Tips for Selling Your Home

Here are my top 8 tips for selling your home quickly in the NOVA real estate market.

1. Pricing. I like to sit down with my clients, and go over all available information with them with regard to their home and what I feel the home is worth. The operative word is ‘sell’, and its extremely important to consider all comparables, your location, the condition of the house, etc. You cannot attempt to sell your home for what your neighbor sold his/her home for ”back in September”.
2. Staging. Clean carpets, spot free walls, and an overall de-cluttered home goes a long way in today’s market. These are the three keys to having a home “show ready”. Creating a little ambience with some home made cookies or a candle will add an extra touch as well.
3. The Internet. As your agent, I will showcase your home using high quality digital pictures, not just through the Multiple Listing Service, but through all the major real estate websites. Your listing will be featured as ‘enhanced’ on Realtor.com – the most real estate site in the world. In the 21st century, showcasing your home on the internet is the most important piece of marketing a realtor can do for their client, hands down.
4. Lockbox. Here is my two cents about the lockbox; utilize it. For starters, it allows buyer agents and their clients to avoid the sometime hoop jumping of an ‘appointment only’ listing. Again, within a buyers market, don’t give an agent and/or their client a reason to possibly miss viewing your home. Secondly, the lockbox is actually a very good way for both you and I to monitor who is looking at your home. The lockbox is tied into a high tech computer system, which registers every realtor’s information every time they show the home.
5. Season. Statistically speaking, the majority of homes are sold year in and year out, from about the first of March through the end of July. If at all possible, make your real estate plans well in advance, and try to utilize these “high traffic” months.
6. Pets. Specifically not allowing pets to interfere with showings. Let it be known, my wife and I are dog owners. We love our little “monkeys”, and are huge animal lovers. However, through my experience as a Realtor, I’ve come to understand that not everybody feels the same way about animals as we do. In fact, some people are downright petrified of animals. The best advice I can give you with regard to your pets, is to do your absolute best, to keep them away from the ‘showing’ process.
7. Lighting. While showing your home, it is important to keep it well lit, be it artificially or by keeping the blinds open. Buyers do not want to walk through a home constantly feeling around for the light switch. They are there to see it, so do your part in ensuring that happens.
8. Showings. Do everything in your power to ensure the home is nice and neat prior to a scheduled showing. Also, allow the agent and his/her buyers to walk the home by themselves. Its usually in everyone’s best interest if you leave the negotiations to myself and the other agent. What may seem as a subtle or innocent conversation that you have with the agent and their client, could provide valuable information for them, and ultimately could hurt you in how they present their offer. If you are asked specific questions by the buyer or buyer’s agent, politely request that they present all questions to your agent.