Seller Mistakes

estate agents and home selling and house price

Critical Home Selling Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

By Kay Pascale

Selling your home is one of the most important life-changing decisions you will make. Moreover, it’s both personal and financial. The stress of the home-selling process can leave you open to some critical and costly mistakes. This includes putting your house price too high! Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Choosing the Wrong Real Estate Agents

The second most ill-advised choice, beyond trying to sell your own house, is the wrong choice of estate agents. As a result, properly vetted estate agents, with proven home-selling experience, can help you with many of the costly legal requirements of property transfer. This helps avoid most of the pitfalls of a poorly marketed home. Therefore, consult several local estate agents and ask how they would market your home. Also, ask for a comparative marketing analysis that would give you the values of houses in your area.

Poor Staging

Part of successful home selling is the attractive staging of the property. In addition, decluttering your home will allow potential buyers to visualize themselves in your home. Putting your extra clutter from the garage, attic, and even some of the main rooms of your home in storage will make your home feel more spacious to the buyer.

Small Upgrades are Necessary for Home Selling

In addition, small upgrades like fresh paint and house repairs are home-selling requirements to secure the best price for your home. The basics of home maintenance give the buyer confidence in your home as their choice. Also, keeping your house picture-perfect and ready at short notice can greatly improve the likelihood of a successful and quick sale. A well-staged house ready to view will get the most potential buyers for your home.

Not having a home inspection

Many sellers assume inspections are only for buyers. However, failing to get a pre‑listing home inspection can seriously undermine a sale. Without it, hidden defects like damp, roof leaks, or electrical faults often surface later during the buyer’s inspection. This leads to renegotiations, delays, or even a collapsed deal. A proactive inspection helps sellers identify and fix problems upfront. It enables accurate property pricing and presents a transparent, well‑prepared home. Such preparation builds buyer confidence and reduces the risk of disputes after transfer.

Pricing Your House Too High is a Home-Selling Mistake

Pricing your home too high is one of the costliest and most time-consuming home-selling mistakes. Too high a price can turn off buyers and delay the sale of your home. As a result, each subsequent lowering of your house price will put you in a more vulnerable position in negotiating an optimum sale price.

Not Giving a 90-Day Notice

One of the legal pitfalls that good estate agents can help you avoid is not giving a 90-day notice of cancellation to the bank. This is a costly mistake since it results in a penalty of 1% on the remaining balance on your bond for the full 90 days.

Cancellation Notice of Your Bond – A Home Selling Mistake Often Made

Your bank will freeze your funds once you give a cancellation notice on the bond. Therefore, if you need those funds for a down payment, it could jeopardise the purchase of your new home. The cancelled bond will usually pay out in 10 weeks. Moreover, withdrawing the necessary funds for your purchase before giving a cancellation notice would avoid a costly delay.

In the End

The researched choice of an experienced estate agent will help you avoid critical and costly home-selling mistakes. Therefore, take the time to choose the right agent to give you confidence in their guidance during the sale process. When you’re ready to find your dream home, speak to an experienced agent. Experienced agents will help you sell your current house and move on to your next adventure in life.

Note: Kay Pascale is a real estate writer and will contribute more interesting and informative articles to my blog.

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THE HOME DETECTIVE » estate agent

06/06/201911/12/2025

Estate Agents and Property Inspections

When Estate Agents Should Insist On An Independent Inspection

The EAAB (Estate Agents Affairs Board) encourages buyers to have a home inspection. However, which buyer ever reads the articles on the EAAB’s website? Maybe estate agents read the articles and the EAAB encourages estate agents to advise buyers to have an independent property inspection?

Most estate agents prefer not to have an independent property inspection, mostly because of concerns over defects that may make the sale fall through and because of the cost involved.

Estate agents should know better! Insisting on an independent property inspection may save the agent from strained relationships with both sellers and buyers. Furthermore, an independent inspection will prevent damage to their reputation or possibly even costly liability later on, should problems occur with the condition of the property.

An independent home or property inspection doesn’t kill a deal by forcing sellers to disclose defects that they wouldn’t otherwise have known about. Any defect that is serious enough to kill a real estate transaction is best discovered before it can kill the deal or result in litigation at a later stage.

24/12/201611/12/2025

Voetstoots clauses are still being used in 98% of Home Sales Contracts

Voetstoots Clauses in Home Sales

Read your Offer To Purchase contract carefully!

Beware of voetstoots clauses in the Offer To Purchase!

If you believe that the voetstoots clause is no longer applicable to home sales, you are mistaken. Estate agents and home sellers are using the clause in 98% of the “offer to purchase” agreements. Furthermore, the clause protects both the seller and the agent in case of legal ramifications for defects. The seller is not selling his home in his normal course of business. As a result, the Consumer Protection Act does not protect you!

In conclusion, just imagine what is wrong and can go wrong with the house you just bought if you don’t have a home inspection!

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THE HOME DETECTIVE » estate agent

24/06/201624/11/2025

Is a Seller’s Disclosure worth the paper it’s written on?

Seller’s Disclosure

There are also various versions of “Seller Disclosure” statements used by estate agents when selling a house. The Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority (PPRA) prepared one of the disclosure forms. Another by a prominent firm of conveyancing attorneys. Some “Offer To Purchase” contracts include the seller’s disclosure at the back of the contract. None does much to make the average property transaction fairer for the buyer.

These disclosure statements often don’t provide the buyer with comprehensive information on the property’s condition. Such agreements shift responsibility away from the estate agent and onto the seller.