Staging/Curb Appeal

20 Tips For Selling Your Home Faster

1.  First Impression – A well-manicured lawn, neatly trimmed shrubs and a clutter-free porch welcome prospects. So does a freshly painted, or at least freshly scrubbed, front door with a Brand New door handle. Rake the leaves, shovel the walkways. The fewer obstacles between prospects and the true appeal of your home, the better.
2. Clean – Clean up in the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen. If your woodwork is scuffed or the paint is fading, consider some minor redecoration. Fresh paint adds pop and value to your property. Prospects would rather see how great your home really looks than hear how great it could look, “with a little work.”
3. Check Faucets and Bulbs – Dripping water rattles the nerves, discolors sinks and suggests faulty or worn-out plumbing. Burned out bulbs leave prospects in the dark.
4. Cabinetry – If cabinets or closet doors stick in your home, you can be sure they will also stick in a prospect’s mind. Don’t try to explain away sticky situations when you can easily plane them away.
5. Think Safety – Homeowners learn to live with all kinds of self-set booby traps: roller skates on the stairs, festooned extension cords, slippery throw rugs and low hanging overhead lights. Make your residence as non-perilous as possible for uninitiated visitors.
6. Leave Space – Remember, potential buyers are looking for more than just comfortable living space. They’re looking for storage space, too. Make sure your attic and basement are clean and free of unnecessary items.
7. Closets – The better organized a closet, the larger it appears. Now’s the time to box up those unwanted clothes and donate them to charity.
8. Bathrooms – Bathrooms sell homes, so let them shine. Check and repair damaged or unsightly caulking in the tubs and showers. For added allure, display your best towels, mats and shower curtains.
9. Create Dream Bedrooms – Wake up prospects to the cozy comforts of your bedrooms. For a spacious look, get rid of excess furniture. Colorful bedspreads and fresh curtains are a must.
10. Open up in the Daytime – Let the sun shine in! Pull back your curtains and drapes so prospects can see how bright and light your home is.
11. Lighten up at Night – Turn on the excitement by turning on all your lights, both inside and outside, when showing your home in the evening. Lights add color and warmth, and make prospects feel welcome.
12. Avoid Crowd Scenes – Potential buyers often feel like intruders when they enter a home filled with people. Rather than giving your house the attention it deserves, they’re likely to hurry through. Keep the company present to a minimum.
13. Watch Your Pets – Dogs and cats are great companions, but not when you’re showing your home. Pets have a talent for getting underfoot. Your best bet: Keep Kitty and Spot outside, or at least out of the way.
14. Think Volume – Rock-and-roll will never die. But it might kill a real estate transaction. When it’s time to show your home, it’s time to turn down the stereo or TV.
15. Relax – Be friendly, but don’t try to force conversation. Prospects want to view your home with a minimum of distraction.
16. Don’t Apologize – No matter how humble your abode, never apologize for its shortcomings. If a prospect volunteers a derogatory comment about your home’s appearance, let Joe and Jason handle the situation.
17. Keep a Low Profile – Nobody knows your home as well as you do.
18. Don’t Turn Your Home into a Second-Hand Store – When prospects come to view your home, don’t distract them with offers to sell those furnishings you no longer need. You may lose the biggest sale of all.
19. Defer to Experience – When prospects want to talk price, terms, or other real estate matters, let them speak to an expert – Joe and Jason.
20. Help Your Broker – Joe and Jason will have an easier time selling your home if showings are scheduled on a daily basis.

LEARN MORE ABOUT CURB APPEAL TO SELL YOUR HOME

Get Your Paperwork Together

When you meet with your new listing agent, he or she will need a lot of documents from you to prepare your home for sale. Among the things he or she will want to see are:

Pay-off Notice: A letter to the lender stating intention to payoff the mortgage.
Assessments or Easements: If there’s a tax assessment or easement on the property, documents stating such will have to be included in the purchase contract.

Property Taxes: Proof of property taxes paid.

Utilities: Provide a record of the past 12 months’ utility bills.
You’ll want to make it clear now which items in the home you want to take with you – the heirloom chandelier in the dining room, the washer and dryer set you just bought last month – and which can stay behind as part of the home sale. Your real estate professional can help show you which items you should put away or replace before your house goes on the market..

Pricing your Home

There are a number of factors that will affect the success of your home sale.

They include:

• location of the home
• interest rates
• economic conditions
• time of year
• condition of the home
• marketing the home
• terms of the sale
• accessibility to the home

Some of these are not within you or your listing agent’s control – location of the home, interest rates, economic conditions. The other factors are items you should discuss with your real estate professional to determine what would benefit the sale of this property most.

For example, marketing your property in more innovative ways, such as on an Internet site like this one or realtor.com, may broaden the pool of potential buyers. If you can, waiting for a good time to sell your home – spring or fall, the most popularly home buying times – also may help it sell faster. And pricing the home properly can make a huge difference in whether a house is snapped up within the first several weeks of listing or sits on the market for more than a year.

To price a home properly, your real estate professional will have to study the local market, research comparable properties and consider current market conditions. This is where the “comparative marketing analysis” will come in handy as a place to start.

• Your competition: Are there many properties just like yours for sale in your area right now?
• Listing prices: What are other properties like yours listing for?
• Selling prices: What are other properties like yours sold for recently?

Based on these findings, your real estate professional should have the experience to help price your property at the right price for a sale that benefits you.

Be reasonable about the price you set. You will always be better off setting a fair market value price than setting your price high expecting that someone will come along and be willing to pay it. If your home stays on the market too long because it is overpriced potential buyers may think that something is wrong with it and you may end up selling it for less than what you could have gotten if you had started out with a realistic asking price.

Marketing your Home

Products that sell well usually have a good marketing strategy. The same can be said for your home. Work with your real estate professional to decide where you want to advertise. Will the house be advertised only with a yard sign? One of the best advertisements that we do is to actually advertise to all the realtors in the area; they are the ones with clients that are ready to buy right now.

Decide what information should be included in the description of your home that will make it a must-see – and hopefully, a must-buy. Include one or more photos of the home to showcase the most appealing features of your property and help remind potential buyers of what they saw as they visit home after home.

You may even want to include a few lines about benefits of moving to this property, such as good schools, convenience to mass transit and other desirable community features.

Prepare Your Home for Showing

You’ll be thrilled that you did the hard work of Step 1 (Prepare Your Home for Sale) now that there’s little time left to get your house ready for visitors.

Now is the time to put on the finishing touches, just like that quick housecleaning you do before company comes over for dinner.

Outside:

• Keep your lawn trimmed
• Rose bushes pruned
• Wweeds tamed
• Put away the garden hose and the tools
• Make sure the bulbs in your home’s exterior lighting fixtures are all in working order
• Be vigilant about removing flyers, handouts and newspapers left on your front doorstep or driveway

Inside:

• Brighten the rooms by opening the drapes
• Turning on the lights
• Cleaning the windows
• Clear the clutter on the kitchen counter bathroom sink, coffee table and couches
• Make all the beds
• Clean all your bathroom and kitchen fixtures
• Do a quick vacuuming of the entire house
• Catch any cobwebs in the corners along the ceiling
• Finally, take out the garbage
• If you have pets, find a safe place to keep them during a house showing: in the garage, in the basement or at a friend’s house

Now leave the work to your real estate professional. Try to be away from home during a showing, but if you happen to be home when the potential buyers arrive, greet them at the door then politely excuse yourself. Make yourself scarce or go take a walk. It’s easier for a buyer to picture himself or herself living in the house when you’re not there. This is your home’s time to shine.

LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW WE MARKET YOUR HOME FOR SALE

The Offer Process

Depending on market conditions, you may receive one or more offers for your property from interested buyers.

Each offer will include the sale price, proposed closing date, proposed move-in date, financing, and contingencies that may include an appraisal or sale of the buyers’ current home. Let your real estate professional help you sort through the variables to determine whether you should accept, counter-offer or reject the offer.

If there are multiple offers, each offer will be presented to you in the order registered. You don’t need to decide anything until after you’ve seen all the offers. If you do accept or counter more than one offer, you are required to establish an order of precedence noting which is the primary offer, followed by the backups in order. This will help you avoid selling the house to more than one buyer.

Once you have accepted an offer to buy your house, expect to make your house available to a housing inspector, a termite inspector and an appraiser.

After seeing the results of the inspections, the buyer may request additional work is completed before purchase, such as repairing a damaged roof or fixing a leaky faucet. You should consult with your real estate professional to determine whether to comply with the buyer’s request or risk losing this offer.

During this flurry of activity, try to keep your home in show condition. The deal has not closed and still may fall through, which may mean showing your home to more potential buyers.

In the meantime, the buyer is working with a lender to secure a loan for the purchase. When the buyer has written loan approval, a closing date can be set.

The Closing Process

There will be a final walk-through before all signatures are collected and the deal considered done. The buyer will go room by room to check that everything is in working condition and, if you had agreed to do so, any additional work requested after inspection is completed.

Now you can prepare for your own move, notify your utility companies of the date to transfer your account to a new address and start packing.

Congratulations, you’ve sold your home!