Selling your home - 6 Steps Savy clients use to get ready to sell | The Reference Blog

Hey everyone, Seth Williams here with Ledge & Young Real Estate welcome to episode four ( blog 4 ) of The Reference. So, this blog, as promised from last weeks episode about The Buying Process... is called The Selling Process. I wanted to share the six most important steps to do when getting your home ready to hit the market.

Let's just jump right in. Consider getting a pre-inspection for your house! So, we know that when a buyer comes to make an offer on your property, often they're going to want a home inspection. That's because its one of the best things a client can do when purchasing a home. If we go ahead and beat them to the punch with a pre-inspection, we're going to know all those things ahead of the game, right? There's going to be no surprises and it also gives us some time if there is anything dramatic that comes up, we can go ahead and fix it before we put the house on the market. All while we're in the middle of doing our pre-marketing tactics. I like to spend about two weeks to market a home before it actually hits the market, depending the time of year it could be more, or less. Get a pre inspection!  Could be as cheap as $300. All the way up to $700 or $800. Oh, and its probably going to save you thousands when you're actually going to accept an offer on your home. Super important and easy thing for us to do. So, that's step one.

Next one, we have to organize and clean up the house, right? So, if your house has some trinkets that you really love, thats great for you. A new buyer might not see things the same way, right? So, all those things, even though they are a little sentimental to you, it's best to take some time and declutter and put some of that stuff away. I always like to bring in some of our professional trade partners and do a full cleaning of the house too. It doesn't mean your house isn't clean, remember that... We just like to make sure it shows best when we bring in our first sets of buyers. We only have really one shot to go to the market, and it's super important to go ahead, organize, declutter if possible, get a storage unit if you need to. This allows us to get the house clean for pictures or videos, and ultimately for our first big showing in open house.

This is a huge step we HAVE to do. Sometimes it's really emotional, we completely understand that...other clients have said the same thing. But ultimately, it's one of the most important steps and it's one of the number one reason that homes actually don't sell just 'cause they're over cluttered, which ult- which ultimately brings in some poor exposure. So, I'll talk about that in step six a little bit later.

So, third step is to get some replacement estimates. If that hot water heater is five to ten years old, even though it's still working fine, (a lot of people say they really should only last six to ten years.) a replacement estimate might put buyers at ease. It doesn't mean we have to go ahead and change any of the items that come up, but let's just go ahead and get an estimate for anything at the end of its life ( did you follow step 1 for the pre-inspection? )That way we can provide these estimates to any buyers as they come in, and maybe question how old the hot water heater is - or any other item. Here locally in Winthrop for plumbing estimates,  I love to use Streeter Plumbing. Shoutout Kenny. Uh, haven't seen you in a while. Thank God... Streeter Plumbing, one of the best plumbers in town, and they are a great resource for you. They are located right on vetrans road in Winthrop. 

So, after we get all those replacement estimates, we can put a nice book together. And that, is step 4! Create an improvement binder. So, if you've just done all new windows, let's put all those receipts, and then show how much that costs.  Let's put the copy of the building permit in there. Let's put the window warranty in there. Let's put the repair estimates, all the stuff that we just gathered in the first few steps. Hell, let's even put maybe the pre-inspection report. And let's have that available for our open house. We'll obviously make some copies. But that's really important to have... Some of our most savvy seller clients do that and it's also really, really well received from any buyers or buyer's agents that come in. So, we really like, like doing that. It's a practice we just recently started. And it's,it's shown some huge success putting buyers at ease, especially potentially if they want to get aggressive and waive inspection in their offer. So, keep that in mind. An awesome binder has all the warranty info and all that stuff we mentioned in the first few steps...and it's really, really important.

So, let's move onto step five. We got to spice up the curb appeal. It doesn't matter what type of the year is. It could be fall, it could be spring, it could be summer. Let's make sure the lawn's cut. Let's remulch. Maybe pop some flowers down outside, and pop some flowers inside. If there was a big snowstorm, let's do a really good job doing removing the snow. Whatever it is, up here in the northeast, we got to make sure we spruce that up. Sometimes that costs a lot of money too, but dont forget you will get it back when the home shows well. Recently, we sold a home up in Beverly. The lot was really overgrown and so, we went ahead and- and fronted the bill for some landscaping. It was well over $2000, but ultimately, we had that home sold well over asking price for that client on the first open house weekend. Received multiple offers and, the clients ultimately loved it and gave us a five star review. Well worth it in the end for everyone. 

Last step, and probably one of the most, important is we have to be realistic, about price, and about timeslines. So, a lot of clients call me and they say, "Hey, I want $800,000, $900,000 for my house 'cause we're in Boston. We're in one of the hottest real estate markets in the entire country... and we want to really shoot for the stars." You know, I think initially sometimes pricing of those homes are a little bit high to try and thread the needle....you know, that's a decent strategy. Sometimes we're trying to find that needle in the haystack for that one client, right? PS. this is not the right strategy.

Ultimately, there's a few big reasons homes don't sell, and some of them are  exposure ( marketing ) and ultimately price. And so, if we overprice the home we limit our exposure in the hotest weeks when the property is new to the market. And, we only have this one shot to go to the market, and it should only be once if its done right.  Overpricing is one of the biggest flaws out there in real estate. So agents will come in and say they will get you xyz, and hopefully they do, but we have stopped taking those clients on, be realistic, and we will sell your home!  We're going to sell a ton of homes this year and one of the things we like to do is make sure we price accurately. You must be realistic when setting up a price with your agent. We'll provide you with all the data and ultimately we want you to help us set the price, and ultimately if it's too high or too low, we'll let you know that. But we MUST be realistic.

And remember, the other reasons, exposure, which is all about unique marketing. So, here at Ledge & Young Real Estate, we pride ourselves on marketing and would love the shot to sit down with you if you are in the market to sell and go over the strategies we use to sell homes. We're putting out a nice video series & blog series here for our clients, and that is another peice of marketing.

Tune into the reference to learn all about the buying and selling process, and tons of other tips, keep up to date with local Boston market updates and more. Thanks for reading eps 4. 

-SW

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 Thanks for tuning into The Reference. You guys want to keep learning more about real estate from Seth, make sure you subscribe to The Reference YouTube channel. And follow us on social media, Instagram, and Facebook. If you have any questions about real estate, you can contact Seth at 781-342-0052. I will see you guys next time.