For most families, their home is their largest financial asset, and deciding to sell it is a big decision that involves a lot of preparation and work. When you're ready to sell it's important to have an experienced real estate professional handle the details involved in the successful sale of a home for top dollar.
Jeff & Tracey Schween are experienced professionals who has helped over 750 customers sell their homes, ranches and investment properties. They know how to handle every aspect of the sales process from strategically marketing and showcasing your home to making sure everything's signed, sealed and delivered by the closing date.
Providing you with comprehensive, high-quality marketing and advisory services is their top priority. So, when you decide to sell your home, contact Jeff & Tracey and leave the rest up to them!
Properties are commonly advertised through real estate agent Web sites, Internet search engines, Syndicated promotional services, social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn & Instagram as well as regional magazines and news medium. Promotion efforts through office and MLS tours are a good way of getting other buyer agents to view your home so they can get enthused about promoting it to the buyers they are working with.
Even with all these advertising avenues, "For Sale" signs on front lawns are still remarkably effective. Many REALTORS® promote their Web sites on the sign in lieu of the brochure boxes that may have traditionally been placed on the signs to market the property – this allows customers to gain greater details while also allowing Jeff & Tracey to track the activity form these searches. When appropriate, and with your permission, your REALTOR® will send a mailing about your property to neighbors. Sometimes one of them has a friend or relative who always wanted to live near them. You never know how far reaching the benefits of word-of-mouth advertising by friends, relatives and neighbors can be. We enhance each of our listed properties with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) while also utilizing social media blasts and banner ads in targeted venues where your likely buyers spend their time online so they will become keenly aware of your property.
To prepare your home for viewing, make it as bright, clean, cheerful and serene as possible. Always look at your home from the buyer's point of view. A great realtor will probably find a tactful way to suggest that you be absent while the house is being shown to prospective buyers, because your presence will inhibit their actions and conversations. They won’t feel free to open closets and cabinets, test out the plumbing and discuss their observations objectively as they walk through the house. It goes without saying that your children and pets should not be on the premises either.
When an open house is scheduled, you may want to notify the neighbors, and assure them that they'll be welcome. They'll jump at the chance to poke around in your house, and sometimes they can turn up a buyer among their friends.
Quick tips for showings and open houses:
- Clean or replace dirty or worn carpets.
- Open all curtains and bspannds.
- Replace any burned out spanght bulbs and turn on all spanghts.
- Clear all clutter.
- Clear all countertops.
- Wash and put away any dirty dishes.
- Set the dining room or kitchen table if you have particularly nice spannen or china.
- Simmer a few drops of vanilla on the stove or bake some fresh cookies/bread.
- Put on soft music.
- Burn wood in the fireplace on cold days, otherwise, clean the fireplace.
- Put fresh towels in the bathroom.
- Take any laundry out of the washer and dryer.
- Leave the house so your REALTOR® is free to deal with prospective buyers in a professional manner.
- Put pets in cages or take them to a neighbor.
Professional appraisers sum up their entire body of knowledge in three words: " Buyers determine value." Your home is worth as much as a buyer will pay for it.
If your home has been on the market for months, it’s a clear message that the property may not be worth what you're asking for it. This is particularly true if there haven't been many prospects coming to see it. What you do at that point depends on whether you really need to sell, and whether you're working with a time limit.
If you're not really motivated to move soon, you can always wait - years if necessary - and hope inflation will catch up with the price you want. The problem is that in that time, your home begins to feel shopworn. Buyers become suspicious of a house that's been for sale for a long time and often think, “what’s wrong with it?”
If you really do need to sell, and it has not happened yet a quality realtor should be engaging with you to review agent and customer feedback to determine – ahead of making any price adjustments – if there are things that need to be fixed, enhanced or removed to better showcase the value in your home. Beyond that, we need to be adults and share what the market is telling us with regards to pricing for the specific attributes that your home has. Anything will sell if the price is right and sometimes a “perceived deal” in the marketplace will have the possibilities of leaping over what may have been the preconceived value of the home due to the synergy that gets created from market forces when the broader public and their agents identify the home as being “in play”.
You may wonder what will happen when you're selling one home and buying another – how will all the details work out? This is a common situation and REALTORS®, lawyers, and title and escrow companies have plenty of experience in arranging contracts and loans so that the two transactions dovetail smoothly.
Should you sell your home first then buy or buy first, then sell? Ideally, it’s best to prepare yourself to be able to make a purchase without having to complete the sale of your existing home (a contingency format). This affords you the most attention from any one seller and will typically keep you at the front of the line when a seller is looking at competing offers. In some cases, you may need to sell your home first and then potentially find a temporary living situation or short-term rental in the interim period between the sale of your home and the final purchase of your new one.
If you find that you need to buy the next house before you've received the proceeds from the present one, lending institutions can sometimes make you a short-term " bridge" loan to tide you over between the two transactions. Make sure you fully understand the exposure and emotional investment before proceeding with this type of loan.