Selling a home is complex. From experience, we know it’s not just a question of selling a home --- it’s also a question of relocating a family. For most home-owners, selling their home is not an everyday experience, and the size of the investment rises as many questions as there are pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
Successful selling is a matter of sorting things out systematically and fitting the pieces together --- until a personal marketing plan designed just for you. Before We start working together you receive the complete comparable market analysis for your home at no cost. After reviewing the report it is your choice to market your house with Me. Here is just a SHORT SAMPLE of the report.
Planning Your Strategy
Marketing your home effectively means first getting an overview of all the elements involved. Your first step is to formulate a strategy of putting your home on the market: what services to expect from your real estate agent, how to set your asking price, how to estimate the net proceeds from your sale, how to figure your tax benefits and more.
What are the overall steps in selling my home?
- Meet with your agent to determine your asking price and work out your personal plan for maximum marketability of your home.
- Review all financing options, including seller financing and other acceptable terms.
- Make repairs or improvements that will increase the marketability of your home.
- List your home for sale at a certain price.
- Permit your home to be shown to prospective buyers.
- Consider offers and negotiate a sales contract.
- Have necessary inspections made.
- Stand by while your buyer applies and is approved for financing.
- Go to settlement (also “closing” or “escrow” --- term caries by area).
- Move out of old home and into new one.
In selling my home and buying a new one, what can I do to be sure I won’t get stuck with two mortgages?
Your best strategy is to place your home on the market far enough in advance to attract a buyer, negotiate a contract with an acceptable settlement or closing date, and then go house hunting.
How do I develop the best possible “selling strategy?”
Planning and selling a strategy means looking at all the essentials of selling your home and putting them in their proper places. Then you can shift easily from one step to the next.
Your first step is a meeting with your agent at your home to go over every part of your home, noting its floor plan and special features. You’ll discuss how to show your home most appealingly. You’ll discuss any repairs and improvements which might increase the marketability of your home. There repairs may bring you back more than they cost you and are likely to help sell your home faster. Your agent will compare your home with other home faster. Your agent will compare your home with other homes for sale in your area and with those previously sold. That helps you land at a competitive asking price.
Your agent will discuss different financing possibilities that may be helpful to buyers who look at your home. Your agent will also go over financing costs to both you and a buyer, and help you estimate your net proceeds from the sale in each case.
What can a real estate agent do to sell my home that I can’t do for myself?
In reality, facts and experience show the difficulties of trying to sell your own home usually far outweigh the benefits. Here’s what your agent does that a home seller can’t do or finds hard to do:
- Places your property in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which exposes your home to all the buyers working with cooperating member brokers. This effectively puts every agent in town to work helping to get your home sold.
- Exposes your property to a large pool of qualified buyers the agent spends a career generating. Without that network, a for-sale-by-owner home seller is reduced to a yard sign, some classified ads and lots of luck.
- Provides solid up-to-date market information with recent sales and current listings, which helps your prices your home realistically. Such pricing is crucial to the possibility of a quick sale at the best price obtainable.
- Shows your home whether you’re in or not, saving you hours of “minding the store.”
- Provides pre-qualified buyers who know what they want and how much they can afford. Screening prospects saves you from the hassle of keeping appointments with “sightseers” and protects you from the threat of “unwelcome visitors.”
- Shows your home to its best advantage. Buyers often shy away from asking homeowners questions; homeowners are sometimes defensive about defects in their homes. An agent can answer necessary questions objectively and guide the buyer to a purchase.
- Helps you negotiate a satisfactory sale. Without an experienced mediator to act as a buffer between the parties, many situations bog down.
- Leads both you and the buyer through the puzzles of rates, points, fees and financing options, helping with loan placement and follow-up, including the provision of names and telephone numbers of specific loan officers. Without expert knowledge of alternative financial resources, many sales are lost --- especially in tight money markets where knowledge of buy-downs, variable-rate, mortgages, graduated-payment mortgages and various types of seller participation come into the picture.
- Protects your interests from contract to settlement or closing with an understanding of real estate procedures. An agent has the ability to smooth the way toward agreements and the experience to attend to all the details that must come together before settlement or closing can take place.
What does a listing agent do between the signing of a listing agreement and sale?
Once you decide on the terms of a “listing agreement.” Your agent will:
- Enter a description of your home and your terms in the Multiple Listing Service of homes on the market in your area.
- Show your home to prospective buyers.
- Advertise your home as appropriate.
- Possibly hold an open house.
- Promote the sale of your home in every way possible.
Once you and your agent have a solid marketing strategy formed and your agent is actively promoting your home, you’re well on your way to a sale.
Time for Action
Now that you’ve gotten an overview of the home-selling process and have sorted out a few of the benefits and pitfalls of making your sale, your next step is to put your strategy into action --- and your home on the market.
Getting Ready For Sale
What is meant by a “listing agreement?”
When you put your home up for sale, it’s called “listing” because your agent lists the property on the open market or in the Multiple Listing Service to expose your home to the widest range of buyers. To do this, you employ the agent to market your home by signing a contract. This listing agreement is signed at a listing appointment. The agreement contains:
- A complete description of your property.
- The price you’re asking.
- An indication of the financing terms you will accept.
- The brokerage fee.
- The length of time the agreement is to be in effect.
When you sign the listing contract, you may agree to give your agent the “exclusive right to sell” your home for a certain listing period, at the end of which you may extend or terminate the agreement, depending on your satisfaction with your agent’s efforts to sell.
You may agree to allow your agent to put a “For Sale” sign on your lawn to run ads in newspapers and magazines, to send out direct mail brochures and to make the property readily accessible so that other agents in the Multiple Listing Service can show your home if you’re away.
Your agent should agree to actively market you home, list your property in the Multiple Listing Service if there is one in your area and to keep on top of all aspects of getting to settlement or closing, including appraisal, loan approval, termite inspection, etc.
- Show flexibility in evaluating the need for special financing, perhaps through owner financing or VA/FHA.
- Try to offer immediate possession, although move-up buyers may need more time.
- Exposure sells homes. Provide easy access to property for showings.
- Offer extras that convey: free-standing appliances, pool table, swimming pool chemicals, washer/dryer, full cord of seasoned firewood, etc. You may keep some extras out of the listing and save them as “sweeteners” for negotiations.
- Allow a yard sign, if permitted in your neighborhood.
Showmanship Outdoors
- Generally, improve you home’s “curb appeal,” or how your home looks to a buyer from a car parked at the curb.
- Make you front door and porch attractive. You only get one chance to make a positive first impression.
- Trim the lawn and shrubs fertilize and water if needed.
- Fix cracks and bulges in walks and driveways; also remove oil stains.
- Replace stray or warped roofing shingles.
- Pain siding, windows, shutters, doors, even mailbox.
- Straighten sagging gutters.
- Replace a worn doorbell button. Polish any door brass. Replace a worn doormat. These things say you care about your home, and the doormat will protect floors and carpets.
Showmanship Indoors
- Clean the kitchen especially, including oven, exhaust hood and inside of dishwasher. Uncluttered counters and cabinets. Some buyers will judge the maintenance of the entire home by the cleanliness of the kitchen.
- Few things increase marketability and give you a better cost return than new paint. Freshen any worn or soiled walls and woodwork with neutral-toned paint or wood polish.
- Polish wood floors and stairs.
- Steam clean or replace worn carpeting.
- Repair dripping faucets, crooked drawers, sticking doors. Tighten the hardware, especially doorknobs. Minor flaws in your home suggest neglect to prospects.
- Repair or replace worn appliances.
- Clean windows and storms inside and out.
- Scrub counters, bathroom fixtures and tiles.
- Clean exterior of water heater and furnace/air conditioner where prospects will be inspecting. Also drain a bucket of water from water heater to remove any rust particles.
- The ideal garage holds only cars. If yours has become a two-car attic, throw out the excess.
Let me Nisha Raza help you sell your home without a mishap. I would be happy to tour your home and make recommendations about the best, most economical ways you can prepare your home to sell quickly at a great price. Working together we will avoid the common mistakes sellers often make. I can also advice you on the purchase of new home. Please feel free to call us with all your real estate questions.
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