Unlocking the Secret Psychology of Buyers

It is important for sellers to consider the condition of their home from the perspective of a potential buyer because that is who we are trying to appeal to. The buyer has no previous knowledge of your house - no nostalgic feelings of home or memories of all the hard work that went into making it look really nice. They won’t know what kind of effort or money was invested into the home. Your home, to them, is now just a house, a product for sale. The buyer doesn’t especially care about your house. They are comparing your house with the last house they just saw and the next house they are going to see minutes after walking out the door. 

They have a relatively short amount of time to walk through a house and decide if it is worthy of one of the biggest financial and lifestyle impacting decisions they will ever make. There is no test drive, no try-before-you-buy opportunity. They are forced to decide if your house is worthy to provide a home for (in many cases) their spouse and children after only viewing the house for an average of 8 minutes.

With such little time to logically evaluate every aspect of the house, the brain relies heavily on emotion and something called confirmation bias comes into play. Buyers experience certain emotions when they consider a house. When they drive up to the house, their mind starts trying to categorize the home into only 1 of 2 groups - “maybe” or “no.”  If they first notice attractive aspects of the home or striking features, these thoughts often immediately transform into warm fuzzy feelings as they picture themselves in the home as if it is their own. If this happens, the brain naturally begins to filter out or minimize small negative aspects in order to justify its original conclusion. You’ll find people looking beyond problems to notice more positives.

If, however, one of the first items that catch the buyer’s eye happens to be something unattractive, even as small as barren or overgrown landscaping, small cracks, even just dirty or peeling paint, they begin to focus increasingly on the negative aspects. Their brains begin to go out of its way to ignore positive aspects just to find more negative items to support the original inclination.  This illogical emotional experience is a strong reason why the strategy of providing an “allowance” for repairs is ineffective. 

Buyers operate with a level of high expectation and a critical eye. A good strategy is to eliminate as many cosmetic issues that might catch their eye so that they have time to begin imagining it as their home before they notice an issue that might cause them to take pause.