Seller's Guide

A Step-by-Step First Time Seller's Guide

Putting your home on the market can be a stressful process, especially when you don’t know what to expect. Fortunately, with the help of an experienced agent and this easy to follow guide, you can smoothly complete the process. Following these steps will help you prepare so you can get organized and sell your home for the best price possible.

Step 1: Understand Why You're Selling

What do you want to accomplish with the sale of your home? Do you want to make a certain amount of money that you can put toward a larger or nicer home? Do you need to sell it as soon as possible to facilitate a move to a new city? Once you understand your needs, we can better craft your offering. For example, if you need to sell quickly, you might want to price your home lower than if your goal is to make a certain profit margin. It is important that we work together to get your desired outcome.

Step 2: Determine Selling Price

Knowing how to price your home is one of the most important parts of the selling process. When you set a fair price in the beginning, you’ll get the most interest from other real estate agents and prospective buyers. Overpricing your home could lead to reduced interest, and underpricing leads to receiving less than what your home is worth. We use a number of techniques to determine the right selling price for your home. Chris Rooney has over 30 years of experience and over 1000 home sales to put you in the best position to be successful.

Step 3: Start Preparations

If you’ve kept your home in showroom condition since you’ve lived in it, you’re in the minority of homeowners. Positioning your home is an important factor when pricing. You want your home to reflect the price you are trying to attain. This includes getting rid of clutter, depersonalizing the space so that buyers can envision themselves in the space, making any small repairs, and doing a deep clean to make sure your home is in pristine condition. At CRHE, we have our own Stager/Designer that helps set the stage for your home to appeal to our Target Buyers!

Step 4: Develop a Marketing Strategy

We have a marketing strategy that is steps above the industry. This involves listing the home and then driving the right people to that listing through social media campaigns, agent-to-agent referrals, traditional media, or SEO advertising. We maximize our MLS with the profile of our home. The first impression nowadays is online, and we understand that completely. Each home is different and thus is each marketing plan. We have a formula that has been very successful, but we won't leave any stone unturned to get your home sold.

Step 5: Evaluate Offers

Receiving an offer is an exciting part of the process, but it doesn’t mean the journey is over. We will evaluate each offer and make sure the party making the offer is pre-qualified or pre-approved by a mortgage lender and that their offer is acceptable to you. If the offer is too low, you can make a counter-offer or offer other ways to bridge the gap, such as covering some or all of the closing costs, making repairs, adjusting the move-in date, or leaving some appliances or fixtures for the new buyer.

Step 6: Accept an Offer

Once we deem the offer is acceptable, we will review the proposed contract to make sure it’s all in order and includes the necessary components such as deposit amount, down payment, financing, inspection and any other contingencies, closing date, and a Net Sheet to understand the costs of selling your home. When signed by both parties the agreement is accepted pending the contingencies involved.

Step 7: Get Ready to Close

You have accepted an offer and are now very close to closing on your property. Many items will happen during the pending stage, but we will be with you every step of the way. Some to-do items may include completing any work orders or negotiated repairs, removing items from the home, and getting the utilities switched over to the new Buyer. Also during this time, we will be having the title work completed to make sure we are able to convey the property to the buyer. You should also expect an appraisal appointment during this time, and maybe the Buyer wants to come through to measure. We do encourage the Buyers agent to tell the buyer to get that all completed during the inspection period.

Step 8: Close

You’ve reached the last step in the seller’s process. When you close on a home you are selling, you are legally transferring ownership of the property to the new buyer. You will most likely sign the final paperwork at our office with the Title Company. At this time we will clear up any outstanding items or issues. You will also need to handle the final details such as canceling utilities, cable, and lawn or trash services, changing the name on accounts that the new owner is retaining and ensuring the new owner has instructions for all appliances that will remain in the home. Any manuals or information you can leave a buyer really helps with their enjoyment of the property.

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