WHAT TO EXPECT | BEFORE YOUR HOUSE IS ON THE MARKET

Alright, so you have decided to sell your house and you may or may not know what to expect. In this video and article we will break everything down and fill you in on what you should know before listing your house for sale.

PREPPING THE HOUSE

If you haven’t already, check out the videos we did covering the entire prepping process for the interior and exterior of your home. But in a nutshell, you want to knock out any deferred maintenance & repairs, declutter, paint, and landscaping. First impressions are everything when selling your house.

FIND AN AGENT

This one should be at the top of the list. Before you go out and spend money on updates and repairs, make sure you speak with a real estate agent first. But how do you find an agent that’s best fits your needs? We did a whole video and article covering this topic so be sure to check it out!

GATHER DOCUMENTS

Find any documents related to the house like a survey, floorplans, warranties, and any upgrades you did. Keep them in a folder to provide to your agent so that they can make copies to use for marketing. The more the better!

SIGN DOCUMENTS, INSTALL SIGN & LOCKBOX

When you decide on an agent to work with, you will sign a listing agreement and other documents related to selling the property. After expectations for each other are set, the next thing is to install the for sale sign and grab an Instagram worthy photo! Make sure you have a spare key to give your agent to place inside the lockbox which will be installed on the front door most likely.

STAGING CONSULTATION

One of the perks when working with our team is that we pay our stager to come out and view the property and make suggestions to show your house in the best possible way. She will walk with you through the entire house and voice her opinion on how to make the place look better. Sometimes it’s as simple as moving some furniture around in ways you wouldn’t think was possible to make an area flow more naturally. Not every property needs this, but some do!

SCHEDULE PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Our team will NEVER take pictures of your house with our phone or even a professional camera for that matter. Real estate photography is a specialty, and it’s best we leave it to the professionals. If you hire someone other than us, and they pull out their cell phone for pictures, consider firing them immediately. Cell phone photography shows the house no justice whatsoever.

Anyways! When you give us the green light to schedule photos, it typically takes 24-48 hours to get someone out there to photograph and another day to receive the final pictures. So in about 3 days’ time we will be ready to go live if you are!

ESTABLISH EXPECTATIONS & COMMUNICATION

This is usually done during the listing appointment, but you and your agent should set up expectations with each other from the very beginning.

When it comes to communicating, everyone is different on their preferred methods. Make sure to let your agent know how you prefer to communicate and what times are best to contact you. We personally like to have group texts with our clients so that you, any other parties in the sale and all of our team members involved are on the same page. It makes things easy and avoids any miscommunication when trying to relay a message!

REVIEW FINAL COMPS

It’s not uncommon for things to change from when we initially met and signed documents with an agreed upon price to the time we are ready to put the property online. For example, we had a client in Pearland reach out to us because they were relocating out of state and needed to sell their house. Well, it took them 6 months after we signed to go live. I am glad we always check comps one last time before we go live, because we ended up listing nearly $35,000 over our original list price! And yes, it received multiple offers and sold $9,000 over list price!

GOING LIVE!

Once everything looks good, we are ready to submit the listing and officially go live on the market! Agents will see the listing immediately, but it could take 30 minutes to an hour or so before it hits the consumer side and you will be able to see it!

Check out our next article in our “What to Expect” series – What to Expect: When Your House is on the Market!

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Have a question? Give us a call at 832-207-3222, 281-685-6768, or you can contact us for more options to call or email and we will contact you right away.
Beautiful luxury home dining area and stairs to upper floorBeautiful luxury home dining area and stairs to upper floor
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