how do I get my home listed

What do I need to do to get my house
listed and ready for the market?

Let’s discuss getting the house listed. We’ll be asking you to sign a contract giving us the exclusive right to market and sell your house for some period of time, usually six months. Don’t get all wigged out by the six-month window. It takes an average of 90 days for most houses to sell right now and we’ll be spending quite a bit of time and money in those 90 days. We want to be around for the payoff, so we don’t want to do all the marketing and have some other agent come in and pick up your house in month 4 and close the sale. We don’t think it will take 6 months to sell your house, but we want sufficient time to do the right job of marketing it.

The most important thing at this point is getting the property priced right. Your Realtor will do a Comparative (sometimes called Competitive) Market Analysis (CMA) for your house. The CMA process is as much art as it is science. We use the MLS database of recently sold houses and of houses currently on the market. We try to find comparable houses to yours, which is easier in a modern subdivision where one or a few builders build all the houses. It’s much harder with older houses or with very custom architecture. We try to factor in such things as condition, improvements, updates or upgrades, extra features like a swimming pool, and other things that either add or subtract from the house’s market value. We normally come up with a price range and will make some recommendation about which end of the range we think the

house should be priced. Things that we don’t consider and neither should you include: what you “need to get out” of the house, what you put into the house, what someone else that you know sold their house for or what your dad told you your house is worth. As Realtors, we are looking at your house as a product within a market and comparing it to other products in that same market. You have to get to that mind-set too. Ultimately the decision on what to list your house for is yours, but forcing the price too high will just drag out the process and could end up costing you more than starting at a fair market price.

As for the Listing process itself. We’ll ask you to fill out a Sellers Disclosure document. Be very serious about filing in this document truthfully, to the best of your knowledge. This document asks you to identify any defects or issues that you know about and could be used in a court later if the buyer thinks that you deceived him with false statements. There are lots of places where “Unknown” is a possible answer, be careful when and how you use that answer. We will also be asking you to fill out a statement about the presence of lead-based paint in the house. Answer that truthfully to the best of your knowledge. We’ll also be measuring rooms and getting other information for the MLS listing. We’ll probably order a sign for your front lawn and put a lock-box on one of your doors, so we’ll need a spare key. We’ll also be setting up the showing instructions, so be as flexible and cooperative with that as possible (see two questions down).

Now let’s look at getting your house ready for market. Here are some tips:

GET RID OF CLUTTER! The biggest thing that I see both as a listing agent and when showing houses to potential buyers is unbelievable clutter in many houses. Junk everywhere. Clothes everywhere. Dishes and food lying around everywhere! Get rid of it! It is hard for most buyers to look beyond the clutter to see the underlying house for what it might be. Your stuff, no matter how much it might mean to you is just getting in the

way. Get organized to attack this problem. Rent a local storage facility (size depends on how much clutter you have) and box up and move some of your stuff out. Even consider moving some furniture out, if you have rooms that are too full of furniture. Your precious collection of beanie babies all over the bedroom just look like clutter to someone else. Get them out! Even your knick knacks and hobby stuff may just look like clutter to someone else. Store them off site. Read this article on getting rid of clutter before you even attempt to spiff the place up a bit for sale.

 Clean the place up. Beyond clutter there is just common cleanliness. If your place smells bad or is excessively dirty, it’s a turn off that will sink the chances of anyone wanting to buy it or will cause them to low-ball the house, since they see a big clean up ahead. This is particularly true of anything that smells of mold or rot. Clean it up. Disinfect and get the smells out! Pay to have the carpets cleaned, so that the buyers won’t automatically be subtracting for replacing the carpets. Cobwebs, spider webs, dust bunnies, dirt tracked floors and other obvious signs of un-cleanliness are red flags to potential buyers that there may be other issues caused by the same slovenly behavior. If you have to, hire a cleaning crew to come in and give the place a good cleaning.

 Paint or touch up the paint. A $20-30 can of paint could add thousands to the “value” of a house. I see many houses where the walls are nicked or marked, due to normal wear and tear and the owners have done nothing to make them look better. How cheap can you be? Paint it if it looks bad. If you have walls with tons of pictures hanging, consider taking them down and repairing the holes in the wall and painting. Kids rooms, especially teenager’s rooms are usually riddled with holes or places where tape has pulled off the paint. Buyers hate to think of having that kind of project right away after moving in and they don’t care about your pictures. A good clean, repaired and painted wall is inviting to a buyers and they can envision putting their tons of pictures up.

Here’s another article from Realty Times to reinforce these points

Be an informed seller. Get a professional home inspection done. Here is a Home Inspection Checklist that you can use yourself to do an “inspection” of your home. It is not meant to substitute for a professional job, just to get you thinking about all of the areas of your home that an inspector will be looking at later. You can make these visual inspections without having to get into the depth that the inspector will, but they will tell you a lot about your home and what may need attention.