All About Real Estate Selling
If you want to sell your home, you are effectively doing real estate – selling. It is exciting but also scary to put your home on the market. Realtors can help you make that journey easier and accompany you through it. Here is how it works.
Once you decide on a realtor (and you can interview several before you make your choice) that person will come over and visit you in your home. This is because he wants to see the property you are putting on the market up close and personal. Before he comes, he will have done some price comparisons with homes similar to yours in the neighborhood so he can advise you on the price you want to put your home on the market for.
He will go over comparable homes in the area with you so that you can understand why he has arrived at a certain price for your home.
More importantly beforehand he will sit down with you and your family to get to know you and to determine what your goals are and what you see as being difficult with regard to the sale of your home. He will be able to answer the questions you bring up and you will be able to discuss with him all the concerns you have.
He will walk through the home with you, room by room and also make suggestions for possible improvements before you put the house up for sale. These could include getting rid of excess clutter (always the number one problem). Prospective buyers do not want to see personal items in your home. They want to be able to envisage their stuff there instead. So it is a good idea to remove all personal and family pictures and ornaments, etc. Also the fridge door should be empty of photos, drawings, timetables, notes, etc. Buyers would like a neat and tidy home without too many pieces of furniture, etc. Maybe the realtor will suggest you think about hiring a stager to do all that for you.
He might also suggest certain improvements in the place. He might suggest replacing that stained carpet with new hardwood or laminate floors because these floors sell better than carpeted floors. Or maybe some of the rooms could use a fresh coat of paint. These improvements usually do not cost an arm or a leg but make a huge different to the look and feel of the place.
He will ask you to sign an agreement with his brokers and yourselves that you have hired them to represent you in this house sale. Then you will both have to agree to a price. The realtor will then take some pictures and maybe even measure the rooms and the lot itself. He will put the house on the MLS so interested buyers can see it. Sometimes he will do open houses to get more interest in the property.
When a buyer is found and a price is agreed upon, the realtor will also handle the contract and take the deposit check.
Using the services of a realtor when selling your real estate makes a lot of sense.
