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Seller's Guide

For Sellers

If you are in the market to sell your home, Your First Step is to call a Realtor. One thing your real estate agent should do is explain to you the benefits of staging and preparing your home for sale. Your agent should also tell you the truth about how your home is prepared for market and tell you what you need to do to get the best price. Unfortunately, having a clean home ready to sell is not always good enough in the eyes of a buyer.

Recommendations aren’t everything. It is smart to get recommendations for a real estate agent to sell your home, for one bad real estate agents don’t get referred. However, you shouldn’t stop on someone’s recommendation. That should only be your first step. You really ought to talk to at least three agents and have them each to visit you and walk through your home. The prepared agent will bring information with them about recent comparable sales, will help you price your home, and they should suggest low-cost upgrades that will boost your home’s value and help it sell more quickly.

Start your home selling online. Chances are you already have if you found this website. You can get a good idea as to what homes are selling for in your area by snooping around property home search tools.

Talk to a lender if you are planning to buy a new home. You’ll want to have your housing plan figured out before you put your home on the market.

Find out if the real estate agent is a full time agent or not. Full time agents are more likely to be tuned in to what’s going on the market that will influence your home’s sales price than a part timer. Second, full time agents most likely have access to bigger networks of other real estate agents they can tap into to help get your home sold.

You may want to find out if the agents you are talking to have completed any specialized training or earned any industry designations such as: negotiating, working with first-time buyers, or selling green or historic homes. You might get a sense of their qualifications and expertise because typically you’ll see designations from industry organizations like the Graduate REALTOR Institute (GRI) or Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) from the National Association of REALTORS.

Not all agents are a good fit for your home. Some seller’s agents may concentrate on a particular type of home or price range. If your house doesn’t fall within that specialty or price range, that agent may not be qualified or motivated to show your home. The agent also may not have a ready pool of buyers looking for a home like yours.

Ask agents how they’d market your home. A good real estate agent will tell you the best way to market your home. Beware of agents who talk in generalities or brush you off with a “let me worry about the details” attitude. Get answers to basic questions: Will you hold open houses? If so, how often? Will you place ads in local newspapers or real estate websites and, if so, which ones are best suited for my home and why?

Arizona Home Sellers Guide | Step-by-Step

Getting Your Home in Selling Condition

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Make Your First Impression Count

When selling your home, beyond making sure that your house is clean and free of clutter, staging can be the difference between getting your house sold quickly and having it sit on the market for an extended period. Staging, highlights your home’s best features and allows buyers to feel welcome and visualize themselves and their belongings in the space. This tip is especially important if you have already moved out of your home and it is an empty shell.

Buyers have a hard time seeing a home’s potential – especially if certain rooms have a unique layout and furniture placement is not easily identified. For the best results, we recommend hiring a professional stager. If that is not within your budget, enlisting the advice of your Caniglia Group real estate agent is a great alternative as they will be more objective about your home.

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Enhance Your Home’s Curb Appeal

When preparing your home for sale, remember this, many people who are considering a tour of your home will often do a quick “drive-by” first to see if they even want to take a look inside. Making sure that the outside of your home is in tip-top condition to entice buyers to have a look inside is key. There are several inexpensive ideas to punching up your home’s curb appeal. Those include, adding a pop of color to your entry or pathway with beautiful blooming flowers, ensuring that the lawn is freshly mowed (or re-sodded if needed) and pesky weeds removed, power washing the driveway, walkway and front of the house and lastly, touching up exterior paint on the home or porch and replacing any burnt out light bulbs or broken fixtures. These are all great ways to make a clean and inviting first impression.

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Neutral Color Palettes Sell

If you happen to watch any of the home improvement shows on television, this tip is always high on the list when it comes to staging your home. You may love your bright accent wall or bold wallpaper pattern, but it may not necessarily be the style of those looking to buy a house in your neighborhood. Before showing your home for the first time, you will want to make every effort to tone down bold colors and establish a neutral canvas that will appeal to the most number of people. This tip also applies to children’s rooms as future homeowners may not have kids, therefore, bold colored walls or gender-specific design may distract the buyer from seeing the space as a study or guest room. And let’s not forget the need to neutralize smell. Being mindful not to overpower your home with heavy air fresheners, potpourri, scented candles or oil rings is just as important as making sure there is no lingering odor from trash cans, refrigerators or laundry rooms.

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De-clutter and Make it Shine

This is not an easy task, but trust me, it is incredibly important when trying to put your home’s best foot forward. Open house visitors will take a peek into your personal spaces. Clearing all surfaces, floors, cupboards, pantries, closets, etc., will automatically open up the space for your buyers. That means removing all personal items such as artwork, picture frames, vacation souvenirs, religious keepsakes and collectibles so as not to offend a future homeowner who may not share in your same beliefs and tastes. Anything left out should be pristine. Once your home has been rid of clutter it is time to make it shine. Cleaning the floors, vacuuming, removing stains from carpets, cleaning the windows, dusting and scrubbing the grout are just some of the ongoing tasks that will need to be maintained while your home is on the market. It may sound like a lot of work, but it will all be worth it when that buyer pays top dollar for your clean and organized space.

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Light It Up

Another important element to home staging is to present a bright, well-lit space. For home tours, make sure that all of the lamps are turned on, and the curtains are open. If your view is less than desirable, purchase some inexpensive window sheers that still allow the light to shine through, but distract from the view. A bright space appears more spacious and convivial.

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Make It Warm & Inviting

Now that we told you to get rid of all of your clutter, we want to make sure that your home still has that personality and charm that made you fall in love with it in the first place. Bringing in a few well-placed elements such as vases of cut flowers on the table or a bowl of fresh produce on the kitchen counter adds that warm and inviting appeal that home buyers are looking for. You may also want to do a bit of rearranging with your living room furniture. Pulling your furniture off the walls and using pairs (of sofas, chairs, lamps) to create an inviting conversation area is a nice touch that gives the space a sense of coziness.

8 Costly Home Seller Mistakes

If you’ve lived happily in your home for years, it can be difficult to detach yourself from cherished memories and look at your house as a commodity you’re attempting to sell.

But no matter how much you love your home, you’ll need to spruce it up before it hits the market.

For a smooth transaction that garners the most possible profit from your sale, avoid these eight common, and costly, home seller mistakes.

Depending on the age of your home, scheduling a pre-listing home inspection could save you a lot of time and aggravation.  You can address issues on your own time and budget before negotiating with a buyer to fix problems.

While you may be tempted to “test the waters” and put your home on the market without painting it or making minor repairs, your home is likely to languish on the market and get a reputation for having a major problem.  A thorough, professional-level cleaning should be your first minimum seller prep.  Your eventual sales price is likely to be lower if you don’t sell within the first few weeks after you list your home.

Instead of picking a Realtor who’s a friend of a friend, a relative or perhaps someone who’s great at working with buyers, take the time to pick a Realtor with an excellent reputation for listing homes.  Your payoff will be much larger if you list your home with a Realtor with local market knowledge and sales expertise.

If you polish and primp inside your home but neglect to pull weeds or paint your front door, you run the risk of potential buyers leaving without ever entering your home.

If you hope that buyers or their inspector won’t find out about the leak under your bathroom sink or the fact that your basement gets flooded every winter, you run the risk of a nasty negotiating period – or worse – a lawsuit after the settlement.

If you’ve hired the right Realtor, someone who can give you a strong market analysis and help you determine a reasonable price for your home, then you can avoid overpricing your home.  If you don’t listen to a Realtor and base your listing price on an inflated view of your home’s value, you’re likely to end up selling after multiple price drops for less than you would have if you priced it right the first time.

Whether you should buy your next home or sell your current home first is only one part of the preparation you need to make to move.  You need a back-up plan in case your transaction on either end takes longer or shorter than you think, and you need to understand your mortgage payoff and the closing costs you must pay.

Part of your emotional detachment from your home is recognizing that while you love Fluffy and your darling twins, buyers want to visualize themselves and their own family in your home.  Bribe your kids if you have to, but make sure the house is neat and as neutral-looking and smelling as possible.  Take the kids and your pets (or lock up your pets) when prospective buyers are visiting:  You never know if someone who is terrified of dogs or cats will be turned off from making an offer because of your adorable pet.

 

Selling a home can be challenging, but with the help of a reliable Realtor, you can avoid making mistakes and reap the rewards of your sale. (Distributed by Realtor.com).

 

If you or someone you know is looking to sell their North Central Phoenix home, please give us a call or fill out the form below and one of our Caniglia Group agents will be happy to assist you.

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The Caniglia Group

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