This Is the No. 1 Thing I Dislike About Selling a House

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Dealing with people can be a really frustrating experience. 

In the past decade or so, I’ve bought several properties and I have also sold several homes. While I’ve always ended up selling for more than I paid and been able to pay off my mortgage loan and walk away with a little profit, I have not really enjoyed the process.

There’s one big reason why that’s the case — and it’s something you should prepare for if you’re going to list your own property.

This is the really frustrating thing about selling a house

As a home seller, the most frustrating part of the process — and the thing I disliked the most about it — was dealing with the irrationality of potential buyers.

I’m not talking about people just acting based on emotion, since I know that buying a house is an emotional experience and you want to love the place you call home. I’m talking about potential buyers making choices that objectively speaking, do not make any sense.

Because I acted as my own real estate agent and thus received the feedback directly (via an online form) after showings, I was able to see firsthand the illogical ways in which potential home buyers acted.

For instance, with one of my previous houses, the feedback the buyer’s real estate agent provided was that they loved the home but they would not buy it because they didn’t like the furniture and couldn’t get past the “bad” impression the furniture made. Of course, the house was not being sold furnished, so the furniture shouldn’t have had any bearing whatsoever on the decision they made to buy (or not buy) the property.

In another situation when I was selling a plot of land that was 16 acres, with over three acres cleared already for a home, I received feedback from a real estate agent indicating that the potential buyers loved the lot but were concerned they would not have room to build a big enough house on the lot. With over three acres of cleared space, that would have been one heck of a house if they couldn’t fit it on the property.

These were just a few of many examples of situations where people passed up on properties they professed to love for reasons that simply didn’t add up. And as a seller who was eager to find a buyer, it was frustrating to lose out on sales for this reason.

How to stay sane during the sales process

If you’re trying to sell a house, the important thing to remember is that a lot of people simply aren’t going to come into the process with the same perspective you have. And there’s no way to convince someone of an objective reality they just can’t see.

Ultimately, you don’t want to try to convince a reluctant buyer because you’re unlikely to get the best offer from them. You just need to be patient with the process and expect it’s going to take quite a few showings before someone eventually falls in love with the space.

By keeping these facts in mind, you can hopefully stay calm and happy during the sales process and not find yourself as annoyed as I was with buyers who don’t think the way you’d expect them to.

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