THE HOME DETECTIVE

26/06/201913/12/2025

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 » inspector » Page 2

20/06/201927/08/2024

Weekend Projects

Weekend Projects to Increase Resale Value

by Kay Pascale

If you’re trying to increase the resale value of your home, there are probably more than a few side projects you want to finish before putting the house on the market for all to see. While some of these, like any kind of roof maintenance, are true renovations that likely require the help and vision of an expert, there remain some weekend projects that you can complete in a single weekend. Here are a few tips to help increase the resale value of your house.

Fix Outdoor Landscaping to Improve Curb Appeal

The first thing potential buyers will see when they walk up to your home is the landscaping. Do trees and bushes look overgrown? Is the lawn too long, or are there unsightly stumps and plants littering the yard? A little prevention in the form of weeding, gardening, watering, and trimming will have the front of your house looking immaculate and inviting to potential buyers. According to Home-Dzine, your lawn is probably one of the first things someone will notice about your house. Therefore, keep your grass trimmed, remove dead branches, and plant some flowers for a pop of colour.

Clean Your Gutters

Power washing the walls and the driveway is a great way to make your home look well cared for. This allows your house to stand out in a positive way from the rest of the houses on your street. Moreover, Gutters are often overlooked when cleaning up the outside of a home because you can’t see them from ground level. But rest assured it will make a big difference.

Make Any Necessary Repairs

Repairs can easily be completed in the span of a weekend. In addition, to ensure that there are no visible red flags, have a walkthrough or seller’s inspection. This will pinpoint any areas that need to be worked on prior to selling the home. Things that may be simply annoying to you might be deal-breakers for a buyer. In particular, leaky taps, mould damage, or a faulty light switch could be the difference between that SOLD sign and spending weeks or even months languishing on the market.

13/06/201927/08/2024

Renting Out a Home

6 Major Things to Know Before Renting Out a Home

By Kay Pascale

With the rising rate of short-term and long-term rentals, there’s a lack of knowledge when it comes to what exactly needs to be done. Different scenarios for renting out your home could yield different challenges. Overall, if you’re deciding to rent out a home to others, there are some basics you should know before you market the home to find a tenant.

1. Pay Attention to Your Home’s Exterior

If you don’t think the exterior of your home matters, think again. First impressions are important. The outside of the house is almost as important as the inside. If a home looks clean and manicured from the outside, potential renters will remember it and have a more positive outlook before seeing the inside. Although keeping up your curb appeal may be demanding for you and your wallet, you can follow some simple tips to manage the toll nature may take on your home and achieve a beautiful look.

2. Understand Indoor Mechanics

The inside of your home goes a bit beyond just looking nice. You need to be prepared for questions about appliances, recent updates, home improvement projects, and how well the working parts are doing within the home. Specifically, air quality can be a huge question among potential renters. Become educated on indoor air quality and other mechanics of your home so that future tenants can feel safe inside.

3. Learn About Required Renting Legal Actions

You will need to address some legal actions if you’re becoming a landlord. Things like insurance and the Rental Housing Amendment Act are good places to start. In addition, you need to consider specific taxes and extra taxation claims to your personal account. Cover your legal odds and ends by consulting with a professional.

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.

31/12/201811/12/2025

Walk-Through Inspections

A walk-through inspection is a comprehensive home inspection without a report! It is a much more informal inspection than my usual property inspections. It requires your attendance at the time of the inspection. As a result, I perform a visual inspection the same as a comprehensive inspection of the home/building and provide you with verbal comments at the time of the inspection summarising my observations. However, I do not provide you with a written report with photographs as I would normally do with a comprehensive inspection.

Most Affordable Inspection

A walk-through inspection is also very affordable. The cost is about half of what a comprehensive inspection would be. This type of inspection is mainly for clients who do not (at this point) want a full home inspection. Because a walk-through inspection is less formal, I do not adhere to the InterNACHI Standards of Practice that require me to generate a written report. You will need to be present at the inspection because I communicate my observations on the condition of the property orally to you.

If you cannot attend the inspection

However, if you can’t be present during the inspection, I will give you a verbal telephone report on any serious defects or issues found. Alternatively, I can provide you with a checklist report highlighting any serious issues found at a slightly increased cost!

Agreement

However, you will need to have a Walk-through Inspection Agreement in place. This is to protect me against liability for deviating from the requirements of the InterNACHI Standards of Practice.

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Inspected Once, Inspected Right!®

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THE HOME DETECTIVE » inspector » Page 2