Putting your home on the market can be a stressful process, especially when you don’t know what to expect. Fortunately, with the help of DeBoer Brothers Real Estate, and this easy to follow guide, you can smoothly complete the process while maximizing your profits. Following these steps will help you prepare so you can get organized and sell your home for the best price possible.
What do you want to accomplish with the sale of your home? Do you want to make a certain amount of money that you can put toward a more expensive home? Do you need to sell it as soon as possible to facilitate a move to a new city or area? Once you understand your needs, we can market and set a timeline for your home accordingly.
Together, we’ll walk through your home so we can learn and get a better feel for it. Then, after factoring in everything, we’ll put together a Comparative Market Analysis to determine what we believe it can sell for in the current market. Remember, brokers don’t determine the value of your home, the market does. We’ll tell you what we believe that range is, and explain how we maximize our clients profit to get top dollar by utilizing different marketing strategies. Listing your home at the right price from the beginning is important, as you’ll get the most interest from other real estate agents and prospective buyers when priced correctly. Overpricing your home could lead to reduced interest, and underpricing leads to receiving less than what your home is worth.
We believe the period before your home goes live on the market is one of the most crucial steps in selling your home. If you’ve kept your home in showroom condition since you’ve lived in it, you’re in the minority of homeowners. Once we price your home, it’s time to start getting it ready to be shown to potential buyers. Based on our knowledge and experience, we’ll make recommendations on little adjustments that can help maximize your profit. This includes getting rid of clutter, depersonalizing the space so that buyers can envision themselves in the space, making any small repairs, touch up paint, doing a deep clean to make sure your home is in pristine condition, etc.
We will develop a marketing strategy that is specialized specifically to market your home. This involves listing the home and then driving the right people to that listing through social media campaigns, agent-to-agent referrals, traditional media, SEO advertising, open houses, high quality professional photography and videography, etc. Our team and ourselves will create a marketing campaign that gets the most traffic possible to your listing in the first couple weeks after becoming a client, depending on your timeline.
Receiving an offer is an exciting part of the process, but it doesn’t mean the journey is over. Together, we will evaluate each offer and make sure the party making the offer is prequalified or pre-approved by a mortgage lender and that their offer is acceptable to you. We’ll explain the contract language, so you know exactly what the offer is stating. If the offer is too low, has too many contingencies, etc. you can make a counter-offer or offer other ways to bridge the gap, such as covering some or all of the closing costs, making repairs, adjusting the move-in date, or leaving some appliances or fixtures for the new buyer.
Once we deem the offer acceptable, we will review the proposed contract to make sure it’s all in order and includes the necessary components such as deposit amount, down payment, financing, inspection rights and repair allowances, contingencies, settlement date, and a list of fees and who will pay them. When both parties have agreed to the term, we’ll prepare a final contract.
You have accepted an offer and are now very close to the end of your selling journey. But first, you and the buyer must make a list of what needs to be done before closing. In some cases, your home may need to be formally inspected, surveyed, and appraised. In other cases, major or minor repairs will need to be made before the house can close. We will head up efforts to develop and execute this list, get each action item paid for by the correct party, and make sure everything is in order by the closing date. A few days before the closing date, we will call the closing company to make sure everything is ready to go. If you haven’t done so already at this step, you’ll need to make arrangements to move out of the home so the new buyer can take possession.
You’ve reached the last step in the seller’s process. When you close on a home you are selling, you are legally transferring ownership of the property to the new buyer. You'll meet with the closing company to sign the final paperwork and go over any issues that have not yet been taken care of. During this time, you can also make plans to handle final details such as canceling utilities, cable, and lawn or trash services, changing the name on accounts that the new owner is retaining and ensuring the new owner has instructions for all appliances that will remain in the home!
Once you have sold your home, you’re free to take the next step on your journey. Whether this is relocating to a new city, moving into a larger home, or downsizing and enjoying your life as empty-nesters, knowing all your selling responsibilities have been taken care of will help you achieve peace of mind for your new path.
Let us put our knowledge and expertise, as well as the power of Windermere, to work for you. Don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email for a free, no-obligation market analysis and consultation. You won’t be disappointed.
