We Visit
We will meet with you and visit your house. DON’T worry, we won’t judge! We’re looking for the details that we can’t get from town hall: does your home have what buyers are looking for? What should you focus on so it does? Without seeing a home, it isn’t possible to assess the right listing price.
We do our homework to determine the right price for your home in the current market. We help you become familiar with all the houses buyers will use to assess your home’s value. Comparable properties have sold or are on the market within your price range. We’ll show you this data, and we come up with a suggested list price range. If you are not planning to sell immediately, a suggested list price isn’t helpful because it is really only valid under the market conditions that exist at the time of the analysis.
Your friends and neighbors may chime in based on their concept of comparative properties. When we present the CMA to you and we go over it together, we will show you the houses we used and why. For your house to sell, a buyer needs to think that your house is BETTER than a comparably priced house that is on the market.
Ultimately, you decide the price your home is listed for. If it is higher than we recommend, that’s OK. We will still do our very best to present your home as a value at its list price. You can think of the pool of buyers along a normal distribution curve, and it’s possible you may capture that buyer willing to pay more than most others. Our suggested list price is just that, and at the end of the day, it is the market — not the realtor — that determines the value. The value is what a real buyer is willing to pay for it, and not more.
Signing up the Listing
We sign a listing agreement, which we have provided here for your convenience. It is simple and straightforward; we go through it with you.
You will also sign a lead paint notification certification and disclosure form if your house was built prior to 1978.
You will also need to sign an Agency Disclosure Form if you have not signed one with us before.
Once you have signed these things, we alert our marketing department of your house and its timeline so that they can begin reserving space in the appropriate media outlets. We’ll map out the marketing timeline and get started on the Next up: Step 3: Getting it Ready
More on Marketing in Step 6: Marketing.