House / apartment for sale: No buyers? Valuation, broker, checklist – 15 mistakes

Home & Apartment Selling Mistakes – Need or want to sell your apartment or house? There are many reasons: Career change, new love, a new life. Sometimes a property also comes unexpectedly, for example when selling an inherited property. But what do you do if you live in Munich and inherit a property near Hamburg, Berlin or Cologne? Selling your first property is difficult, because hardly anyone has experience with selling apartments and houses. After our great guide, with checklists, on the subject of buying a condominium, we wanted to deal today once again with the subject of selling property, more specifically selling a house and selling an apartment. What does it come down to and what are the biggest mistakes to prepare for as a property seller? Whether selling a home privately or selling with a real estate agent, there are typical mistakes to watch out for. Which ones, we show you today!

Selling Real Estate: 15 Mistakes When Selling Condo & House

This list goes further than all other guides on the Internet, which usually only deal with six, seven or eight errors. Here it goes much deeper; also critical of too high valuations by real estate agents.

Example: No sale due to too high valuation

Here is a small example that we will discuss in more detail later:

You’re smart, of course, and ask several real estate agents for an offer on your condo or house! Actually, that’s exactly right. But there may be a mistake here, because you will probably end up choosing the real estate agent who gives you the highest valuation. But a too high offer price (not purchase price) can scare away interested parties and thus your property, whether condo or house, will quickly become a slow seller and it will not be sold, at least not in the period of time you would have wished. If it is to be sold then nevertheless fast, you must accept substantial losses with the purchase price. After all, you are under pressure! But let’s start with the typical mistakes.

First, a look at the full checklist.

Checklist: Mistakes when selling an apartment or house

These 15 typical sources of error were identified by Lukinski (List: 15 Mistakes in Real Estate Sales; external).

1. Time pressure! Too little time for the sale
2. Timing! Wrong time to sell
3. Inaccurate object description! Exposé written unprofessionally
4. Unflattering photos! Interested parties do not click
5. Wrong target group! Newspaper for students apartment with 50m²
6. Too high a valuation! Too expensive, no buyers
7. Lack of documentation and evidence
8. Viewings unprepared! Does not convince interested parties on site
9. Underestimated effort! Back to time pressure (error 1)
10. Negotiation are easy! Purchase price losses with professionals
11. Private, sell alone! Sales phase without experience
12. Waiting time! Prospective customers stall too long
13. Creditworthiness! Proof of financing (buyer)
14. Sales contract! Defects in the purchase contract are overlooked
15. Burn property! Large or exclusive properties in mass portals

Condominium as an investment in the city centre: Apartment sales are not only interesting for private individuals, real estate investors also have a look at the coveted A-locations. That’s why real estate portals are not always the best idea, especially properties in A-locations are usually sold through renowned brokers who are not only regionally positioned, but have an international network of buyers.

Loft on 2 floors, such properties sell well! Even if they are in need of renovation. After a make-over, such a loft apartment with modern, free-standing staircase shines in all new splendour.

Now let’s take a look at some of the risks:

Time pressure! Too little time for the sale

One of the biggest sources of error that can ultimately cause you to get a much lower sale price than you would have liked is too little time. If you don’t have enough time to sell your condo or house, or even land or apartment building, then you will most likely be under pressure. Of course, if you are under pressure, skilled traders can take advantage of it and they will!

• Time pressure – sales process underestimated
• Option A – Accept lower purchase price
• Option B – Accept longer selling time

The problem: Option B only works if you don’t need the money from the sale of the apartment or house! For example, because you have already bought a new property.

As a recommendation, at least 2 months of preparation time are mentioned here. After all, as you will learn in the other sources of error, it is not just about making a small advertisement, you have to collect documents and records, you have to collect the object data, make meaningful real estate photos, accept the first inquiries, conduct conversations, arrange viewings, then follows the entire negotiations, the purchase contract and notary appointment.

At least 2 months preparation time; sales time often up to 6 months

You see how complex and extensive the process of selling real estate is. That is why it is so important that you take enough time.

Inaccurate object description / Unprofessionally written

What puts off many prospective buyers, especially if you have a lot of listings on property portals, is an inaccurate property description. No one wants to ask for extra information if it is not already provided by the seller. Why should they, when there are a multitude of other offers just a few clicks away.

There are many factors that go into an accurate property description, in the article a complete list(mistakes in selling real estate) is given, with details that must be given at least in the real estate listing.

An object description should at least contain this information:

• Meaningful title
• Address, or location and district
• Living space
• Footprint
• Apartment type / House type
• Available from when
• Number of rooms
• Bedroom
• Bathroom
• Garage / Parking space
• Internet

Features and Extras:

• Building fabric & energy certificate
• Year of manufacture
• Modernisation/refurbishment
• Object state
• Equipment
• Heating type
• Energy source
• Energy certificate

Documents in the first step:

• Floor plan

The result is then an online advertisement or a nice, clear brochure, as shown here in the example:

Unfavourable photos in the exposé – Just like exposé, hardly any demand

Photos say more than 1,000 words! As a magazine, we know very well from our practical work how important photos are; from the online edition to the printed magazines, the choice of picture is one of the most important criteria for attracting the attention of prospective buyers. It’s the same with house sales and apartment sales.

What you have to pay attention to is the quality of the camera. If you use a new smartphone or a modern digital camera, you won’t have any problems. But sometimes the lens is dirty, sometimes the phone model is no longer the latest. When the photo shoot comes up, check what camera options are available to you beforehand. Tip. Smartphones today take very good photos, usually it is quite enough.

Apartment: Before / After example

Here is a practical before / after example of good and bad photos. A simple example: daylight and camera setting.

Before (with bad light):

After (with good light):

With simple tips for photography beginners and the most important camera settings, you can quickly achieve a lot, from outdoor to indoor, even with backlighting.

Order, cleanliness and daylight

What the camera can not solve is order and cleanliness in the premises and, of course, on the outdoor areas. Not only at the viewing, already when real estate photos are created, should always be paid attention to order and cleanliness. Because so the rooms seem high-quality, accordingly more prospective customers on your offer will jump. A good tip is also to remove objects. For example, if there are too many picture frames on the cabinet, clothes hanging visibly in the room, and so on. The tidier the rooms, the higher the chance of a profitable sale.

When the rooms are prepared, it is still a matter of the right timing of the photo shoots. Here you should make sure that you shoot in daylight. This way you have the optimal, natural brightness in the rooms – this is much better than unnatural light, as in the example above. In order for buyers to get a good picture of the apartment, house or apartment building, you should also always photograph multiple perspectives. Simply put, don’t just take one photo of the living room, take three.

Quick check for your photos:

1. Camera quality
2. Order and cleanliness
3. Daylight, bright rooms
4. Multiple perspectives

Also for viewing: Preparation of the rooms

For the visit, similar standards apply as for the real estate photos, everything should be well prepared, because the property must convince. Fresh air, daylight, order and cleanliness, in addition also already prepared, drinks and snacks, it should come directly to the first deeper going in discussions, during the inspection.

House and condo priced too high! No one writes

This mistake is relatively fatal:

If the valuation of the property is wrong, you will usually notice it late, namely exactly then, when no or too few inquiries come!

Under exactly this aspect of the late knowledge of the too high offer price, you are quickly back in error 1) the time pressure. Because suddenly there are no prospective buyers and maybe you’ve already confirmed your new home? Maybe the new financing for the house has already been taken out? This is where it gets critical! There are many reasons why a majority want to sell quickly, not after 1 or 2 years when the ideal time + buyer is found.

As described in the introduction, many get comparison quotes. When you look at settlement offers, you’ll probably say “I’ll get the highest rating”, after all, that’s when you get the most money, right?

Real estate agents also compete with each other and accordingly, of course, you know that the real estate agents who give the highest valuation are usually hired. If 2 real estate agents recommend ~ 800,000 for your condo and another one recommends 950,000, who do you think will win?

1. Broker valued at 820,000
2. Broker valued at 800,000
3. Broker values at 950,000 – gets the job

This could be a mistake!

Brokers want the order, high rating are the means for “satisfied” customers

Therefore, when evaluations are made by real estate agents, make sure that they also include critical points in the evaluation and do not only see everything from the optimal point of view for the order confirmation. A well-founded property valuation should definitely always be done by a professional, a real estate agent or even directly a surveyor. You should make sure that your property is not only “nicely calculated”.

Documents and proofs are missing – Documents are not available

If you want to sell your house you need a lot of documents, if you want to sell your condo is a lot of documents and papers! From floor plans to the energy certificate.

To give you an immediate overview, here is a checklist with the important documents for all types of houses and apartments.

Source: Lukinski.de

Documents for real estate

The general documents for the sale of real estate:

• Official cadastral map of the municipality
• Land register entries and documents relating to registered land charges
• Floor plans / construction plans of the property, building description and the building permit certificate
• Living space and usable space calculation
• Open Space Design Plan
• Building specification
• Building permit and building plans
• Property tax assessment notices
• Energy certificate of the object

In addition, there are the photos of the property, as already described above.

Documents for condominiums

For condos, you’ll need to get a few more documents.

• Declaration of division
• Caretaker agreement
• Business plan
• Partition plan (showing special and common property)
• Common rules of the community of owners
• Minutes of the owners’ meetings
• Service charge statements
• Amount of the maintenance reserve

Selling phase is designed alone – selling privately without estate agent and expertise

If you now take another look at the entire list of possible mistakes, you will quickly notice that the private sale of a property is very difficult, from the credit check of the interested parties (proof of capital), through the entire process of communication, initial enquiries, further discussions, to the first viewing, further viewings, the sales negotiations and, of course, the purchase contract and the notary appointment.

Here again at a glance:

1. Time pressure! Too little time for the sale
2. Timing! Wrong time to sell
3. Inaccurate object description! Exposé written unprofessionally
4. Unflattering photos! Interested parties do not click
5. Wrong target group! Newspaper for students apartment with 50m²
6. Too high a valuation! Too expensive, no buyers
7. Lack of documentation and evidence
8. Viewings unprepared! Does not convince interested parties on site
9. Underestimated effort! Back to time pressure (error 1)
10. Negotiation are easy! Purchase price losses with professionals
11. Private, sell alone! Sales phase without experience
12. Waiting time! Prospective customers stall too long
13. Creditworthiness! Proof of financing (buyer)
14. Sales contract! Defects in the purchase contract are overlooked
15. Burn property! Large or exclusive properties in mass portals

When selling a home and homes, working with a professional real estate agent who has the right expertise and experience is worth a lot.

Did you already know? Two thirds of all properties in Germany are sold through estate agents. Why? The time involved is very high, you need to have the right contacts so that his apartment does not appear on 20 real estate portals. You need the right negotiating skills and ultimately…

House & apartment forms at a glance: List

In the real estate market, there are a lot of different types of construction. Both in the field of apartment and houses, there are many forms and types according to which a property is designed. These are divided into different formats. We have clearly listed some of the most common house and apartment types for you here. You can find more information about the respective property type in the corresponding article by clicking on the corresponding link.

Overview of house types: from bungalow to prefabricated house

Here you will find a list with an overview of all common house types. The linked article provides you with more information about the respective house form, introduces you to characteristics and definitions and you also learn which house type is suitable for whom and why. In addition, we introduce you to the advantages and disadvantages of the respective house form in the associated articles.

• Bungalow
• Semi-detached house
• Single-family house
• Half-timbered house
• Holiday home / weekend house
• Beach house
• Prefabricated house
• Country house
• Massive house
• Terraced house
• Villa
• Low-energy house
• Zero-energy house
• Passive House

Apartment types overview: Old building apartment to basement

The housing market is highly competitive and there are many different types of housing that come with certain characteristics. In the corresponding articles you will find definitions and information about the respective type of apartment, as well as a list of potential advantages and disadvantages of the corresponding apartment.

• Old apartment
• Apartment
• Attic apartment
• Granny flat
• Apartment
• Loft
• Maisonette apartment
• Penthouse
• Basement apartment
• Terrace apartment

Real estate agent in the vicinity

Especially if you’ve already moved away for your new love, are planning to move, are changing homes for work reasons, and so on. You can find good tips directly with us:

• Real estate agent in the vicinity