Thinking About Listing
Information Gathering
Understand the market and set a realistic sales price goal. I will provide a comparative market analysis that will look at a variety of factors to help you understand where your house fits into the current market and what price you can expect to have it sold at. If you are selling with the purpose of buying another property in the city, then we must also go through the “Thinking About Buying” processes so that we best understand the overall picture and strategically maneuver the buying and selling together.
Sales strategy
The listing price and market value are not the same. While the CMA provides you with an idea for where the house will sell, it doesn’t mean that that will be the listing price. Each sale is unique and requires a different sales tactic in order to reach the upper limits of the market value the property holds. While I will strategize with you based on your situation, ultimately it is your decision and I am happy to follow your decision (within reason of course), because I work for you.
Preparing to List
Getting the house ready for photos/showings/open houses – declutter, clean, remove personal items (potential buyers want to be able to envision it as their home, not view it as yours)
Potential Renovations – eliminate negative first/lasting impressions (bold and outrageous colours, damage, rot…etc)
General upkeep/Maintenance over due – overgrown landscaping, loose hardware, leaking taps/showers, creaking door hinges, replacing light bulbs, pest control
Emotional Tole
Prepare for the potential emotions you can be faced with when selling a home. Often times, people have lived in the home for decades and have a lot of memories tied to it; this can be a difficult transition. While its always good to allow ourselves to feel the emotions, we must also control them while dealing with the transaction. It is important to understand that something you might consider really valuable to your home, not only might not bring value to a potential buyer, but could also be a negative feature for them; this often leads to sellers over valuing their own home. Emotions can also get in the way when it comes to the negotiation, while we always want the best deal possible, it is natural to have second thoughts at this stage and ruin a good deal by self sabotage.
Timeline
While a lot of sellers like to try and time markets, which most of the time fails to be successful, it is important to understand a timeline for getting the house listed that works for you. Potential renovations or other “curb appeal” work, figuring out where you will live next, moving or giving legal notice to a tenant, hosting visiting family, can all take time or interrupt the process. This is good to understand for both targeting a time to go active with the listing, but also for ideal possession/closing dates to negotiate in the contract of purchase and sale.
Actively Listed
Showings/Open Houses
While I sit down with you for the listing presentation, we will discuss what this phase looks like. Some owners expect Open Houses while others refuse to allow them; I am happy to service all. The property will need to be maintained and ready for showings, again we will discuss length of showings and how much notice is required, and days/times that they are allowed. I will remain in constant communication with you throughout this process, even if it is to tell you that I have no update; the last thing I want is you feeling in the dark about the process and what I am doing to sell your house. I do my best to get feedback from every single person that walks through the house as that allows us to know what potential buyers are viewing as positives or negatives and the listing price and we can adjust our strategy accordingly (if different than what we already knew).
Marketing
Every house has a slightly or sometimes vastly different marketing strategy. We will discuss this during the listing presentation. Every house will be listed on the MLS which runs realtor.ca, we will provide professional photos and floor plans, while being active on social media. Beyond that, we will write into the listing contract the expectations that you have for me to market the property so that you know I will always be putting my best foot forward.
Offers
Whenever an offer comes in, I will contact you via your preferred contact method and we will go over the offer in detail, I will suggest our response (accept, counter or decline) with my reasoning and let you make the final decision. The sales price is often not the final detail to negotiate: deposit amount and timing, conditions, possession/closing dates, inclusions/exclusions, clauses and more can often make or break deals.
Closing
After we have an accepted offer I will continue working with you as we prepare for closing and possession dates and see the sale all the way through the process.
