We’ll pick up where we left off on Tuesday, and talk about ways in which sellers in today’s housing market have completely crippled their chance to maximize their homes’ values, or their chances of selling altogether.

If you look at these examples, and think, “Who the heck would ever do this?”  Well, then I guess you’re one step ahead of the game…

I cut this down to “Top Five” instead of ten, since issues with homes always require a better explanation!

And we have photographic evidence of these, so that the heck…

1) Not Showing To “Maximum” Potential…

No, seriously – this happened.

This is not just twenty-thousand flyers on the porch of a house.

And it’s not just twenty-thousand flyers on the porch of a house that is for sale.

It’s twenty-thousand flyers on the porch of a house that is for sale, AND, has a hold-back on offers!

Have we truly lost our minds in today’s real estate market?

Once upon a time, only “the best houses” got multiple offers, and now even the disgusting slums seem to expect them.

It’s one thing to not maximize your home’s potential, but it’s another thing altogether to show it in this condition…

2) Don’t Check Up On The House During The Listing

This is yet another photo from a house listed for sale, that had a hold-back on offers, where the owners seemed to expect multiple offers:

This house was staged, and it looked pretty good in some spots, but in others, it was disgusting.

It’s “midge season,” and if you live in a condo, you know what I’m talking about!  These tiny little bastards are everywhere, and they’ll be here until the temperature dips below 15-degrees for good.

In this home, the midges essentially had squatter’s rights, and all the light fixtures looked like the one above.  Keep in mind – this was a $900,000 house!

If your home is going to be vacant for 6-8 days during showings, you have to check up on it at least once per day, but ideally, in the morning, afternoon, and evening.  You never know what could go wrong, or how the condition of the property could change.

I went to a house the other day where the front door was wide open.  Literally, wide open, and nobody was home.  The house was vacant, and staged, and the door was wide open.

I went to a house in the summer where somebody (unless it was the wind…) had knocked a giant vase off the counter, and water, glass, and flowers were everywhere.  I’m not saying that this alone is going to kill any interest a potential buyer might have in a property, but it certainly doesn’t show the home in the finest light.

When a house is listed for 6-8 days, is it really so much to ask that the seller go and check up on the property a couple times per day for a week?  Or are sellers really willing to leave the sale of their biggest asset to the elements?

3) Lie On The Listing

I mentioned this in yesterday’s post with respect to condos, but it happens with houses as well!

Here’s a property that claims to have a “mutual” driveway, which, um, I guess it does…

HOWEVER, there’s no curb-cut on the sidewalk!

The most important thing about a “driveway” is the ability to drive into it.

There’s no way to access this supposed driveway, unless you drive a Hummer, and have no problem rolling up over the curb, over the lawn on the boulevard, and through those two houses.

I don’t know if this is a flat-out lie, or if it’s an agent that didn’t do their homework.

But either way, buyers are going to come to see this house, expecting to see a driveway, when, in fact, there isn’t one.

Time and time again, agents will put features on MLS listings that don’t exist, perhaps hoping to lure in buyers that might not otherwise see the property.  But if there’s one surefire way to ensure a buyer will lose all interest in a property, it’s to disappoint them as soon as they get out of the car.

4) Terrible Photos, And Even Worse Marketing…

You get to use nine photos on the MLS listing, and provide one “feature photo,” but don’t tell that to the person who did this:

See that photo on the left?  That’s the feature photo!  That’s the photo that appears first on the MLS listing, and shows prominently when viewed.

That’s right – the feature photo for this listing is a shot of the floor, which is cheap laminate, for the record.

The second photo is……wait for it…….another shot of the floor, but from a different angle, and with different lighting!

And the third photo, for some reason, is of the mailbox…

I don’t know why the listing agent and/or seller didn’t take a photo of the house that they’re trying to sell, like most normal, rational human beings would do.  And I also don’t know why they used three photos instead of the nine they’re allowed, or why 67% of the photos are of the goddam floor.

Is there no common sense in these people?

5) Have Multiple Residents Of The Home In Very, Very Poor Health

This one is not meant to be insensitive, but it’s a story I simply have to tell.

I went into a house on Saturday that made you want to Purell your whole body as soon as you walked out.  You could smell the inside of the home from the front door, and it just felt “off” in a way.

When we opened the door, what looked like a dog slowly dragged itself to the front door.  The poor thing had to be about 25-years-old, and there was a note from the owner that specified the dog had two bad hips, and was harmless.

In any event, this dog, to be completely honest, was in miserable health, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of dog you wanted to pet, or touch at all.  It looked like it was one step from death, and its hair was literally falling out as it dragged its poor little body across the floor.

But things got even weirder as we went upstairs.

In the first bedroom, there were medical supplies stacked in massive piles along the wall.  It looked like medication, but I’m no doctor, so I don’t know what the medication was for.

In the master bedroom, we could tell exactly what was going on – somebody that lived there was obviously bed-ridden, as there was (forgive my ignorance here – I don’t watch E.R. or Grey’s Anatomy) what looked like a stand for an IV-bag, and one of those machines that makes beeping noises (okay that was a lame attempt to describe it).

Believe me when I say that I’m not suggesting staging comes before life itself, and I know that this was clearly a case where the seller had no choice but to deal with the house in its current condition, but I have to call it as I see it, and this house is massively discounted because of the way it shows, and the fact that every buyer wants to leave as soon as they enter.

I feel terrible for the owner of that home, and for the poor dog.  I hope the owner’s hand isn’t being forced, and that this isn’t why the home is on the market – with people trekking through at all hours of the day, disrupting what looks like a pretty tough life at the moment.

But maybe this owner is at the point where he or she doesn’t care about the state of the home, and how much it sells for?

In any event, I felt like a jerk for looking at this situation with my real estate hat on, rather than sympathizing from the onset.

But it was a real estate “first” for me, which is something I always tend to share…