Mueller Austin Homes

I took my first kickboxing class today, and sweated, punched and kicked my way through an hour of training. Afterwards it occurred to me that there are many ways in which selling a home reminds me of kickboxing.

Preparation is everything.   On fight night on TV, the fighter shows up looking buff and ready to fight. In the real world the fighter is training six days a week to get in shape for several months or years. The preparation that you don’t see determines the performance on camera – hence the saying “Train hard, fight easy”.

It’s the same with selling a home. A home seller has to rigorously prepare their home for sale. Whether it’s painting, cleaning, staging or fixing things found on the pre-inspection report, there’s a lot of work to be done. Before the cameras come out and the audience of buyers gets to see it.

Don’t rely on armchair experts. I watched many HGTV shows while feeding my newborn daughter and I can assure you that selling a home isn’t as easy as it looks. In 20 minutes on HGTV, a few presenters stage and prepare a home for a budget of $2,000. (Ever wondered why they don’t count labor costs for the crew? Don’t get me started)

In reality, there’s more to it than showing up with a few cans of paint, some open house signs and deciding which of the offers to accept. Avidly watching Ultimate Fighting Championships on TV doesn’t make someone an experienced fighter. Watching every episode of Designed to Sell doesn’t make you an expert stager. Get professional help!

You’ve got to have someone good in your corner. You’ve seen the fighter listening avidly to the advice from his corner during the match. If the fighter doesn’t win in the first round, their coach tells them how to adapt. What new angles to explore.

It’s the same with selling a home if you haven’t got any offers in the first month. Your agent looks at what the market is doing and then gives you things to change, different things to do. If you listen, you won’t have to go the distance. You listen to your agent. Your agent listens to the market.

When you get tired your technique goes out the window Today’s boxing drills were each composed of 10 punches or less. As the class ate away at my stamina, my technique went out of the window. I’d get the sequence wrong, or throw too few punches all together. And sometimes miss.

If your home has been on the market for a few months and it hasn’t sold, it might be hard to maintain the same level of intensity that you had when it first went on the market. A seller tires of cleaning the home to the necessary standards, tires of making the beds every day. They let their guard down and their homes can start to look tired.

You wouldn’t challenge a professional to a fight I’m always amazed when I see For Sale By Owner signs in people’s yards. In 2008 I helped five sellers who had failed to sell their homes without a real estate agent. I sold each of their homes, and met or exceeded their goals for the sale.

Most people wouldn’t step into a ring and try to fight a professional kickboxer, but people still try to sell their homes themselves. The majority of buyers have a professional representing them, so sellers would do well to get representation too.

Selling a home is like kickboxing in that it requires more preparation than most people think, is highly competitive and requires good coaching, and advice.

Garreth Wilcock is an real estate agent in Texas who knows a lot more about selling homes in Austin than he does about kickboxing anywhere. Find out how much your home is worth with a FREE valuation.