There are all kinds of articles out there giving advise of how to sell your home. But what if you want to list your home just for fun, but don’t want it to sell then what? If you want to make sure that your home doesn’t sell, here are some valuable tips for you.
- Make sure your home is not easily shown. If nobody can see your home, then there is no way anybody will ever buy it. The best way to do this is to not hire a Realtor, but instead have your home for sale by owner. Then, never answer the phone when people call for more information. If you never answer, they will never make an appointment, and with no appointment, there will be no showings, and no selling.
- Overprice Your Home – Most people look on the internet for homes for sale before they ever try to make a showing appointment. If your home is priced well above the competition, more expensive than other similar homes of the same size and age.
- Don’t include photo’s on your MLS listing – Buyers love photo’s. They want to see as much of the house as possible online, to give them an idea of if they should even bother arranging a showing. If you don’t add ANY photo’s, they will just skip your listing without even looking at the other details.
- Make Sure Your Home Has Foul Odors – Nothing will detract a potential buyer more than a foul smell. Consider animal urine, cigarette smoke, or just rotten food if you want to get rid of buyers quickly. If the odor is bad enough, buyers won’t even bother seeing anything beyond the entry room.
- Keep Your Home Cluttered and Messy – If your home has a great floor plan, you can totally detract from this by having stuff, especially garbage, everywhere. Clutter will detract from any positive selling point your home has. Potential buyers will be so distracted by all of your stuff, they will completely ignore the positive features. Their brain power will be occupied pondering how anyone could sleep on a bed with so much junk on it.
- Have Broken Items – Buyers generally want a well maintained home. They want to know that they aren’t going to have to fix problems as soon as they move into their new house. One way to help detract this is to make sure there are plenty of broken items buyers will notice while viewing your home. Some easily noticed broken items include, broken windows, leaky toilets, holes in the wall, ripped carpet, and doors that won’t open and close.
- Minimize Curb Appeal – First impressions are most important, so if you can give a bad first impression, your chances of not selling your house are pretty good. The best way to give a bad first impression is with poor curb appeal. Don’t mow your lawn, or even better allow it to die. Let weeds overtake all planters and garden areas, and don’t have any flowers. Ensure that your exterior paint, doors, trim and general exterior look beat up and warn out. Loose paint chips, especially on houses older than 1978 make an excellent detractor. If you really want to ice up the bad first impression, make sure your doorbell doesn’t work and the front door is very difficult to open.
By following these seven steps, you can guarantee that your house will never sell, even in this rough buyers market.