere else, and you’ll have to do it on a defined timeline. If you're looking to buy somewhere else, you may be nervous about being able to buy in a low inventory environment. One of the best ways to deal with this fear is, again, to do the research and start a basic shopping process for yourself while you're looking to move toward settlement. That way you won't get any unpleasant surprises as you go!

This is one of the most common fears that professional agents help sellers with.

It's normal for sellers to look at their own properties with a critical eye. Maybe the landscaping is not optimal or the house isn’t in good shape for staging. There may be any number of structural or home system problems that have been causing the sellers themselves grief. They can't imagine it being any different for a buyer: they live in fear that because of these issues, their property will be considered a ‘dog,’ and continue to sit on the market forever.

That's really at the heart of many of these fears—that the property won't sell well, and that it won't sell at all. Having to take a loss on a property is another thing that sends shivers down a seller’s spine.

The good news is that, again, professional real estate agents can ballpark values and assess a property with all of its flaws, in the context of the deal that’s likely to be made. They’ll get you to a price point where your property will sell. 

One way to move forward without fear is working with an agent who knows their way around your local market. That wisdom is like a flashlight shining on the dark corners of what's possible. So you can go back to focusing on Halloween ghouls and goblins, knowing that you're well supported!

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