What’s involved in getting a home on the market and sold? Here’s a quick breakdown:
1. Information. In order to decide to put a home on the market, you’ll first want to go through the information stage. This is where a real estate professional can help. I provide the following free information that helps home sellers decide whether to sell or not sell, and what selling would look like.
– What homes have recently sold in the local marketplace, and how they compare to your home in order to determine accurate pricing.
– What the overall condition of the housing market is.
– What your bottom line after closing, minus closing costs and commissions would be.
– What to do and what not to do to get the best price.
You might approach this stage from purely a standpoint of curiosity, that is you may just want to gather information to determine if selling your home is even on the horizon. If so, don’t be bashful or feel like you’re wasting my time. I have a long-term perspective, if I help enough people and provide valuable information, some of the effort will eventually turn into helping buyers and sellers accomplish their real estate goals. Other times, it may give you the information you need to stay put, refinance, or add on to the house vs. sell.
Or, you might be ready to move forward with selling, but need this information to determine the best pricing.
2. Prepare. You’ll want to make any needed/advantageous repairs, improvements maintenance, cleaning, de-cluttering, yard work, etc. prior to pictures being taken and listing your home on the MLS. How do you know what-to-do and what-not-to-do? Some of it is common sense, and much of it you’ll already have in mind (like that long overdue “honey-do” project). But, it helps to get a second set of eyes, and professional opinion to help guide you on where to put time and energy to get the best price, and where not to. It’s very easy to spend a ton of money on things that will bring very limited value, and miss easy, no-cost improvements that can dramatically help your home’s show-ability. Sometimes during preparation it’s good to consider a “coming soon” listing int he MLS that helps build some momentum heading onto the market, but a good real estate licensee will be able to help you weigh the benefits of this proposition. Last but not least, as you get closer to listing, it’s a good time to dig out those old property file folders that include documents such as surveys, well/septic paperwork, etc. from when you purchased, or that you’ve had done along the way. Sometimes this information can be dug up from other sources, but not always.
3. Listing. You’ll want to make sure you interview your agent (real estate licensee technically here in the State of Alaska) carefully, and make sure they are offering competitive services, aggressive marketing, have a proven track record of success and experience to help guide you through the myriad of situations that can arise. They should walk you through this entire process, but it’s still helpful to be in the know. You will sign a listing agreement for a specified time (oftentimes 6 months, but can be negotiable). They will most likely provide you a copy of the State of Alaska seller’s disclosure form to fill out, disclosing anything you know about the property. Keep in mind, that it’s better to disclose rather than not if there’s any question, and make sure to be thorough whether you think specific details of what’s happened to your home are important in your mind or not.
4. Going Live. After professional pictures are taken, the listing can usually go live within a day or two. By this point, sign and lockbox also should have been installed, and you’ll have put an extra key in the lockbox. Your real estate licensee will fill out all the information that you discussed on the listing appointment, create a write-up, and upload pictures. Once uploaded, you should get a link to the new listing to review and suggest changes.
5. Moving forward. From here, you’ll be contacted for showings, with showing feedback, and hopefully not too far out, an offer! Meanwhile, you should get reports and updates on activity to your listing (so you can see how much interaction and views it is going), updates on similar homes that have come available or sold, and a fairly frequent e-mail and/or phone call from your real estate licensee touching base to keep you up-to-date and brainstorm when needed!
Anyways, that’s a pretty quick overview, but let me know if you’ve got any other questions or I can help you with your home buying or home selling goals!
Happy Monday!
Tait Zimmerman
Advantage Alaska Real Estate
www.AdvantageAlaska.com
907-519-0043
tait@advantagealaska.com
“Your home sold in 90 days, or I’ll sell it for free!”