Valuable Tips for Selling a Home

1. Understand Why You Are Selling

Your motivation to sell is the determining factor as to how you will approach the process. It affects everything from what you set as your asking price to how much time, money and effort you are willing to invest to prepare your home for sale. For example, if you need to sell quickly, your approach will be different than the approach to maximize profit.

2. Keep the Reasons You are Selling to Yourself

The reasons you are selling your home will affect the way the sale is negotiated. Keep it between you and your Realtor so that you won’t place yourself at a disadvantage.

3. Do Your Homework Before You Set the Price

When the price is set, that generally is the signal for the maximum you will accept for your home. As a seller you naturally want to get as close to the list price as possible. If you start out too high, you run the risk of not getting showings and if you price too low, you leave.

• * Comparative Market Analysis. Your Realtor will perform a CMA to evaluate comparable home sales, competition, market trends and other factors to help you determine a realistic price.
• * Getting an appraisal. You may want to invest in an appraisal as it helps in the negotiation and also reassures buyers that the home will appraise for financing.
• * Home shopping. The best way to learn about competition is to check out other comparable homes. Your Realtor will help you use this information in the valuation analysis.
• * Ensuring you have room to negotiate: You need to achieve a balance between negotiating room and pricing too high for the market.

4. Recognize That Appearances Matter

The appearance of your home makes a statement about the home—this generates a greater emotional response than any other factor. Prospective buyers react to what they see, hear, feel and smell. You need to scrub, scour, get rid of clutter, repair leaks, light switches, etc. Remove knick-knacks. Decorate in neutral colors, and overall make the home possible for the buyers to visualize themselves there instead of feeling like they are intruding in someone else’s life. Odors are deal killers: traces of food, pets and smoking odors can kill potential deals quickly and also devalue your home.

5. Invite Honest Opinions from Others

The biggest mistake is to rely solely on your own judgment. Realtors often include their listings in a Realtor Tour specifically to solicit the specialists’ opinions about their listings.

6. Move Before Selling Can Put You at a Disadvantage

It has been proven that it’s more difficult to sell a home that is vacant. It makes a statement about motivations to sell. A home without furniture makes it more difficult to visualize how rooms can be used.

7. Keep emotions in check during negotiations

Let go of the emotion why you are selling the home. If you are detached, you will definitely have an advantage over those who get caught up emotionally during the process.

8. Pay Attention to Important Negotiation Points

* Low Offers. Don’t take these personally. Invariably an offer is below what you and the buyer knows he will pay for the property. Don’t be upset; evaluate the offer objectively (see point above about keeping emotions in check.) The Realtor will ensure that the offer spells out the offering price, sufficient deposit, amount of down payment, a closing date and any special requests. Alls of these are the starting point to evaluate where the negotiations can go from there.
* Counter Offers—this lets the buyer know his first offer wasn’t adequate and sets the stage for negotiation points that are important for you.
* Buyer Qualifications- it is important to know whether the buyer is qualified at this stage
* Contact Completeness—All terms, costs and responsibilities are spelled out in the contract. It includes items such as the date, names of parties involved, address of the property being sold, purchase price, where deposit monies are being held, date for loan approval, date and place of closing, type of deed, and any contingencies that remain to be settled and what personal property is (or isn’t) included in the sale.

9. Resist from Deviating from the Contract

For example, if the buyer requests a move-in prior to closing, just say no. Now is not the time to take any chances that the deal may fall through.

Reprinted from Buffini & Company