We know that selling your house has the potential to be a stressful and complex project. Our goal is to make the process as smooth and painless as possible. We will walk you through the entire journey and give you strategies to help minimize your stress and maximize the amount of money you can get for your home. Here are a few tips to help. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for more support.

Inspections:

There are few things worse when you are trying to sell your home then settling into a contract and thinking your house is sold, only to have the buyers back out because they found dry-rot in the subfloor two weeks into the escrow process. We have seen it, and it isn’t pretty!

Although there are many schools of thought on this, and even more differences in standard procedures throughout different counties, we suggest our clients get all the inspections done on their house before it goes on the market. This way you can know exactly what, if anything, will need to be repaired and can have those repairs done in advance, the way you want to do them and for the price you are willing to pay. It also adds another layer of negotiation power when you know up front that your house has a clean bill of health.

Cost Effective Improvements:

There may be other improvements or repairs that can be done to increase the value of your home that don’t show up on inspections. Don’t worry; there’s no need to do a complete remodel hoping that you’ll be able to recuperate the entire expense when you go to sell. Not all improvements are equal at developing a return on investment.

Kitchen and bathroom improvements tend to return the most amount of the money invested, and there are other, less expensive projects that can help increase your home value. The most helpful improvements are the ones that increase the aesthetic appeal to as diverse a buyer population as possible. Those factors can change depending on the demographic of the typical buyer in your area.

Pre-Packing:

After doing the work to make sure your house is ready to sell, the next step in the selling process can be difficult: having to keep it clean and looking like a model home, especially if it has been lived in and well-loved for many years. The best way to make that job easier is to pre-pack all of your non-essentials!

If you are selling your home, then you have probably already resigned yourself to the idea that you will not be living there much longer. At some point, hopefully in the near future, you are going to be packing everything up and moving it out. Pre-packing the items that you don’t really need on a day-to-day basis helps with the moving process, and what’s more, it eliminates a whole bunch of items that you won’t need to bother to keep clean and tidy when it comes time to show off your house to prospective buyers.

Staging:

This can be a challenge for a lot of people. A well-lived in house can feel extremely welcoming when having a large group of friends over for dinner; however, when trying to show off for potential new owners, the mantra “less is more” tends to be the best approach. The good thing is, taking the time to pre-pack and pare down a lot of the extra household items in your home has already helped you create a more minimalistic environment that will be more attractive to potential buyers.

The biggest objective in staging a home is to make it as appealing as possible to as many people as possible. This means that the fewer highly personalized items in your house when it is seen by the public, the more receptive people will be to envisioning it as their own home. Removing the majority of family photos and sentimental knick-knacks can go a long way in making your house more desirable to a lot of different people, creating the optimal environment to garner multiple offers.

Marketing your House:

The three items above are things that we recommend doing before placing your house on the market, but what about once it’s out there? That is where choosing the right real-estate professional is most important. Picking a Realtor or real estate team that is positioned to get the most visualization on your home is key. Here is a list of three key features to consider when choosing who represents you in one of the biggest transactions of your life.

Breadth Of Knowledge:

The majority of real estate transactions are handled by a minority of licensed real estate agents in the area. On average over 90% of all transaction are handled by less than 5% of the licensed professionals in the area. Those 5% are the specialists in the area that are best equipped to speak to your home’s and neighborhood’s strengths while also knowing how to address and mitigate to any potential weaknesses.

Use Of Current Technology:

In today’s market, buyers are finding their future homes online at one of three websites – Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com. If the person representing you does not have a strong presence and leverage with those sites to drive buyers to your property, you are missing out on a significant chunk of the market. Furthermore, your real estate professional should be able to show off key features of your property online in a rich, robust way that will be noticeable to buyers. Photos, videos and virtual tours are all key components to this, and if the those pieces of media are lacking, your buyer may not even notice your house.

Dependability:

This should go without saying in any profession, but does the real estate agent that is trying to market your home connect with you? Or do they rub you the wrong way? How about their previous clients? While this can be a little trickier to ascertain, it can be the most crucial. This is the person you are trusting to sell your house, your home! It has the potential of being a very sensitive area. Are you comfortable communicating your wants and needs to your agent? Are you confident that they are going to represent you in a way that will fully protect your interests? Search online, find out what their previous clients have said about them, and ascertain if they are the type of person you can and want to trust.