The real estate market is a competitive place. If you want your selling experience to result in a house that sells, you need to make it stand out from the competition.

With the help of the internet and real estate agents, buyers today are more educated than ever on the market. That means you need to be even more so in order to attract a buyer quickly for your home selling process.

In order to not ruin your home selling experience, you need to avoid these 9 mistakes:

1. Not making repairs – Buyers have the tendency to overestimate what the cost of making repairs is going to be. That leads to only bad situations for the seller. Either the buyer will decide it is too much work and expense and not to make an offer, or the buyer will make a lowball offer to account for leaving room to make the repairs.
2. Not clearing out the clutter – Clutter makes your house look messy and small. You want your house to look as large as possible. That means you need to remove clutter from your house. Consider donating items you don’t want, or pack away things you don’t need.
3. Leaving the house empty – Less isn’t always more. Buyers are horrible at envisioning what an empty room would look like with furniture. If you have already moved, pay a home stager to decorate key areas like the dining room, living room, and master bedroom.
4. Pricing too high – If your house is priced too high, it will most likely sit on the market. You may even price it out of the range that your real buyers are in, which means it won’t even come up in their searches.
5. Neglecting showing day – Your house should be in tip top shape for every showing. Create a scene that buyers will love to walk into. Buying a house is an emotional situation after all.
6. Not negotiating – Buyers want to negotiate. If you are unwilling to negotiate on the price, you just might end up hanging on to your house.
7. Not disclosing the necessary information – You need to disclose everything you know about the house to potential buyers. Through their due diligence process, they will find the problems anyway and then they will lose trust in you as the seller.
8. Timing it wrong – There are some tax benefits that you can take advantage of and also some that could save you thousands of dollars if you time it right. Each day matters.
9. Not preparing for closing costs – Both buyers and sellers are going to have costs at closing. Know what you are responsible for before you get to the closing table.

There is a lot that goes into the home selling process. If you want your experience to be a good one, you are going to want to avoid these ten things. Proceed with caution and you will sell fast and have a great experience.