Marketing your home with Me
When you choose a professional to help you sell your home, it’s really like hiring a person who will go above and beyond and someone who is willing to listen. My job is to know the best way to reach those buyers out there, how to make your product shine, and how to help you offer it at a price that entices the right purchaser. Our goal is to get it moved not sit on the system. Just like anything else that sits out… it gets STALE! I want to know what made you want to buy the home when you were looking; what key things will you miss about your home and some happy memories that were created there so when I project your home I’m sending all that POSITIVE energy with it!
A successful sales system
When we start working together to sell your property, we create a thorough game plan, using a system I’ve developed for successful sales. It starts with preparing your home for sale, check out “how to prepare your house for sale” including a timeline, making any repairs or cosmetic improvements necessary, and getting good photos and video after you have depersonalized it. Then we work on the listing step – setting the right price, arranging the binder, making sure it hits the market with a bang, arranging showings, open houses, reading and learning from their feedbacks, fielding offers and negotiating the best deal we can get. And I’ll help you through all the essential steps, including de-personalizing but not making it completely bare, de-cluttering, fresh paint – until closing day arrives and you can move on to the next phase in your life. My job is to keep the entire process as smooth as possible.
Do you need a Realtor®?
One thing to remember is that the “best deal” is not a fixed number. Occasionally home sellers question the need for a Realtor®, but I can honestly say that in today’s market I can make a big impact on the deal you get. There are more properties on the market right now, and they’re taking longer to sell – so having a professional “home marketer” can mean the difference between a quick sale at a good price vs a languishing listing with a price that keeps dropping and becoming stale.
Using comps to your advantage
We’ll make optimum use of comparable sales in the area to set the right price for your home. If you’re in a condo building, comps can be a very strong indicator of your unit’s value. If you’re selling a single-family home in an eclectic neighborhood, I can use my market knowledge as well as detailed measures – cost per square foot of the land or the house, for instance – to find the number that will work.
Hitting the market
Then we’ll make sure that when your listing appears, it explodes onto the scene. There are hundreds or even thousands of buyers out there who are targeting a home in your area and your price range – and we want them to have an immediate reaction when they first see the listing. Photos, virtual tours, well-written descriptions… we’ll use them all to create a stunning debut. And because I know that buying a home is as much an emotional decision as a financial one, I’ll help you prepare your home so it connects with potential buyers. I often utilize the talents of interior designer and professional stager to make your property stand out from its competition in the neighborhood. Finally, I’ll help you navigate the sometimes grueling process of showing your home and closing a deal. We’ll work around your schedule so that you can live your life even while you sell your home.
Why staging???
These days I’m completely sold on “staging” (most) residential properties before putting them on the market for sale. Now there are different definitions of staging. For some, putting a couple of placemats and dinner plates on the kitchen counter and some nice hand towels in the bathrooms is staging. My approach is quite different … it’s almost like a complete make-over for the subject property.
The goal of staging in my mind is emphasizing all the good attributes of a home – inside and out – so Buyers can really see how to live in the property. After discussing my approach to prepping their home for sale with the Sellers and getting their agreement to stage the property, I bring in professional interior designer. The stager begins by doing a 1-2 hour consult with the Sellers and me at their property. That consult results in two lists – things that need repair or maintenance and a complete list of staging items that will be needed to complete the project.
The next step is to create a calendar or timeline for all the items that need to be done and in what order. At some point the stager will return to “install” the make-over. This usually takes 1-2 days time. A typical Design Management staging involves moving furniture (including some additions and some deletions to existing pieces), rearranging artwork and wall hangings, using area rugs for focus, and adding LOTS of light to each room. The stager really makes each job special with her custom artwork, as needed. And the outcome is always stunning! In every case the home recently staged have told us, “We don’t want to sell now!”. In fact most of my Sellers do more entertaining once they go on the market because their home looks so beautiful after the staging. So if you would like to talk more about staging just email me or call me.
The bottom line is staged homes really speak to the Buyers who are looking for a turn-key property and staged homes typically sell much faster and for more money than the average hum-hum listing. And for the Sellers that can mean more $$ in your pocket sooner in this softer housing market.
Appraisals
I had an interesting conversation with a Seller client recently. We were talking about how to price his property for sale. I made the comment that his home was NOT worth what we might list it at. Okay, that’s fairly obvious! I went on to tell him that it may NOT even be worth the price that the eventual Buyer offers to pay for it. At that statement the Seller tilted his head and looked at me puzzled. I told the Seller that his home will be worth what the Appraiser says it is worth (assuming that the buyer is not paying cash).
Here’s what I mean … We all know that Appraisers have been under a great deal of fire from the lending world to be accurate, even conservative, with their appraisals. And should an appraisal come in below the contract price that the Buyer and Seller have agreed on, you can bet in this market that the Buyer is going to want to re-negotiate the contract price down to appraised value.
So what is the moral of the story for Sellers? There are actually two … Consider getting a professional appraisal up front before deciding on a listing price AND work with a professional real estate agent who will meet with the Appraiser at your property and give them a written list of all the upgrades and features of the property that support the contract price. Your agent should be working hard to get you every dollar you deserve!
If you have any questions about listing your property for sale please contact me.
