Listing Your Home | Peggy McBain , CRS

LISTING YOUR HOME FOR SALE

When It's Time To Sell You Will Want To Get

The Best Way to Reach These Goals

Make your home look good. It's important that it looks presentable before you put it on the market. Clean up the outside and
add some flowers for that most important first impression. Stand facing the front door and observe what buyers will see as they
wait for their Realtor or the homeowner to open the door.

Pricing Your Home For Sale

Price it right. Pricing your property at market value from the start will typically result in the best price you will get for the property in the least
amount of time and inconvenience to you.
Listing your property high at first only helps to sell the other houses like yours on the market. Remember, buyers preview a lot of homes so they know what is overpriced.
The sales price also has to appraise at market value in order for the buyer to get a loan on it.
When you figure extra mortgage payments, property tax, insurance, the time and energy to keep your home looking good and the inconvenience of having your home on the market a couple extra months, over pricing isn't practical. Sellers mistakenly believe that they should price their house higher knowing that they can come down in price if it doesn't sell.
Buyers shop around before buying and recognize value in a specific price range because of comparison shopping. Homes that wind up on the
market a long time typically sell below market value.

Use A Real Estate Professional

Real estate today has become a business that is very labor intensive on many fronts. Continuing education is required to stay up with all the changes and requirements for a real estate transaction. Most home owners don't have the time or knowledge to successfully market and sell their home and get the best price.
To save a commission, some people start marketing their home for sale by owner. Some are successful, while most eventually list with a realtor. Most buyers work with an agent, because they don't want to go through the buying process without the use of a knowledgable professional.
FSBOs get far less market exposure. Agents typically prefer not to
work with FSBOs as they wind up doing much more work. Why? - because FSBOs typically don't have the knowledge and required forms needed for selling a home so the agent winds up providing for and consulting with the seller
Real estate professionals have the needed information to arrive at a market value of your home. A realtor will conduct a Comparative MarketAnalysis(CMA) using the Multiple Listing Service(MLS). This involves a survey of homes that are on the market or have recently sold that are similar to yours. The agent will advise you on the additional value (or deficit) of your home's unique features and factor that into the equation.
Going with the agent who recommends the highest price isn't always the best. This technique is used by some agents to get the listing.

Commissions

Commissions are negotiable. They can vary between 5%-10%, depending on the type of property, current market conditions, and the sellers motivation. 6% seems to be most typical.
Many people wrongly assume the whole commission goes to one person. Typically it is divided four ways: the listing agent, the
listing agent's broker, the buyer's agent and the buyer's agent's broker. Referral fees and franchise fees many times are a factor also.
When agents show properties to potential buyers, one thing they sometimes look at is how much commission is being offered.
Agents typically will show homes offering 3.5% before the ones offering 3%. If your home is offering 2.5% to the other agents, it will get fewer showings meaning fewer people will even look at your house. The result: you will be helping other sellers get their homes sold first.
MLS fees, insurance and membership dues can run thousands of dollars a year for each realtor. There is the cost of overhead, computers, office equipment, transportation, signs, advertisement and so on. It's a business with many expenses without a weekly paycheck.

Disclosures

Selling real estate today requires many disclosures to be made to buyers. Make sure you provide all that are needed.

Marketing Real Estate

The MLS (multiple listing service) is still the best effective way to market your home to the public.
The internet is fast becoming the preferred method for finding homes. More and more potential buyers start looking for homes on the internet. A tremendous amount of information can be found here. Soon it will be the norm for buying and selling real estate.
Now one can take a virual tour of a home at the click of a button. More and more homes will be marketed this way, especially high end homes or special property. Real estate companies that use this technology will be serving their clients better.
A FOR SALE sign should be placed on your front yard. Not allowing a sign on you property will greatly decrease your marketing power.
It's important that you have a lock box so agents can preview and show the property during the day. Not allowing a lock box will dramatically reduce the needed exposure to properly market your home. Lock boxes have become very secure and record who uses it. Agents don't like to show property if access is an inconvenience. Use a lock box.
Advertising in property magazines, newspapers and open houses are additional methods used, however they are probably less effective
marketing tools.

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