Beware of well-meaning advice

When your friends, relatives, neighbors, and even casual acquaintances hear that you’re thinking of buying or selling a home, you’ll get advice. All kinds of advice.

 

Suddenly everyone is an expert. It might be because they bought or sold a home themselves a few years ago; because they have a brother in another state who sells real estate; or because they were themselves licensed for a while back in 1993.

 

Some of their advice might be good, but some of it could be disastrous.

 

The truth is, every market is local, and every market is in constant flux and change.

 

The price a similar house in your neighborhood sold for six months ago could be way off base for the price you should ask/pay today. And the price a similar home sold for in one community – even in the same city – may be thousands of dollars different than the price it will sell for in another.

 

The marketing method that works in one community may not work at all in another.

 

For instance, in some places open houses bring buyers. In others all they bring is time for an agent to read a book or work on his or her laptop. Here in Tamaqua, we find that open houses can bring in a buyer

 

This is why we urge people not to take advice from anyone who isn’t working in the business – in your locality – every day. They simply don’t have the same information and experience to share.

 

On the other hand…

Those who live in your community can give you at least one good bit of advice – they can recommend an agent who served them well (or warn you about one who did not.)

 

Secondly, anyone who has been involved in a real estate transaction recently can give you something more - warnings to help you avoid the mistakes they made.

 

Both buyers and sellers can tell you what happened when they failed to take their agent's advice – and did things to harm their own chances of success.

 

Home sellers can tell you about mistakes such as over pricing their home, insisting on being present for showings, refusing to fix-up or repaint, and getting insulted and refusing to negotiate low offers.

 

Home buyers can tell you about the time wasted making low-ball offers or the disappointment of losing out on the home of their dreams when they decided to "sleep on it."

 

So listen to your friends and relatives – just don't listen when they give you pricing or marketing advice, and don't listen if they tell you to ignore advice from your own experienced real estate professional.

 

You've chosen an expert to help you - so let that expert do his or her job.