Are you considering selling your home? Or maybe you’re just curious about its value?
This guide is intended to help you get ready and understand the selling process so you can make the best choices for yourself and your family.
In my experience, many homeowners think that all REALTORs® do the same thing. If you’ve talked to more than one REALTOR®, then you probably have a similar perception.
I’d like to change that. As a broker, I’ll leverage my background in technology and skills in communication and negotiation to create a seamless, client-focused experience. My product management roots mean I’m always looking for solutions that are tailored to each individual, ensuring that every client feels heard and supported. I view selling a home as more than a transaction—it’s a journey, and I’m dedicated to making that journey as rewarding and stress-free as possible.
In this post, I’ll outline the skills, strategies and actions that enable me to achieve results for you. Read on, or for a personal conversation about your specific situation, contact me for a free consultation.
Hire a professional who knows how to list, market, and sell your home.
Use market knowledge and prices of competing homes to set the list price.
Get the home ready for staging, photography, and showing.
Start marketing the home through a property marketing plan, in collaboration with your REALTOR®.
Buyers will tour the home, ask questions, and determine if your home is the right fit for them.
Evaluate offers on your home, and through your REALTOR®, negotiate to close a deal that works best for you.
Pricing Your Home
You may have heard that there is not much housing inventory right now, which means that prices are higher on average. This is great news for you as a home seller! The timing is perfect for you to get a strong return on your investment in your home.
But even in today’s market, there are still homes that sit, waiting for an offer, for months and months. This time spent on the Multiple Listings Service (MLS) means that you are still making payments on your mortgage, you are still not getting equity out of your home, and in many cases, you aren’t able to move forward with the purchase of your next home.
Perhaps even worse is what buyers and buyer agents think about homes that have been on the market for too long. The first impression a buyer gets about a property that has been listed for a long time is “Something must be wrong with that home.”
That thought will scare away many buyers, and it will prompt the ones who remain interested to try to lowball you when they submit an offer on your home.
But why are those homes still on the market in the first place? It’s because they are often priced “out of the market.” Take a look at this graph to see what I mean:
The intersection of the two axes – price and preparation – represents homes “in the market.” These are the properties that are priced competitively and prepared nicely, and these are the homes that will net the most money for their sellers.
As you move further away from the intersection, the homes become too pricey and in too much disrepair. These homes show poorly and are basically guaranteed not to sell at a price that will make you happy.
The homes hovering near the middle of the graph, represented by the question marks, are in a sort of limbo. They are priced just a bit over their market worth, or they are not adequately prepared to show. These properties are the ones that will stay on the market for months and months, ultimately selling for under the initial asking price and causing their sellers a lot of time and frustration.
If this sounds complicated, don’t worry! I have a specific strategy that will help you avoid the dreaded limbo of home sales and keep your home “in the market.”
Free Home Value Report
Preparation is Key
Just as first impressions are important for people, they can also be make-or-break for a home. When potential buyers walk into your house, they will start to evaluate everything they see. Their impression will ultimately determine how much they are willing to offer on a property… or even if they’ll be interested in buying it at all.
Therefore, in order to get you the most money possible for your home, we at [Company] put a ton of care into its preparation before we put it on the market. Quality preparation that will leave buyers with the best impression of your house involves three elements:
1. REPAIRS
There are several reasons to complete repairs on your home before you put it on the market. Ultimately, buyers will pay more for a home to avoid the work of fixing it, and they will pay faster.
Moreover, any money you invest into repairs before you list — when you have time to price-shop and to use a little bit of elbow grease — will be far less than the quote from the home inspector or the concessions for which buyers will ask.
The good news is that most repairs are merely cosmetic and fairly inexpensive. Think of the things on your to-do list: that leaky faucet and the cracked bathroom tile were bothering you when you lived in the house, and they’re going to bother the new owners too.
2. CLEANLINESS
You wouldn’t want your mother to come over when your house was dirty, would you? And you’re not even trying to get her to shell out thousands of dollars for the place!
Buyers are easily distracted, and they will tend to focus on the negatives instead of the positives of each home they tour. Each dish left in the sink or dust bunny in the corner is going to detract from the perceived value of your home, which means a lower offer amount and more time on the market for you.
3. STAGING
According to a recent study by the National Association of REALTORs®, 96% of buyer agents reported that staging had some effect on their clients’ view of homes. They said that staging made it easier for their clients to visualize the properties as a future home and that they were more likely to overlook property faults.
And these effects turned into cash for sellers like you. The survey reveals that 52% of buyer clients were willing to offer more on a staged home than a similar home that was not staged — as much as 20% more than asking price!
