Selling a property can be daunting. For most of us, it’s one of the largest transactions we will make in our lifetime. Sound professional advice and these helpful tips can help demystify the process to make for a smoother and more successful sale.
Before the first buyer walks through the door, most of the groundwork has already been done: who you choose, how the price is set and how the campaign is built to create competition. These are the seven things we would want a friend to know before they sign anything.
1. Choose the agent based on net result, not lowest fees
A lot of people choose an agent on fees. If every agent sold a property for the same price, that would be the right call, and you would simply go with the lowest fee. They don’t. A good agent may get you above-market value by creating competition for your home, and a poor one may land you below it.
Say the comparable sales suggest your home is a $750,000 property. One agent quotes 2% and another quotes 2.5%. The difference is $3,750, and at a $750,000 sale price the cheaper agent looks like the obvious choice. Now imagine the 2% agent sells it for $735,000 and the 2.5% agent sells it for $765,000. After fees, the first leaves you with about $720,000 and the second with about $746,000. The dearer agent has put roughly $25,000 more in your pocket.
That does not mean the cheaper agent is the wrong agent. It means the thing to weigh up is the net result, and how each agent plans to get you there.
2. Understand the market before you set a price guide
A good agent will show you how they arrived at their price guide, so you can see it clearly and be convinced yourself. If one agent comes in suspiciously higher than the others, ask them which comparable sales they would use to defend that figure. If they can’t answer, the number is there to win your listing, not to sell your home.
The reason this matters is simple. Once you know where the market value lies, you can wrap a strategy around it to create competition, so you have several buyers putting forward their best offers at the same time. Get the value wrong and the strategy has nothing to stand on.
3. Create competition (and the sale takes care of itself)
One buyer is a negotiation. Two or more is a competition, and that is where prices move. Marketing often gets treated as a necessary evil, and it can feel that way when you are spending before you have received a cent. Think of it instead as the cost of finding buyers you do not yet know about.
Say your home is online and you already have one interested buyer. A second person who didn’t see it on the portals picks up the newspaper guide, comes through the open home and ends up competing with your best buyer. That second buyer may add another $20,000 to the result, and it was the mix of the portals and the guide that put them in the room. That is what the marketing spend is for.
4. Invest in presentation
Buyers buy on how a place makes them feel. If you can create an atmosphere, people will still feel the house long after the inspection has finished, and that feeling is what they carry into their offer. If it lacked soul, felt cold, or looked a bit run-down, they would carry that feeling out the door instead.
Styling, a coat of paint, a tidy garden. None of it changes the house, and all of it can change how someone feels when they walk in. Spend $4,000 on styling and the home may look $40,000 better to the people walking through it. Outside of a casino, there are not many places you can put money down with a chance of getting ten times back, and here you are spending it on something you already own.
5. Ask your agent what they would do if it were their own home
It is the question we ask ourselves at every appraisal, and it is a useful one to bring to any agent meeting. An agent who has spent time on your home will have an answer ready, because they have already been thinking that way. An agent who has been focused on winning the listing rather than solving your problem may be caught off guard, because it is the one thing they should have thought about all along. The response tells you quickly whether you are hearing a strategy or a sales pitch.
6. Know what an off-market sale is really buying you
Off-market has its place. If discretion or ease is the most important thing to you, it can be the right call, and sometimes it is. What it will not usually get you is the best price, because the best price tends to come from competition, and competition is created by marketing, open homes and a campaign that brings several buyers to the table at the same time, each putting their best offer forward. So be clear about what you are choosing. For speed and convenience, off-market can work well. For the best price the market can pay, it rarely does. A competent agent will guide you towards the right sales strategy for your goals.
7. Insist on proper vendor reporting
How will you know what a good offer looks like if you have not been told what buyers think? Make sure your agent provides consistent reporting throughout the campaign. “They didn’t want it” or “the bedrooms are too small” is not feedback. A proper vendor report should cover at least three things: what buyers liked, what concerned them, and where they saw value.
Then when an offer lands on its own, you have something to measure it against. Along the way the same feedback often points to small tweaks, a room to restyle or a line in the marketing to change, that can lift the campaign while it is still running.
If you are thinking of selling, or would just like to know what your home might be worth today, ask for a free market appraisal. And whoever you sit down with, ask them what they would do if it were their home.
Check out our other articles to help you prepare for selling:
How to Choose the Right Real Estate Agent
The Pricing Playbook: How Strategy, Competition and Negotiation Drive Results
