Finish all the work on your house before listing it
Q : I’m getting my house ready to sell and my Realtor wants to wait until I’ve finished all of the work that needs to be done to the house before listing it. I feel we should get it on the market as soon as possible and finish everything after it’s listed. Aren’t we losing precious time on the market?
A: I’m afraid I have to agree with your listing broker on this one. Listing a house before it’s really ready to be seen or have ideal photographs taken is a mistake. There is only one opportunity to make a first impression and you’re basically saying, “Can’t we make a bad impression first and try to fix it later?”
A listing gets the most activity (online and in person) when it’s first listed. Here’s why: When you first come on the market, all of the buyers who have been looking, sometimes for months, are watching the market very closely. You have a backlog of buyers waiting to find their house. So, the day you go on the market, all of those buyers see your listing and if it looks good (great pictures) they make an appointment to see it. After that initial flurry of buyers, you only get introduced to new buyers coming on the market one at a time. They have sometimes hundreds of properties to consider online, so finding yours becomes less likely.
If you list your house before decluttering (and staging if you’re having that done), fixing what’s broken or making whatever improvements you might make, then people seeing the house for the first time are going to miss out on the benefit of seeing it when it’s all done. The people com- ing on the market might not even notice it if the listing is not compelling. If they don’t like it right away, they’re going to cross it off their list (or never see it) and move on to whatever else is available.
That said, there are sometimes exceptions to this rule. You might list before all of the work is done if you’re completely remodeling the house and you want to give buyers the chance to pick their colors and finishes. This can be an enticing prospect, but in gen- eral, buyers want to walk into a house that is move-in ready and doesn’t need a ton of work.
If you are not in the latter situation and you’re just getting a house ready to sell and trying to make it look its best, then I strongly recommend you wait until the work is done to list it. You want your first impression to be the best one possible and get as many buyers as possible.