see what your home is worth in today’s market
Knowing the value is the first step toward selling your home.
Selling Your Home: Complete Guide
Step 1: Hire a Realtor
Hiring a good real estate agent can save you time, energy and money. The process of selling a home is very complex and if you’re not working with the right agent, you could end up in a lawsuit. A Realtor will handle all the process for you starting from preparing your home for sale up until negotiations and closing. There are a number of things that your realtor will help you with and some are highlighted below:
- Use market research, along with their local knowledge to set the best possible listing price for your home.
- Prepare an estimate of the net cash proceeds you will receive on completion of the sale, based on the suggested asking price and the financing arrangements currently in place.
- Help prepare your property for sale. A realtor will view your property from the perspective of the buyer and the home inspector to help point out the things that need to be repaired or replaced so that you do not spend any money on unnecessary upgrades.
- Help market your home to reach maximum exposure.
Step 2: Set the Sale Price
Your realtor will provide you with a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) to show you the price of recently sold properties that are similar to yours. Based on the details of your property such as the number of bedrooms, washrooms and other considerable features, your realtor will be able to calculate an estimate of fair market value. You can decide with your realtor on what would be the right listing price.
It’s important to take into consideration that a home that is priced too high can negatively impact the sale process and ultimately will not yield the highest price. If there are price reductions on an overpriced property, buyers will assume that there is something wrong with the property and they will end up considering alternative properties.
Therefore setting the right price is key to attracting as many buyers as possible resulting in saving you time and yielding you the highest return.
Step 3: Preparing the propery for sale
When a buyer comes in to view your property, they want to picture themselves living in your place. Therefore in order to help them visualize themselves living in the space, it’s very important that you take your time as a seller to depersonalize the home as much as possible.
If the property is vacant you should definitely consider hiring a staging company or at least have the place virtually staged. Studies show that staging can help sell your place twice as fast as well as increase the value of the offers.
Other preparations include repairs inside and outside the property, appliance replacement, and repainting of the home. Last but not least is making sure that the property is clean.
Step 4: Marketing the property
Your realtor will help develop a marketing plan to ensure that your property gets the maximum possible exposure and to attract interested buyers.
Every realtor has a different approach. However, my approach is utilizing technology to target buyers who are looking for properties within the criteria of the home you’re selling. I have experience in digital marketing to place ads for people who are specifically searching for your type of listing. This will help sell your property twice as fast compared to using the traditional ways of advertising. When marketing your home it is very important to showcase the best features to attract buyers to view the property in person which will then result in an offer.
It is also important to sell the location by providing the buyers with a map with all the nearby amenities such as parks, shops and restaurants. This will make it easy for buyers to see the convenience of living when buying your property.
Step 5: Review offers
Your realtor will receive offers from interested buyers and will help you to carefully review each one of them. Your realtor will also help you negotiate any terms if necessary. After reviewing all offers you have the option to accept, counter-offer, reject, or ignore the offer.
Once you have decided which offer to accept, you will sign it and communicate it back to the buyer which then becomes a legally binding contract.
Step 6: Closing Date
It is common that the buyer’s lawyer or notary to prepare the documents necessary to transfer the legal ownership. However, you as the seller should get your own lawyer or notary to act solely on your behalf and make sure you are protected from any future lawsuits.
On the completion day which is stated on the Contract of Purchase and Sale, legal ownership will be transferred from you to the new owner in exchange for the purchase price of the home.
The anticipated day is here! You signed the transfer documents, moved out, received your money and handed your keys to the buyer.
Congratulations, Your home is sold!