KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Avoiding property selling mistakes starts before you list. Budget for the real cost of moving, allow enough time, and don’t wait until you are under financial pressure.
- Choose your agent on skill, not promises. The lowest fee and the highest appraisal are the two most common traps.
- Spend where it counts. Street appeal, honest presentation and proper marketing widen your buyer pool.
- Price with a strategy. Overpricing early, quoting a price to buyers, or misjudging your selling method all drive buyers away.
- Make it easy for buyers to view. Flexible inspection times and an empty home during opens let buyers speak freely and picture themselves there.
- Don’t take offers personally. A low or early offer is the opening of a negotiation, not an insult, and the highest offer is not always the strongest.
There is a painful moment every real estate agent sees far too often: a home sits on the market for months, open homes turn quiet, and an anxious seller drops their asking price by fifty thousand dollars just to get a bite. Most people assume selling a home in Perth is as simple as putting a few photos on the internet and waiting for offers to roll in. In reality, stepping into the market unprepared opens the door to avoidable property selling mistakes that drain cash straight out of your settlement payout.
A successful sale needs sharp strategy, honest advice, and an understanding of how buyers actually think. From miscalculating hidden transaction costs to partnering with the wrong representative, small missteps early in a campaign snowball into major financial losses. What follows is the full list of traps sellers fall into, grouped by the stage of the sale where each one does its damage.
Misjudging the Real Cost of Moving
One of the quickest ways to derail your financial plans is assuming your net profit equals the sale price minus your mortgage balance. Selling one property and stepping into another involves significant transactional expenses on both ends of the deal.
Your ‘Out’ Costs
Selling expenses include real estate commission, campaign marketing, conveyancing or settlement agent fees, loan discharge costs, and removalists. If the property is an investment rather than your home, capital gains tax may also apply to the profit.
Your ‘In’ Costs
On the purchase side, the big one is government stamp duty, which is almost always the largest single transaction cost and the one sellers most often leave out of their sums. Add your settlement agent’s fee, the lender’s establishment charges, building and pest inspections, and the cost of connecting services at the new address.
Not Allowing Enough Time
Sellers routinely underestimate how long the whole process takes. Preparation, a marketing campaign, negotiation and settlement together commonly run to around four months in Perth. Compressing that timeline forces decisions under pressure, which is exactly when sellers accept less than they should. If you are juggling timelines and considering selling your property, sit down with a settlement agent or your bank manager and build a realistic budget and calendar before you launch.
Going to Market Half-Hearted or Under Pressure
Buyers and agents can both tell when a seller is not fully committed, and a hesitant campaign reads as a weak one.
Selling Half-Heartedly
Testing the market with no real intention of selling wastes your marketing budget and burns the goodwill of the buyers who do inspect. A listing that lingers without a price adjustment or a presentation change starts to look stale, and buyers who saw it in week one stop watching it.
Waiting Until You’re Under Financial Strain
A seller who must sell has lost their strongest negotiating asset: the ability to say no. Buyers and their agents read urgency quickly, through a vacant home, a price drop, or a short settlement request. Selling from a position of choice almost always returns more than selling from a position of need.
Selling in the Quiet Months
Buyer activity in Perth is not even across the year, and listing through the quietest weeks means competing for a smaller pool of active buyers. That costs you the competition that lifts price. Our guide to maximising your property sale price sets out when the Perth market is busiest and how to time a launch around it.
Falling for the ‘Low Fee, High Price’ Trap
Selecting the right agent is arguably the most important decision in your campaign, yet many owners choose on two flawed promises: the lowest commission and the highest appraisal. Less competitive agents often use inflated appraisals to win a listing, then ask for price reductions weeks later when buyers fail to show up.
Not Checking the Agent’s Track Record
Consumer guides published by REIWA recommend choosing a licensed agent with a solid understanding of your local market and strong communication, and caution against choosing on fees alone. Interview several local agents, look at their recent results in your suburb, and read verified reviews rather than testimonials on their own website.
Choosing an Agent Who Claims ‘I Have a Buyer’
A specific buyer waiting in the wings is a common listing tactic and rarely survives contact with reality. Even where the buyer is real, selling to one person without exposing the property to the market removes the competition that drives price upward. Ask to see that buyer’s written interest before you let it influence your choice of agent.
Not Choosing a Negotiator
An agent who discounts their own fee the moment you push back has shown you exactly how they will handle a lowball offer on your home. The fee conversation is a free demonstration of negotiating skill, so pay attention to it. Ask each agent to walk you through how they handled a recent multiple-offer situation.
Not Listening to the Market
Buyer feedback after the first two weekends is the most accurate pricing data you will ever get. If every group raises the same objection, that objection is real, whether it is the price, the kitchen, or the busy road. Sellers who dismiss consistent feedback as buyers being fussy usually end up accepting less, later.
Skimping on Presentation and Marketing
You cannot sell a secret, and cutting corners on a campaign is the classic example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. REIWA’s selling guidance stresses that your agent should bring a comprehensive marketing plan designed to reach as many buyers as possible, because reach is what creates competition.
Neglecting Street Appeal
The front of the house sets a price expectation before a buyer reaches the door, and anything that reads as deferred maintenance invites a mental deduction for repairs. The error is treating the exterior as cosmetic when buyers treat it as evidence. For the specific high-return upgrades worth making, see our guide to maximising your property sale price.
Selling ‘As Is’
Leaving visible maintenance issues for the buyer to price almost always costs more than fixing them. A leaking tap, a cracked tile or a bold feature wall are cheap to resolve and expensive to leave, because every buyer prices the unknown conservatively. Under WA offer and acceptance contracts a buyer takes the property in the condition they viewed it, so what they see at the home open is what sets their number.
Using Poor-Quality Photos
Most buyers form their entire first impression of your home on a screen before they ever see it in person, which makes photography the highest-leverage spend in the campaign. Mobile phone photos and skipping professional styling narrow your reach at exactly the point where reach matters most. Professional images, twilight shots and considered floor plans do the opposite.
Ignoring Social Media and Passive Buyers
Portal listings reach buyers who are already searching. Targeted social campaigns reach the much larger group who are not actively looking but would move for the right home. Leaving that audience out shrinks the buyer pool to only the people who happened to be searching the week you listed.
Setting the Wrong Price or Quoting a Price
Pricing is where the most expensive mistakes happen, because a pricing error made in week one shapes every negotiation that follows.
Overpricing Early
Your first two to three weeks attract the most qualified and most motivated buyers — the people who have been searching for months and recognise value immediately. Pricing above the market burns that window on buyers who never make an offer, and by the time the figure is corrected those buyers have committed elsewhere. A price reduction three weeks in also signals weakness to everyone still watching.
Quoting a Price to Buyers
Naming a figure anchors every subsequent conversation below it. A buyer who hears a number treats it as a ceiling to negotiate down from, not a starting point to compete over. The same property presented without a quoted price lets buyers reveal what they are prepared to pay.
Expecting to Sell at the Asking Price
An asking price is a marketing position, not a valuation. Sellers who treat it as the minimum acceptable figure reject workable offers and stall their own campaign. Decide your genuine walk-away number privately, and keep it separate from the number on the listing.
Not Considering the Alternatives to an Asking Price
The mistake here is not choosing the wrong method; it is never putting the question on the table. Many sellers default to a fixed asking price without ever asking their agent whether their property would do better without one. Dismissing the alternatives without a conversation removes a real option, and the trade-offs between each method are covered in our guide to maximising your property sale price.
Not Accommodating Buyers
Every obstacle between a buyer and your front door reduces the number of offers you will receive.
Making Buyers Jump Through Hoops
Restricting inspections to a single thirty-minute window, insisting on long notice periods, or declining private viewings all cut your buyer numbers. Serious buyers often work the same hours you do, and the one who cannot get in is the one who buys elsewhere. Flexibility costs you nothing and widens competition.
Not Vacating During Home Opens
Buyers will not talk honestly in front of an owner. They will not open a wardrobe, question a layout, or say out loud what they would change, and those conversations are where a buyer talks themselves into a purchase. Leave the house, and let your agent do the job you are paying for.
Selling With a Tenant in Place
A tenanted sale is possible but it takes cooperation. An uncooperative tenant, restricted access or unattractive furniture can all cost you buyers, and tenants have no financial incentive to help. Where timing allows, waiting until the property is vacant usually makes for a smoother campaign and a better presentation.
Taking Offers Personally
Property sales are deeply personal, especially where years of memories sit inside a family home. Letting emotion dictate your response to offers is where good campaigns come undone.
Rejecting the First Offer
A fast offer feels like evidence you priced too low. Usually it means the opposite: the most qualified and emotionally invested buyers have been searching for months and act decisively when the right home appears. Rejecting an early offer outright ends the conversation, where a firm counter-offer keeps it alive.
Dealing Only With the Highest Offer
The highest number is not always the strongest contract. A slightly lower unconditional or finance-approved offer can be worth more than a higher one that is subject to the sale of another property, because it is far more likely to reach settlement. Weigh price alongside conditions, finance status and settlement timing.
Managing Unqualified Buyers
Accepting an offer from a buyer whose finance is uncertain takes your property off the market while the risk sits with you. A 48-hour clause, as described in Consumer Protection WA’s buyer glossary, lets you keep marketing and gives an earlier buyer a short window to make their offer unconditional if a better one arrives. Used properly it protects your position without discouraging genuine offers.
Setting Up for a Successful Outcome
Avoiding these traps comes down to three things: realistic pricing informed by real feedback, presentation and marketing that reach the whole buyer pool, and an agent who can negotiate. Whether you are cashing in a long-held investment or downsizing for your next chapter, informed decisions keep the result in your hands rather than the market’s.
A detailed property appraisal gives you an evidence-based view of what your home can achieve before you commit to a campaign, including the pricing strategy and selling method that suit it. If you would like that read on your own property, book an appraisal with Bourkes and we will walk you through the numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions About Property Selling Mistakes
What are the biggest mistakes when selling a house?
The costliest are misjudging the real cost of moving, choosing an agent on the lowest fee or highest appraisal, overpricing in the first few weeks, skimping on presentation and marketing, restricting buyer access, and reacting emotionally to early offers. Most of them are decisions made before the property ever goes live.
What costs do I pay when selling a house in WA?
Typical selling costs are real estate commission, campaign marketing, conveyancing or settlement agent fees, loan discharge costs and removalists. If the property was an investment, capital gains tax may apply. If you are buying again, budget stamp duty, settlement fees, loan establishment charges and inspections on top.
Should I accept the first offer on my house?
Don’t dismiss it automatically. A fast, competitive offer often comes from a motivated buyer who has been searching for months. Consider it seriously on both price and conditions, and if the figure is too low, counter rather than reject so the negotiation stays open.
How do I choose a real estate agent in Perth?
Interview several local agents. Ask how they would market your home, which selling method they recommend and why, and how they handled a recent multiple-offer situation. Look at their recent results in your suburb and read verified reviews. Treat the lowest fee and the highest appraisal as warning signs rather than selling points.
How much should I spend on marketing a property?
There is no fixed figure, and it varies with the property and the campaign. The principle is that reach creates competition: the wider your presence across portals, social media and your agent’s buyer database, the more active buyers come through the door. Skimping here is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes sellers make.
Can I sell a house with tenants in it?
Yes, but it takes cooperation. Access restrictions, an uncooperative tenant or unattractive furniture can all cost you buyers, and the tenant has no financial stake in the outcome. Where your timing allows, waiting until the property is vacant usually produces a smoother campaign.
How long does it take to sell a house in Perth?
From preparation through to settlement the process commonly runs to around four months. Presentation, pricing, marketing reach and your selling method all affect how quickly a property sells, and rushing any of those stages tends to cost more than the time it saves.
Disclaimer: Commentary and advice in this article are provided for general educational purposes and reflect Western Australian real estate conditions current at the time of publication (2026). Transaction costs, tax implications, contract conditions and market conditions vary, so sellers should seek tailored financial, legal and settlement advice before entering binding agreements.
