Selling a Home - Your Path to Success

While the home selling process varies slightly from one seller to the next, there are certain steps that most sellers go through. Those are the steps we will cover in this step-by-step tutorial. Think of it as your road map to a successful home sale.

1. Hire an Agent

We are not just recommending this step because we are real estate agents. On the contrary, the vast majority of home sellers use a real estate agent to help in the sale of their homes, and for good reasons. An agent can help you with many aspects of the home selling process, such as pricing the property, listing it for sale, reviewing offers from buyers, negotiating, preparing for the closing process and more.

2. Determine Your Asking Price

This is another area where it helps to work with a real estate agent. The key here is to gather as much information as you can find about the price of homes sold in your area recently. Real estate professionals refer to these as "comps," which is short for comparables. This information will help you determine your asking price.

3. Conduct a Mini Inspection

When selling your home there's a very good chance the buyers will have it professionally inspected. So it's worthwhile to conduct your own "mini inspection," just by walking through and around the property with an eye out for discrepancies. Do you still have the inspection report from when you purchased the home? If so, you can use this report as a checklist, because the next home inspector will check many of the same items.

4. Perform Repairs as Needed

When home buyers encounter items needing repair, it makes them wonder what else might be broken. So instead of looking at the property with a positive mindset, they are on their guard and keeping an eye out for problems. This decreases the chance that they will purchase the home. Of course, you can prevent all of this by performing repairs on obvious discrepancies. The goal here is not to renovate the home, but simply to reduce the amount of discrepancies a home inspector might find.

5. Remove Clutter / Start Packing

The more personal items you can remove from your home before showing it to buyers, the better off you'll be. This includes clothing, books, knickknacks, family photos and other personal effects, and even certain furniture items that might be crowding the home. This will actually help you in two ways. For one thing, you're getting a head start on the inevitable packing process. Secondly, you will make the home appear more spacious, which is always a good thing when selling a home. If your next home is not ready or accessible yet, you might consider a temporary storage unit for this purpose.

6. Clean, Like There's No Tomorrow

When showing your home to potential buyers, the goal is to help them see themselves in the home. The cleaner the home is, the easier it will be for buyers to envision themselves living in the space. This increases the likelihood they will make an offer. On the contrary, a dirty home will give buyers a bad first impression, and they will carry that impression with them through the rest of the house.

7. Stage the Home Properly

We won't get too far into the topic of home staging in the article, because you'll find an entire article on this subject elsewhere on this website (go there now). So for now, suffice it to say that staging a home for sale will greatly increase the chances of selling the home quickly, and for the best price possible.

8. List the Home for Sale

If you have followed the steps up to this point, you have prepared your home for the market, found a real estate agent, and determined a reasonable asking price. You are now ready to bring in the buyers! When you are ready to show the property, your real estate agent will list it in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). This will alert other agents and home buyers in the area that your home is for sale. In most markets, buyers will begin visiting within a day or two of the home being listed.

9. Accept an Offer

This is another key area where your real estate agent will prove valuable. Depending on the type of market you are in, you may receive one offer or multiple offers. There may also be some back-and-forth negotiation during this process, in order to reach an agreement between yourself and the buyer(s). It's important to read the offer agreement carefully, because it will specify the details of the sale, such as price, timeframe, contingencies, etc.

10. Maintain Communications

After you've accepted an offer, the most important thing to do is keep in touch with your real estate agent. A good agent will make this easier by being proactive and keeping you informed. After the offer acceptance, the buyers will arrange for one or more inspections of the home. Ideally, this is where your mini inspection and repairs will pay off.

The buyer's lender will also have the home appraised, to ensure it is worth the price they have agreed to pay. Again, staying in contact with your agent and the escrow / settlement company is the key during this stage.

11. Go to the Closing

The final step in a real estate transaction is the closing process, also referred to as settlement. During the closing, all remaining monies will be paid out to the real estate agent, the escrow company, and other fees for mortgage processing, inspections, etc. This is also where you will receive your check, if you've made a profit on the home. At the end of the closing process, you will transfer the keys to the new owners. Now you can take a deep breath and relax ... you've just sold your home!