By James Doerfel
Designated Broker
Over the past decade, I’ve listed dozens of properties in which I myself had an interest and scores more for clients. I’ve coached agents on how to get the most out of their listings and sellers on how to get the most out of their sales. What follows is my takeaway of all that selling—a checklist for sellers. This list is designed to give you every advantage when selling your home. The more of these best practices you follow, the better chances you have of selling on your terms and maximizing your profits. In the neighborhoods of Greater Seattle, the difference is often hundreds of thousands of dollars.
0. Make a game plan—a list of strategic actions you can take to optimize your sale and a reasonable timeframe for each. Start with the list you are reading and adjust it to fit your situation. If you do everything on the list below, it could take weeks or even months before your property is ready for the market. Discuss each of the items in your plan with your agent so that you are on the same page from start to close.
1. Make your home functional. If you want to fetch the price of a move-in ready home, make your home move-in ready. Doors and windows should open and shut cleanly. Lights should illuminate. Drains should drain. This is the time to service your systems. Thermostats and doorbells, switches and knobs, seals and panes, circuits and light bulbs, filters and smoke detectors are all relatively affordable. Every dollar you spend at this point can make you many dollars when you sell.
More than at any other stage, Purchase and Sale Agreements (PSA) fall apart during the inspection. Eliminate surprises. Have an inspection done up front. Have your inspector inspect your property on your terms before escrow and emotions are on the line. Learn to see your property through the eyes of a professional inspector and repair major issues before you go on market.
A pro agent will attach the inspection report and the documentation of repairs to your listing. I advise they be appended to your Seller Disclosure.[1] In competitive markets, if your property presents as meticulously maintained and documentation is attached to your listing, there is an excellent chance one or more of your buyers will waive inspection contingencies all together.
2. Make your home beautiful. If you would like to fetch the price of a beautiful home, beautify your home. Usually, this means investing real money. Once again, the goal of this investment is that every dollar spent adds multiple dollars to the price a buyer is willing to pay. If you are not sure where to start, a pro designer can really pay off. A pro agent has pro designers on his team. A home equity line of credit is an excellent way to fund your cosmetic remodel.
3. Invest in strategic improvements. Spend a dollar to make two or more. Rarely will you have an opportunity to invest a dollar today and get two dollars back in a matter of months. Virtually any home can be dramatically improved with fresh flooring and paint, cabinets and countertops, fixtures and appliances, plantings and landscape.
When budget is a factor, focus on refreshing / updating on the master bath, kitchen, and main entertaining areas (including transitional indoor/outdoor entertaining spaces like decks and patios).
To set your home apart, give your home a WOW factor. A custom accent wall, a custom light fixture over the dining room table, can make an otherwise ordinary house feel extraordinary.
4. Stage your home.[2] Many sellers underestimate the dramatic impression staging can make on would-be buyers. Effective staging (e.g. furniture, wall art, accent pieces) creates feelings of comfort and excitement, function, and possibility. Potential buyers will imagine themselves happily living there and will pay more for that image. Staging is your best bet for making otherwise awkward spaces intuitive and inviting. Many designers will offer staging services as well.
When I remodel and flip a house I stage it every time. If you cannot move your furniture out of the house completely, move it into a shed or garage. The cost of temporary storage is minimal, relative to the upside.
5. Make your home convenient to tour. Statistics are clear: vacant homes—easiest to tour—sell fastest and for more money than occupied homes.[3] If possible, move out prior to putting your home on the market. If impossible, plan a vacation for the first week(s) your home is on the market. More than ever buyers expect to be able to tour a property at their convenience, and many buyers will tour only properties that fit into their busy schedules.
6. Make sure your agent understands and is committed to twenty-first century media. Make sure your agent orders professional photos, virtual tours, and scored video. Pro media does not just feature the house, but it also highlights neighborhood hubs (schools, jobs hubs, restaurants, theaters, museums, parks, trails, etc).
More than ever today buyers shop for houses online. Online search and valuation engines like Zillow and Trulia take their feeds directly from local MLS’s, but often allow for additional descriptions and media beyond the direct feed. Use them.
Truly special homes deserve their own webpage and an investment in the social media and search-engine optimization that drives targeted traffic to them. Your agent’s listing commission covers these costs.
7. Make sure your agent understands and is committed to twenty-first century marketing. A pro agent will use demographic analysis to identify your likely buyers. Where do they work? Where will they play? Where will their kids learn? Where will they shop? Where will they dine out? Where will they worship? Target your marketing to your likeliest buyer pool. Craft the marketing message with likely buyers in mind. A pro agent keeps up on local trends in the areas he serves through this research. Your agent’s listing commission covers this work.
Media… Messaging… Marketing blitz. Make sure your agent frontloads his marketing budget.[4]
Open houses are neighborhood events, exhibitions, celebrations. Plan them accordingly. A pro agent puts strategic thought into signage & streamers, music & munchies. Your agent’s listing commission covers these costs.
Invite buyers to attend open houses on social media and invite neighbors with flyers, postcards, and strategic signage. The objective is to get as many buyers and neighbors through the doors in the first several days as possible. Buzz creates urgency.
8. Expose the property to the market. In markets like the one we are in, at the time of the writing of this blog, where there are many more buyers than homes to buy, it is important to make sure your property has adequate exposure to the market. Our testing on this matter recommends going active with your listing on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Schedule open houses over the weekend and review offers on Monday or Tuesday evening. That gives you the best chance of getting dozens of buyers through. When a property is getting a lot of traffic buyers cannot help but notice, and that generates a healthy sense of urgency.
9. Review offers. If you have prepped, priced and marketed your property right, there is an excellent chance you have multiple offers to choose from. Every situation is unique. Consult with your agent before you review offers. The Purchase Price is an important factor, but it is not the only factor.
Consider earnest money, closing timeframe, contingencies, and check for special provisions (typically included in a General Addendum[5]). What can you tell about the selling agent? Is he a pro? Does he have a reputation as a closer? Is he responsive? Consider the offer as a whole… Is the verbiage concise and intelligible? Do the provisions fit together to form a coherent whole? As a whole, does it signal an earnest and good faith intent to close?
Vet your buyers. A pro agent will verify buyers’ funds, have a probative conversation the buyers’ lender about buyer’s credit qualifiers, consider their enthusiasm for the property, their down-payment, their employment, and connections to the community. The stronger a buyer’s connections to the community, the less likely they are to flake if issues come up along the way. After you have considered all the factors, based on what you know, which buyers do you feel most comfortable working with? Rank them from first to worst. Don’t be afraid to go with your gut.
10. Negotiate hard at this critical juncture. [6] A pro agent proves his mettle here. At this point your buyers are most likely to improve the terms of their offers. They are vested and the prize is in view. Your agent’s been in dialogue with each of the buyers’ agents, feeling them out for intent, motivation, earnestness, ability to escalate. If you have offers with waived contingencies, it is perfectly acceptable to ask the buyers you prefer to work with if they would be willing to waive. Butter them up. Play to their psychology. Spell out the reasons you prefer to work with them (financial strength, credentials, connection to the community, etc). Give them the time they need and dangle mutual acceptance as the prize. I’ve gotten all-cash buyers to increase their offer by more than 10% by suggesting that while the sellers would prefer to work with them, another buyer offered a price that is hard for them to ignore.
11. Do not hesitate to accept back up offers… especially if you are having trouble picking between your top two offers. When your property goes from Pending back to Active, the likelihood you will reproduce the results you got the first time around is extraordinarily low. The cost of taking your property off the market can be tens of thousands of dollars, weeks (if not months) of your valuable time[7], and immeasurable stress and lost sleep. If possible, do not leave that up to chance. Offer your second (and third) place buyers back up positions. If they accept, counter-offer their offers and include a back-up addendum.[8] That way if your top choice fails for any reason,[9] you are not forced to go from pending back to active on the market. Additionally, having a backup offer in your pocket gives you the confidence to play hardball if buyer one comes back with unreasonable modification requests after you are in escrow.
As a coach, an educator, and a human being I come back to time and time to the Stoic mantra of accepting the things we cannot change and working to change the things under our control that we cannot accept. As sellers many factors are simply outside our control. Because we have vested interests in the outcomes of our sales, it makes sense to do everything in our power to tip the factors we can control in our favor. In business we call this perspicacity. In economics we call it rationality. In sports we call it playing to win.
[1] A seller-provided inspection disclosure is advised.
[2] See the National Association of Realtors report on the impact of staging. https://www.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/2019-profile-of-home-staging-03-14-2019.pdf. Staging generally costs a dollar or two per square foot of space you stage plus a monthly fee.
[3] Tenant-occupied rental properties are particularly challenging to sell. It means serving notices, working around tenants’ schedules whose interests are not necessarily aligned with yours. It means navigating tenant belongings and whatever wear and tear result from your tenants’ lifestyle (don’t get me started!). On average it takes longer to sell them, and sales prices are significantly below comparable properties. Many owner-occupants will simply forego all a tenant-occupied properties (this is especially true for single family homes). If you are targeting investor buyers, the income your property produces very well may be your top selling point. Make sure your agent has the past two years’ rental documents (lease agreements, profit and loss statements, receipts, and warranties for critical repairs). Once again, have your agent attach all pertinent documentation to the listing. Make it easy for an investor buyer to say YES.
[4] A healthy media and marketing budget is 20% – 30% of the total listing office commission. 85%+ of that budget should be spent getting the property in front of buyers in the first several weeks of a listing. Even in slower markets, driving traffic to the virtual and real presentation while it is freshest tends to pay off.
[5] NWMLS Form 34
[6] As with evolutionary systems (and markets are evolutionary systems), the critical point is the is the moment of selection. All the advice in this list is designed to stack advantages to the seller for this moment.
[7] I’ve knows sellers that have sold a property for >100K less than their original offer, after the first purchase and sale agreement fell apart. This doesn’t count the additional costs of holding and maintaining the property and the listing.
[8] NWMLS Form 38A
[9] I’ve seen purchases fail for just about every reason imaginable. from illness and death, to family disintegration, to job loss, to unreasonable inspection response, to buyer’s simply getting cold feet.
A real estate professional for the 21st Century, James uses data science & intention modeling to develop the human connections that move us, the professional techniques that inspire trust, and the property intel that transforms the spaces we inhabit.
James Doerfel | Designated Broker
(425) 221-5111
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