Serious About Selling? 5 Steps to Make Your Home the Best on the Block

We all want to be good neighbors. But when it comes to selling your home, it’s not just about “keeping up with the Joneses.” It’s about outshining them at every opportunity!

If you want to sell your home fast and for the most money possible, you’ll need a strategy to set it apart from all the other listings competing for buyers in your area. That’s why we’ve outlined our proven, five-step plan for serious sellers.

Use these five tactics to help your listing get noticed, win over buyers, and net a higher sales price than your neighbors!

STEP 1: Stage Your Home to Show Its Full Potential

The average seller will do the minimum to prepare their home for the market: clean and declutter, fix anything broken, and mow the lawn. And while those tasks are essential, today’s buyers want more than just a clean house and tidy yard. When they dream of buying a new home, they envision a designer house with modern finishes. Help them see your property’s full potential by staging it.

Home staging is one of the hottest trends in real estate—because it works! According to the Real Estate Staging Association, professionally staged homes spend 73% less time on the market.¹

So, what exactly is staging? In a broad sense, staging is the act of preparing your home for the market. The goal is to highlight your home’s strengths, minimize deficiencies, and help buyers envision living in the space. When staging a home, you might rearrange the furniture to make a room feel larger or remove heavy curtains to make it appear brighter.

Some sellers choose to hire a professional home stager with specialized training and experience to maximize their home’s appeal to the largest number of potential buyers. Others may opt to do it themselves, using guidance from their agent.

We can help you determine the appropriate budget and effort required to push your home ahead of the competition in your neighborhood. The good news is an investment in staging pays off. A 2018 survey found that 85% of staged homes sold for 6-25% more than their unstaged neighbor’s homes.²

 STEP 2: Draw Buyers in with High-Quality Listing Photos

You only have one chance to make a first impression with potential buyers. Many buyers will view photos of a listing before they decide whether or not to visit it in person. 87% of buyers find photos “very useful” in their home search.³ Poor-quality or amateur-looking listing photos could keep buyers from entering your door.

Since good photography is essential in getting your property noticed, we only work with the top local professionals to photograph our listings. But we don’t just rely on their photography skills when showcasing your home.

We go the extra mile to ensure your listing photos showcase the true essence of your home. We’re always on-site during the photo shoot to help the photographer capture the best angles and lighting and to let them know about unique or compelling selling features they should photograph. The extra effort pays off in the end. Listings with high-quality photography sell 32% faster than the competition … and often for more money! ⁴

STEP 3: Price It Properly From the Start

Some homes will sit unsold for months, even in a robust real estate market. This can be the “kiss of death” in real estate, as buyers tend to imagine that something must be wrong with the property, even if it’s not the case.

But why are those houses still on the market? They are often priced too high.

Every buyer has a budget. And most will be viewing listings within a particular price range. If your property is overpriced, it can’t properly compete with the other houses they’re viewing that are priced correctly. This means it’ll sit on the market until you’re forced to drop the price.

Alternatively, if you price your home aggressively, it can be among the most excellent homes buyers have seen within their budget. This can lead to emotionally attached buyers, who are often willing to pay a premium or settle for fewer seller concessions. In certain markets, it can lead to a multiple-offer situation or a bidding war. The result? More money in your pocket.

We can help you determine the ideal listing price for your home in the current market. Pricing it correctly initially is the best way to ensure a fast and profitable sale.

 STEP 4: Put on a Good Show at Each Showing

Once buyers are interested enough to schedule a visit, you must put on a good show at each show.

The first step is to make your home readily available—often on short notice—for buyers to see. A missed showing is a missed opportunity to sell your home. If you set too many restrictions on when it’s available to view, busy buyers will skip over your listing and move on to the next one.

Making your home available means keeping it relatively show-ready as long as it’s on the market. Most of us don’t live picture-perfect lives, and our homes reflect the day-to-day reality of our busy (and sometimes messy) families. But a little extra effort spent keeping your home clean, fresh-smelling, and ready for buyers will help it sell faster … which means you can return to your regular routine as quickly as possible!

 STEP 5: Use a Proven Promotion Plan

Most agents are still marketing their listings like they did 20 years ago  … put a sign in the yard, put the listing in the MLS, and pray that it sells. Yet, 93% of buyers search for real estate listings online.³

That’s why we invest in the latest training and technology to ensure your listing appears where buyers are most likely to look. Our dual-level promotion strategy includes pre-launch activities designed to seed the marketplace and post-listing activities to ensure your home stays top-of-mind with potential buyers.

By utilizing online and social marketing platforms to connect with consumers and offline channels to communicate with local real estate agents, your property gets maximum exposure to prospective buyers.

LET’S GET MOVING

Are you thinking about listing your home? Get a head start on your competition! Contact us for a copy of our Home Seller’s Guide, which offers a complete guide to the home selling process. Or call us to schedule a free, no-commitment consultation. We’d love to create a custom plan to maximize your property’s sales potential!

Sources:

1. Real Estate Staging Association – https://www.realestatestagingassociation.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=304550&module_id=164548
2. Home Staging Resources –
   https://www.homestagingresources.com/2018-home-staging-statistics/
3. National Association of Realtors –
   https://www.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/2018-real-estate-in-a-digital-world-12-12-2018.pdf
4. RIS Media –
   https://rismedia.com/2018/12/12/shocking-stats-importance-photography-real-estate/