A GUIDE TO THE HOME SELLING PROCESS
Preparation
Is Key to Selling Your Home
Just as first impressions are important for people, they can be a make or break proposition 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’re willing to offer on the 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 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
3 Elements Of Home Sale Preparation
- check1. 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 buy faster. Moreover, any money you invest in 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.
- check2. 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.
- check3. 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 just like you. The survey revealed 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!But a picture is worth a thousand statistics. Take a look at the images below. Which home gives you a better first impression?
Trick question! This is the same home! The picture on the left was taken from the MLS listing of a property that expired on the market. On the next go-around, the listing was staged and new, professional photography was taken, and the home sold over asking price
Pricing Your Home
To Sell It Fast & For More Money
You may have heard that there’s not much housing inventory in Salem area right now, which means that prices for homes have gone up across the board. This is great news for you as a home seller! The timing is perfect for you to get the most return on your investment into 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 MLS means that you’re still making your mortgage payments and you’re still not getting equity out from your home.
Perhaps even worse is what buyers and buyer agents think about homes that have been on the market for too long. Remember how important first impressions are? The first impression a buyer gets about a home that has been listed for a long time in this hot market is this:
Something must be wrong with that home.
That thought will scare away many buyers, and it’ll prompt the ones who remain interested to try to lowball you. 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 the graph on the next page to see what we mean.
The intersection of the two axes — price and preparation — represents homes “in the market.” These are 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 farther 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.
The curve in the middle of this graph contains homes in what we call “Limbo Land.” Homes in Limbo Land are priced just 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 ultimately sell for way under asking price.
Sound complicated? The good news is that we have a specific strategy to avoid the dreaded Limbo Land and keep your home in the market.
Promotion
Marketing Your Home to Sell
In the “old days,” real estate agents marketing their sellers’ properties would simply put a sign in the yard, put a listing in the MLS, and pray that it sold. Even today, there are a lot of real estate professionals who think syndicating listings to portals is a job well done. And that might actually be enough to sell your home in today’s hot market. But if that’s all an agent does to market your home to potential buyers, then they’re not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to you: to get you the most money possible for your home.
You see, you have a distinct advantage in wanting to sell your home right now: there isn’t much inventory, but there are a ton of buyers. A smart agent will use this classic example of supply and demand to create an auction environment for your home.
Getting multiple offers on your home will allow you to choose the best one for you, the one that has the right price, the right timeline, and the right conditions. This isn’t possible if your agent convinces you to sell the home before it’s even officially listed! The key to creating an auction environment is the promotion. We have to get your home in front of the people most likely to purchase it.
Two-Part Promotion
We have a two-part promotion process for each of our listings. The first part is what we call our “pre-launch” sequence, and the second is “post-listing” marketing.
The pre-launch activities use the latest technologies and our marketing know-how to seed the marketplace, optimize for SEO (search engine optimization), and position your home for the best possible impression right out of the gate. For example, we run targeted Facebook advertisements for your home and create YouTube videos to showcase it’s best features.Our post-listing activities are designed to keep your home top of mind with potential buyers. We use our national network of agents to promote your home to people wanting to move to the area, and we pen compelling marketing narratives to help buyers envision living in your home. We continue to run Facebook ads and use other social media to get your home in front of the people who want to buy it.
Since 2018, almost half of all home buyers found the home they ended up purchasing on the internet, and that percentage is only going to grow. If you’d like more details on how we use online marketing to sell your home for as much money as possible, then please give us a call at (503)510-9539.
