Welcome to our Home Selling Roadmap! Click on the links below to learn more about the steps involved in selling a home. We hope you find this information both informative and useful in your quest to get your home sold!

Decide to Sell?
 
Perhaps you’ve been thinking of selling your home or real estate in order to improve your circumstances.

Why Do You Want to Sell? Do you want to sell your home in order to move to a different neighborhood, school district, or to be closer to family or employment opportunities? Perhaps you’re leaving the area. Maybe you want a country setting or want to be closer to town. Or maybe you need more bedrooms or storage? You may even want to downsize. As experienced real estate agents, we counsel our clients to help you understand not only your underlying reasons for wanting to sell, but the implications of how selling might impact your life and finances in ways you might not have anticipated.

What are the Current Market Conditions? The current real estate market may affect not only how much your home might sell for, but also how quickly. For example, in a buyers market, there are more homes for sale than there are buyers, so buyers have more negotiating power. In a buyers’ market, having an agent with excellent negotiating skills on your side can be instrumental in a successful sale, preserving your sales proceeds as much as possible. In a sellers’ market, there are fewer homes on the market, prices may be increasing and there may be multiple bids on desirable properties. In this kind of market, an experienced agent will help you price your home properly correctly to maximize your exposure and bring you the best market price and terms available within your time frames.

What Is Your Home Worth? Has your home appreciated? Do you know what it is worth? Pricing your home accurately is one of the most critical decisions you will make. On their own, most people tend to overestimate the value of their home. An overpriced home will languish on the market, and worse, may even be actively shown by agents just to make another home look like a better value. As experienced real estate agents, we look at dozens of homes every day and we know at what price homes actually sell for, compared to their original listing price. We can tell you, generally within an accuracy range of a couple of percent, the price your home should sell for on the market.
 

Prepare to Sell

Creating Curb Appeal: The value of curb appeal is in enticing drive-by buyers to want to come inside the home. The yard should at least be comparable to the neighborhood; the cost of a quick clean up by a landscape crew usually pays for itself through a faster sale near the asking price.

Should You Make Repairs? A quick coat of paint and other relatively affordable cosmetic upgrades might take years off a home’s appearance. A light neutral paint color has the broadest appeal and may also make rooms look larger. Will undertaking significant repairs prior to putting your home on the market generate the best return, or will selling your home “As Is” in it’s present condition? We can help with that decision. Having a written estimate from a contractor helps alleviate buyers’ fears of the unknown. Allowing the buyer to choose their own contractor relieves you of liability compared to pre-sale repairs, plus they can choose the materials. Consult with your agent before spending any money – we will advise you on how best to allocate your budget.

Cleaning Up Your Property: Keep your property tidy, clean, well-lit and smelling good. Your agent is able to see your home as a buyer will and can recommend how to show it in its best light. Often this requires removing memorabilia that you love but that others may see as clutter. Let buyers visualize their own belongings in the house. Turning on lights, even in the day time, makes your house appear more inviting, cheerful, and even spacious. A professional carpet cleaning can remove stains and odors that you may not notice but are immediately noticeable and often offensive to buyers who don’t smoke or own pets.
 

Disclosures & Inspections? One of your primary duties as a seller is to make a list of anything that should be disclosed to buyers. Real estate agents are familiar with the legal environment surrounding disclosures and will prompt you to develop thorough disclosure documents that will serve both you and the buyer in creating a sound and satisfactory transaction. Depending on the condition and age of your home, and the current real estate market, your agent may recommend you have a termite and pest inspection done before placing your home on the market. This can help avoid nasty surprises and broken contracts down the road.
 

Showing Your Home: It is important to leave your home while agents are showing it to potential buyers. We recommend you leave the showing of your home to professionals for several reasons. Buyers are more comfortable discussing the home’s merits and drawbacks with their agent if you are not there; they might even feel like they are intruding if you are home. Your agent is experienced in dealing with others on your behalf and has a fiduciary duty to represent your interests in the best possible way; let them do the talking. This way, you don’t accidentally volunteer information that your agent could use more strategically during negotiations.
 

Accepting the Offer

Price Isn’t Everything: Price is not always the deciding factor and the first offer may not be final: Our role is to help you sift through all the terms and conditions of the offer(s) you receive to help you create a transaction that best suits your needs. When appropriate, we will help you draft up a counter offer in response to an offer that comes up short of your needs. Contrary to popular belief, when presented with multiple offers, the highest price offer may not be the best offer to accept, after all things are considered.

Dealing Objectively and Fairly: Selling your home requires remaining objective and always negotiating in good faith. We will help you negotiate contractual terms that are beneficial to you and fair to the other party. An experienced agent knows how to handle situations including multiple offers and multiple counter offers prior to your going into contract with one buyer, or “ratifying” their offer.

The Deposit: Once there is a ratified offer, the buyer will deposit an agreed upon good faith deposit into an escrow account, reflecting their earnest intention to purchase your property.

Keep it in Writing (counter offers and addendums): Converting all verbal agreements to a commitment in writing signed by both parties clarifies everyone’s intentions and prevents things from being ambiguous, forgotten or contradicted later. We will help you draft addendums to your contract that will help further your objectives.

Staying on Track: Real estate contracts provide a series of deadlines for both buyer and seller. Keeping this series of events on schedule ensures a timely and successful close of the transaction, or close of escrow. Upon acceptance of an offer, we will give you a copy of the timeline we will be using to track the transaction, so you will always know what’s next.

Escrows, Inspections, and Appraisals

Title Company and Escrow Holder: In our area, typically the buyer selects the title company and escrow holder, because they are paying for the costs. The title company will research the complete recorded history of the property, to make sure that the title is free and clear of all encumbrances by the date of closing and that all new encumbrances are properly added to the title. You will receive a copy of the “preliminary report”, which we can explain to you.

Contingencies: Most purchase agreements provide the buyer with specific amounts of time to inspect the property, review the preliminary title report and all disclosure documents and obtain financing and insurance before they must actually complete their purchase of the property. At the successful conclusion of each of these milestones, the buyer will remove that contingency of their purchase and move one step closer to the close. Or, the buyer may use information they have learned to request a renegotiation of the terms of the contract (often the price). This is when an objective, experienced listing agent can really make a difference by helping you make an informed decision on how to respond to the buyer.

Inspections: The buyer has the right to have a wide variety of property inspections to determine the property’s condition and the cost of any impending repairs or upgrades. Inspections may include roof, termite/pest, chimney/fireplace, property boundary survey, well, septic, pool/spa, arborist or mold. You are entitled to a copy of any of their inspection reports.

Appraisal and Loan Approval: We recommend accepting offers from buyers who have a lender’s pre-approval letter, which is stronger than a pre-qualification letter. Later, the lender will send an appraiser out to the property, to ensure the property is worth the sales price.

Time to Start Packing: We can recommend when it is time for you to start packing, based on our vast experience with transactions similar to yours. Too soon, and you risk having your house in upheaval right when a buyers’ offer falls apart or when we need to begin showing your home to prospective buyers again.