Maximize Your Selling Price With These 3 Quick Tips
The Best Tips For Homesellers
Getting top dollar for your home is definitely a driving factor of selling
While there may be any number of different reasons a person may decide to list their home for sale, you can rest assured that its selling price is definitely among one of the most important reasons for a sale.
After speaking with what feels like a countless number of homeowners, the consensus between them is that none of them want to “give their home away” and at the very least want “fair market value” for their home.
In this post, we will focus on helping make sure you know the right steps to getting the maximum “SOLD!” price for your home.
Quick Tip 1: Preparation
You must make sure your home is “First Date Ready.”
A commonly overlooked (or oftentimes underestimated) element of home selling is making sure it’s “First Date Ready.”
When you decide it’s time to list your home, you have to be sure that both the exterior and interior are ready for the task.
In my 12+ years of experience in real estate, there have been countless times where a homeowner would, at some point during the initial conversation, refer to how it may currently be a market that favors sellers, and in doing so basically insinuating that they can forego some elements which may feel “basic” such as cleaning or curb appeal.
DO NOT FALL INTO THIS TRAP!
While it may be true that a seller’s market can produce offers on your home regardless of its condition, the truth is, that people are emotional and visual. If 10 people visit your home, and you do nothing to prepare it properly, instead of getting 7 offers, you may only get 4 or 5. This means that the remaining 2 or 3 offers you would have gotten could have been higher and better than what you received, or, worse yet, you may get 1 or 2 offers, and those offers may be less than you’re hoping. Yes, it can be like that.
A great way to test if your home is “First Date Ready” is to invite an impartial neighbor or acquaintance over to view your home and give feedback. You’ll be surprised what you’ll learn this way!
Another is to do the obvious; hire a landscaper to improve the curb appeal, hire a cleaning company to deep clean your home, go out to a big box home improvement store and purchase some paint or some door knobs, etc., to fix and update easily fixable and updateable things.
Quick Tip 2: The Right Agent
“3% of all agents do 100% of all the real estate business”
There’s no shortage of real estate agents out there and there certainly aren’t any who will volunteer that they’ve never sold a single home before in their career and have no idea what they’re doing.
The fact is, getting a real estate license is very easy to do and requires little education. The “school” that people go to when becoming a real estate agent simply teaches real estate law and does not teach any element of the real estate process, or even how to treat a customer or client.
The right real estate agent is difficult to find, but the wrong real estate agent is very easy to run into, and worse yet, to work with.
Some signs of a “good” real estate agent:
- They have at least 5 years of experience
- They have at least 40 completed sales on record
- They have a bonafide marketing plan
- They specifically mention what they will avoid doing for you
- They specifically mention what they will do for you
- They have a list of industry professionals to share
- They have a great-looking website with great info
- They are dressed professionally and act professionally
- They are confident and have answers quickly
- They have great public ratings and reviews
- They can accurately research property taxes
- They can demonstrate clearly how to financially qualify a buyer
You’d be surprised to hear that there are only a handful of agents who can provide those 12 signs of a “good” real estate agent. To make sure you’re dealing with a good agent, secretly interject these points into an interview with that person. See how many of those 12 points that person “checks off.”
On the flip side, a “bad” real estate agent will miss the mark on several if not many of those points. For each of the 12 points that are missed, it may cost you thousands of dollars in profit.
Charles Bianco, owner, REALTOR® and Mortgage Officer of YourHomeYourTerms.com can easily provide those 12 points and then some, if you’re in search for an amazing agent.
Quick Tip 3: Maximum Exposure
So your home is ready, you’ve done all the prep work and cleaned, decluttered, did some minor repairs and updates, you’ve then went and hired the right agent who has great experience, marketing, and is a rock-solid choice to represent your needs and wants, what’s left?
Maximizing your home’s exposure to buyers! This is an absolutely important element of getting the most money for your home; you can have the most wonderful home in the world, but if only a few people learn about it, they won’t compete for it and you’ll be staring down the barrel of selling at a discount whereas other homeowners are consistently getting over asking price for their homes.
Maximizing your home’s exposure is only made most effective when you’ve followed quick tips 1 and 2, however.
A “First Date Ready” home that is marketed by an experienced and successful real estate agent is a recipe for big-money success!
Your beautifully ready home being broadcasted by your experienced and successful real estate agent via the MLS, Zillow, Trulia, Google, Paper Marketing, Digital Pay-For Marketing, etc., will put your property, in its most beautiful light, in front of the largest group of ready and able buyers…it’s a perfect-case maximum SOLD price scenario!
The group of people who most commonly have an issue with getting maximum exposure are For Sale By Owners.
For Sale By Owners concentrate entirely on “not paying a ‘realtor fee,'” usually emphasizing how “they don’t need an agent,” while simultaneously demonstrating how badly they truly do need an agent, and how much money they’re losing because of the lack of exposure to buyers versus paying an agent’s fee and getting tens-of-thousands of dollars over their asking price.
It’s silly, but it’s also human logic; “if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself,” except, they don’t realize that completing quick tips 1-3 is literally also “doing it yourself.”
In Conclusion
These quick tips are vital for anyone who is looking not only to sell their home but to get the highest SOLD price possible for it.
It’s easy to follow these tips and doing so will put you miles ahead of the competing homes around yours.
Even in the greatest seller’s market, there will always be competition, and, equally as important, there will be frustrated buyers who will begin to scrutinize homes in an effort to “feel better” about the grueling process of purchasing. Buyer’s feel that every little win counts, even if it doesn’t amount to anything more than a rejected offer, or to not place an offer to begin with.
At the time of this blog post, it is currently an “extreme seller’s market,” and yet there are homeowners who are struggling to get offers for their homes. All too often, on the MLS, I am still seeing notes which reads “MOTIVATED SELLER!” or “SELLER WANTS OFFERS!” which are the death knell of homeowners who may have hired a “bad” agent.
I’m willing to believe that those homeowners did not see this blog post, but luckily you have, and now you’ve got a great advantage!
