How To Sell Your Home: A Guide for Selling Your House Fast, and Getting The Highest Price

If you're looking to sell your home for the most money, it's best first to contact a real estate agent who understands your local market, the entire cost of selling a home, and the best way of selling to meet your goals. The highest offer won't always wind up leaving you with the most money, and you won't always recover the costs of major renovations.

Interested in selling your home? Contact Dillon Ross.

Understand the Process of Selling Your Home

Determining the market value of your home in a real estate sale requires more than just valuing it at what you (the seller) think it's worth. You must understand the market trends of your area and what you can sell your house for, given the current market, to get you the highest amount. Understanding the market is essential to the process of selling your home, as you don't want to price too high or too low. Whether done on your own or by a local real estate agent, the first step to pricing your home is done by researching local comparables (comps). Comps will show you what the closest comparables to your house are selling for.

Granted, there will be a difference in what you decide to list because you may have invested more or less money into your home over the years you've lived there.

It's essential to price your home correctly and not just wing it because at some point, whether during initial negotiations or the appraisal, an issue could come up concerning the price of the home.

Know What You're Up Against

To sell your home for the best prices, you need to know what the market is like. For example, is the market you're in currently a sellers or buyers market?

As a seller, you hope that it's a seller's market because what this typically means is that the level of supply is less than the amount of buyer demand, thus allowing you, the seller, to get more for your home that you likely wouldn't in a buyers market.

Again, whether you or your real estate agent, you should see what other homes are on the market and what they're listed for. By knowing this, you'll understand the current market competition and understand how to price and market your home correctly.

Get a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA)

A CMA stands for comparative market analysis and is typically prepared by a licensed real estate agent to show you, the seller, what your home is worth, based on the local and recent comparables.

What's excellent about conducting a CMA is that real estate appraisers also utilize comps to determine the value of your home. So, if you identify good comps and price your home correctly, this will limit your chances of having issues when it comes to the appraisal.

Prepare Your Home for Sale

When you hire a real estate agent to list your home for sale, a lot more goes into it than just submitting it to the local MLS.

Depending on the current state of your home, an agent might recommend that you paint areas of your house, have it professionally cleaned, and even sometimes stage your home. When staging a home, 22 percent of sellers' agents reported an increase of one to five percent of the dollar value offered by buyers compared to similar homes.

Once your home is ready to be marketed to the public, your agent will arrange a photography session so that your house has professional photos available to the public, both online and in print format.

Depending on your agent, they might even incorporate video into their marketing strategy. Every real estate agent has a different marketing strategy that they deploy when listing a new home.

The trick is to find one that you get along with, resonates with your style, and that you have the utmost trust and confidence in.

Showing Your Home

As the seller, you have to make your home available to potential buyers to see. While the internet has undoubtedly helped increase exposure, people aren't going to make the biggest purchase of their life over a couple of pictures; they'll need and want to see it in person.

Don't be challenging to work with if you want your house sold quickly and for the most money. Be flexible and work with your agent to allow buyers agents and their clients to come and see your home.

Make sure your house is tidy, smells nice, and that your agent leaves out listing information, typically on the kitchen counter.

If you make your house easy to show, agents will bring their clients to see.

Don't Be Difficult

There is nothing worse than clients (buyers or sellers) that have unrealistic expectations and demands in real estate.

Listen, as sellers, obviously you want the most amount of money. As buyers, you want to pay the least and have many contingencies to ensure you're getting the best deal.

We can't have it all.

The moral of the story is, be aggressive but don't be difficult. Negotiate but within reason. Don't kill the deal over things that are so tedious. In the long run, it'll be you who misses out.

Conclusion

Selling your home, contrary to popular belief, doesn't need to be stressful or difficult.

If you make it difficult, it'll become stressful, and vice versa.

If you decide on listing your home with a licensed real estate agent, listen to them! They know your house's value, your market, and what marketing will attract the right buyers.

If you follow the guidance of your listing agent and aren't challenging to work with, your home will sell quickly, and you'll get the most amount of money for your house!

Interested in selling your home? Contact Dillon Ross.