Main Content

Selling Your Arlington VA Condo – Covid Tips

In this video, Arlington VA Realtors and real estate agents Shawn Battle and Matt Leighton discuss the top five mistakes that sellers make when selling their property in 2020 during COVID 19.

Required fields are marked *

Mistake 1: Using the most recent comparable property to price your property.

Using comps is important to come up with your listing price, but we want to make sure we are using the correct comparable properties. Condos from six months ago (Spring 2020) were sold in a drastically different market. Focus on recent properties (comps from the past 1-2 months) that have sold inside your building.

Mistake 2: Not preparing your condo.

The goal is to appeal to the masses. Old carpets need to be replaced. Condos that have not been painted in a while should be repainted. Older light fixtures can be updated rather easily. Focus on knocking out the small items in your condo so that the property shows better. You do not necessarily need to renovate your condo, more so have your property clean, fresh and appealing when you bring it to market.

Mistake 3: Don’t sell your condo vacant (empty).

Stage your condo! Staging is worth its weight in gold. Buyers struggle to envision their own furniture in empty rooms. When you stage a property, the buyers can see the layout perfectly and they have a much better idea on how the space functions. Staging can make small condos feel bigger, staging can hide any strange angles in the condo and staging can make your property stand out from the competition. Staging creates an emotional response from the buyer and helps the buyer to picture themselves living in the property.

Mistake 4: Being too restrictive with your showing requirements.

Our first priority is the safety and wellbeing of our clients and customers alike. With that being said, when you list your Arlington condo for sale, we need to make sure we are accommodating showings. The recent trend has been to overly-restrict showings to a certain day or a certain time. What ends up happening is the buyer gets frustrated and may not want to see the property if it is difficult to view. No overlapping appointments is still mandatory at this time. But asking for things like a negative test within the past 14 days is probably asking too much from prospective buyers.

Mistake 5: Accepting an offer in the first 24 hours.

You have done all this work to prepare your condo, you have staged it, you have priced it correctly and now you have received an offer in the first 24 hours. Should you accept the offer? Maybe, maybe not. If there is a possibility that there will be multiple offers, it may benefit you to wait until after the weekend to review all offers. This gives you the ability to sit down and look at all the offers side-by-side to pick the best one as opposed to just picking the first one you receive.

This is a tricky area to navigate so be sure you and your agent have a game plan for reviewing offers.

Thinking about selling (or buying) real estate in Arlington, Virginia? Shawn and Matt work work in Arlington (and throughout Northern Virginia) on both the seller and the buyer side. If there’s anything we can do for you, feel free to reach out:

Shawn Battle
[email protected]
https://orangelinecondo.com/
https://www.instagram.com/theshawnbattle

Matt Leighton
[email protected]
http://www.themattleighton.com/
https://www.instagram.com/themattleighton

Thanks,
Shawn & Matt
703.999.8108