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How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar

Did you know that getting top dollar for your house doesn’t mean starting with the highest price? In this video, I’m going to explain how properly positioning your home will get you the most money on your sale. By starting with the right price, description, and marketing, you’ll sell your house in record time while walking away with the largest profit possible.

How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar

While everyone wants to get the most money for their home, there’s a strategy for making this happen. A common question I get is, “Can we start our price way up here?” While it might seem like the right way to get top dollar, pricing high is not a good idea. When selling a home, it’s important to position the property to target and attract the ideal buyer. We do this by positioning.

Properly Positioning Your Home In 3 Ways

Most people have never heard of positioning their home for sale. What does this entail? Positioning is how we make your home appear to buyers, and having an action plan for this before listing is vital. There are 3 main ways we’ll position your home—the most important of which is price.

Pricing

Pricing your home right the first time is the most important thing that we can do to get the most money. Doing so will minimize your market time, allowing you to have the best chance of getting your desired price. If your house accumulates too much market time, you’re going to end up getting low ball offers. This is a situation that nobody wants.

To better explain, imagine you’re in the position of the buyer. Would you be more likely to give a lowball offer to a brand new property on the market or one sitting on the market for a long time? Too much market time usually means one of two things: either the seller is being unreasonable about price, or there’s something wrong with the house. The buyer may be pricing the property too high, or the house has major issues that are turning buyers off.

When you’re the new kid on the block, however, everybody is going to rush to see your property. The first few weeks that your house is listed will be critical, and we need to get the most amount of eyes on the property. This will result in more showings and a faster sell time. Since people don’t want to miss out on something new, they’ll be more likely to make an offer before someone else has a chance to take it away from them.

Another thing to consider when pricing your home is the way people search online. Prospective buyers tend to search in price range blocks, usually in increments of $25,000-$50,000. If we think buyers will search up to $400,000, $425,000, or $475,000, we want to make sure we price accordingly to get the most number of eyes on the property. Getting as many buyers as possible to look at your listing during these early weeks is key.

Listing Description

The second way we’re going to position your home properly is through its description. In other words, we want to capture the attention of the ideal buyer for the property. The “remarks” section in the listing is a really important place for advertising your house. It’s where we get to tell your home’s story.

For example, if we were selling an investment property, we would be talking about financial terms—like cash on cash return or net operating income. On the other hand, if we’re marketing a single-family home in a great school district, we’re going to be talking about features that appeal to families who have or are thinking of starting a family.

Marketing

The third and final piece of proper positioning is marketing. We need to market your home where your buyers are going to be hanging out. An aggressive agent—or politely aggressive Canadian-American agent—is going to go after the buyer actively. They’ll do more than just put a sign in the ground and hope that the buyer comes magically to you.

As you can see, proper positioning is vital to get the most value when we sell your house. Listing your home on the MLS is one thing, but marketing it, positioning it, and getting top dollar for it is another. If you would like to get a politely aggressive marketing plan for your home, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and I’d be happy to help!

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Sep 21 No Comments

How Much It Really Costs To Sell Your House

Categories:Info for Sellers

Have you decided to sell your house but are wondering how much it’s going to cost you? With all of the packing, moving, and adjusting, selling your house can be stressful. What’s even more stressful, however, is not knowing how much you’re going to pay. In this video, I’m going to walk you through all the costs associated with selling your home. By knowing what your closing costs are upfront, you’ll have the upper hand in negotiations and will know exactly how much you’ll walk away with at the end of your sale.

How Much It Costs To Sell Your House

The most important number you need to know when selling your house is not just what the buyer pays for your home. Surprisingly, its the amount of money you put in your pocket when you walk away from the transaction. To better understand what this number will be, you’ll need to consider some common closing costs.

Title Fees

One of the first closing costs you’re going to see is title fees. These fees are essentially what you’re paying the title company to change the title over to a different name. This includes any fees and taxes associated with that switch, such as unpaid liens. In short, this process changes the name on the property from who used to own it (you) to who’s going to own it now (the buyer). Wherever you buy property in the United States or Canada, there’s going to be title fees. It’s an inescapable part of the process.

Tax Proration Fee

The next fee you’re going to see is a tax proration fee. I personally learned about this the hard way when seeing an unexpected, large fee on my home sale. The tax proration fee is the amount of property taxes that are left during the calendar year period that you, the homeowner, haven’t paid yet. You will be responsible to pay your taxes up until the day you own the property. From that day moving forward, the property taxes will be the burden of the buyer.

The tax proration fee is calculated out daily, and it ensures that you pay up until the day that you close. After that, you’re done. You can walk away, and everyone’s happy.

Transfer Fee

Another fee you’ll be responsible for is the transfer fee. This is a county tax, usually calculated as a certain dollar or percentage per every $1,000 of the purchase price. This fee goes towards a variety of county line items that your taxes pay for—and that comes from property sales. One of the biggest items you’ll see on your closing statement (or prepared seller net sheet) is going to be your loan payoff amount. If you’re lucky and don’t have much left on your loan, it will be small. If you have more, it will be the amount of your unpaid mortgage balance.

Real Estate Commissions

If you decide to hire a realtor, the next fee you should expect is the commission for your realtor. The seller actually pays for both the buyer’s and seller’s side of commissions. This then gets split evenly between the buyer’s broker and the seller’s broker. When you purchase a property, you don’t have to pay commissions.

Included in the realtor commissions on the seller’s side is everything that’s needed to sell your home. All the activities in the pre-listing stage—including photography, videography, drone photography, print marketing, and internet marketing—will be covered, as well as a portion for the buyer’s agent. The commission fees will be consolidated into a single line item.

Your Total Seller Closing Costs

Once you subtract all seller closing costs, you’ll then have a number that will be your walkaway total profit. From the sale price of your home, you’ll need to account for commissions, tax prorations, and all the other fees we discussed. In real estate, everything is based on a percentage of the sale price. The higher the sale price of the home, the more the closing costs are going to be as well.

If you’d like to get an idea of what it would cost to sell your home, please feel free to contact me. I’ll be happy to give you a seller’s net sheet so you can see what your bottom-line, walkaway take-home figure will look like. This will give you the best idea of how much money you’ll keep in your pocket after you sell your house!

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Sep 14 No Comments

The 3 Stages Of The Home Selling Process

Categories:Info for Sellers,Uncategorized

Have you decided to sell your house but don’t know what to expect next? If so, I’m here to help. In this video, I’m going to walk you through the 3 stages of the home-selling process. By understanding everything that the process entails, you’ll be better able to sell your house for top dollar and move on to your next chapter.

3 Stages Of The Home-selling Process

#1: Pre-Listing

The first stage of the process is called the pre-listing stage. Before we put the property on the market, we’ve got to make it look great. There are a few different steps that we’ll need to take, which include going through your home, decluttering and depersonalizing.

I’ll also have my stager with me to give us some great ideas that will make your home look as great as it can. Decluttering means getting rid of excess stuff, so whatever you don’t need to live your everyday life will have to go. Whatever you’ll want to save will go in storage, and anything you don’t want to take with you to your next home will be sold or donated. The primary goal here is to make your house look amazing.

Once there’s less stuff in your house, potential buyers can start envisioning themselves and their stuff in your house. We don’t want them to look at your life and your things. We want them to imagine their lives and their things in this beautiful home. After the decluttering and depersonalization, we’re going to hire a professional photographer and videographer. Depending on the property, we’ll also want to get drone footage and make a 3D photo using a Matterport camera.

The reason photos and videos are so important is that the first showing of your home is going to be online. We want to make it look as enticing as possible, which will draw the most solid buyers in to see your home in person. The video walkthrough tour is going to be very critical, using professional still photographs with the best lighting that shows all the amazing qualities of your house. That’s going to be critical to our success. Have you ever seen something online that you thought was just so awesome that it made you want to see it in person? That’s exactly what we’re aiming for.

#2: Active On The Market

Once we’ve completed step 1, we’re ready for your listing to go live on the market! The first two weeks that your home is listed are going to be our most opportune time to get a great offer. You’ll have the highest number of eyeballs on your home with the highest level of interest, making this truly game time. Everybody wants to see the new kid on the block, and your house is going to be the prettiest and shiniest new object. The more people we can get to see your house in these first two weeks, the likelier we are to get the highest offer close to—or even above—asking price.

During this two-week time, it’s also important to be as flexible as possible when showing. By offering as much access to the home as possible, keeping it at its show-ready stage at all times, you’ll get the highest number of potential buyers coming through your house. You want people to be able to quickly and easily come in to get a look at your beautiful home.

While we can’t control when people want to see your house, we can control how it looks when they do see it. Eventually—hopefully sooner rather than later—your home will get an offer and we will go into escrow.

#3: In Escrow

The third stage of the home-selling process is accepting an offer and getting your house into escrow. People think that once you get an accepted contract, most of the work is done. In reality, this is when things really start to happen.

The first thing that’s going to happen is the inspection, which the buyer’s agent will set up right away. Additionally, the buyer’s lender is going to send them a bunch of loan disclosures to fill out so the appraisal can be ordered right away. After that, there will probably be a termite inspection just to make sure there are no bad surprises.

After these inspections, there’s more to be done. If there are HOA dues, we’ll need to order those documents. Cleaning and moving will need to be complete, as well as repairs. We’ll also need to transfer utilities to the buyer. If your head is already spinning, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered when it comes to all these details. Our job is to make it as stress-free as possible for you. If you’re not using a realtor, it will be your responsibility to complete all these steps and follow through.

I hope you now have a better idea of everything that the home-selling process entails. While this is a general outline of what will happen, every situation is different depending on the market. If you have any questions, please contact me

contact me and I’ll be happy to be a resource for you. I’m always here to help you get your home sold and move forward in the next chapter in your exciting life.

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Jul 17 No Comments