Today’s homebuyers are the most knowledgeable and discerning they’ve ever been. With a world of information in the palm of one hand and the weight of a life-changing decision in the other, they are fully equipped to make critical decisions and ask every crucial question they need to.
As a home seller, you have to be ready for these questions. Below are three common questions you can expect potential buyers to ask you.
1. Why Are You Moving?
Reasons for selling a home vary from seller to seller. Some people move because of better opportunities elsewhere, impactful life events like marriage or even the death of a loved one, or simply having the means to moving into a better home.
Whatever your reasons may be for selling, buyers tend to only have one reason for asking – to determine how to approach negotiating for price.
Certain reasons (i.e. anything that suggests an urgency to close the sale as soon as possible) may prompt your buyer to negotiate for a lower price, understanding that your situation would make you more willing to accept such an offer.
In cases like this, it wouldn’t be wise to lie, either. Instead, you can insist on keeping your reasons private because they’re “too personal to disclose.” If you have a number of reasons for selling that overlap, you could choose to only disclose the one that won’t put you in a tough spot.
2. What Am I Buying Exactly?
The law is clear about what is included in a home sale and what isn’t – at least for the most part. Fixtures like window blinds, faucets, bath tubs, and other things permanently attached to your home are commonly understood to be part of a sale. The law, however, isn’t clear about a number of items and it doesn’t take into consideration that home staging, which may involve the purchase of furniture just to make a space look good, is integral to home selling.
Be ready with a full list of items that are included in the sale. This won’t only help you give a prompt and clear response when asked and get you brownie points for doing so, itemizing everything will make everything simpler for both of you if you decide to negotiate.
3. What Major Problems Have You Had to Fix?
This is as loaded as a question gets. A home’s problems and history of repairs sheds light (a lot of it) on the environmental and even structural threats of a home. For example, a long history of electrical repairs may mean that the electrical engineering of your home’s design is faulty from the get-go, and rewiring is a very expensive and tedious process.
Again, dishonesty isn’t the solution here. Homebuyers can very much still go after you for failing to disclose certain issues. Be transparent about the problems but be as confident in assuring your buyer that sufficient and lasting repairs have been made.
At the end of the day, buyers just want information that may be pertinent to your selling price, be it your reason for moving, what exactly their money is worth, and any foreseeable expenses for them as a result of moving into your home. But if you don’t have time to negotiate with buyers, you can always sell your home to a property investor like Blue Hen Homebuyers. We buy all kinds of homes, regardless of their age or condition. Call our offices today at 910-802-2222 to learn more about how we can help you.