If you're trying to sell your home, you likely have started looking at real estate agents to see who can help you – or you've started researching how to sell your home yourself because you want to save the money that would normally go to agent commissions. Selling a home is about more than just placing a signature on a contract or telling you whether to accept an offer.
Real estate agents provide services for sellers that would be more difficult for those sellers to pull off successfully on their own. And these services can make the difference between barely getting your home sold and fielding terrific offers.
How (or Whether) to Stage Your Home
First, the agent will want to see your home and help you determine whether you need to stage it—and if you do stage it, how to do so as smoothly as possible. While the trend to stage or not stage waxes and wanes periodically, you need to be concerned about your house only. The agent may decide that you need to clear out as much of your own belongings as possible and stage the home with rented furniture, or the agent may simply want you to clean up certain areas and hide specific things. And some homes don't need to be staged at all and can be shown empty. The factors that go into making the right decision are many, and your agent can quickly evaluate which category your home is in.
Evaluating Whether to Fix Now or Sell for Less
Homes often need some sort of updating or repair in general. When you want to sell, you have a choice between spending the money yourself and selling the home with the repairs or updates completed or framing them as fixer-upper issues and selling the home for less than you'd likely get if you took care of everything first. In a red-hot seller's market, you could likely get away with making the buyers handle the repairs or upgrades because housing is in such short supply in many areas. But some upgrades or repairs may make the house violate local codes, which can be difficult for buyers because banks may refuse to fund a mortgage for the house. Your agent will know what actions you need to take before selling.
Just How High to Price Your Home
It's no secret that the U.S. housing market (and markets in many other countries) has been very difficult to buy in for years. The pandemic made things worse as people with high salaries went remote and bought homes in cheaper areas, driving up prices for locals; investment companies buying up whole neighborhoods have also reduced supply. Your agent can let you know where a good price for your home would fall between the numbers you're used to seeing and the numbers that are actually being paid out. Your agent can prevent you both from undercutting yourself and from overestimating what your house could get, even in a market where people routinely pay thousands of dollars above the asking price.
Meet with services like BHHS Towne Realty to learn more. The advice and help are worth the price of the commission, especially in such a fast-moving, high-priced market as is present in much of the country.
Hello, my name is Ben Hatten. Welcome to my website about selling your home on the real estate market. When I was ready to sell my home, I thought that the process would go smoothly from start to finish, so I did not acquire help from an agent. After learning about all the things that could go wrong, I decided to enlist the help of an agent to sell my home with assistance. I created this site to help everyone prepare for the process of selling their home with help from an agent. I hope you will come by often to learn more. Thanks.