How to Maximize your Selling Price on your Home

How to maximize the price on your home or a property when selling that property. Especially in this seller’s market, a house is probably the most valuable asset that you will sell in your lifetime, maybe one or two or three or four times. So when you do sell, you want to make sure that you maximize on the price get the fair market value, pending the terms and conditions of the current market. So here are some guidelines and tips for you to get the top price in this seller’s market or in any other market.

 So when you are ready to sell a home, you should always  depersonalize your home. So take out all the pictures, the personal pictures for security reasons. And also when the sellers or the buyers when they come to your house, they want to feel like it’s gonna be their house, so they don’t want to see your personalized pictures. So that’s one thing. And also more than Depersonalizing, it’s decluttering. Take out all the little things in the house. Over the years, we collect so many things in the house. So declutter the house, take out the stuff, people buy space. So the more things you take out an extra sofa, an extra stool, an extra dresser, permanent garage, extra lamps, whatever you can take them out, and then do your basic preparation for the home, touch up paints, maybe your washer is broken in the kitchen or in the bathroom, something’s leaking. So fix up those things. Maybe the garden needs some tender loving care. So add some more plans, or mulch, or water the garden and make the grass greener in the front yard, clean up the windows. So those are pretty much basic things. And I shouldn’t really be talking about that as a tip, because those are basics, but you’d be surprised how many sellers don’t even do that. And which goes a long, long way.

When it comes to selling a house, this tip is worth listening to to get more price than you would normally get. And that comes to staging. So when you have your house ready to go and you’re ready to put it up for the market, just before you put it on the market, you may want to have a professional stager come in and stage the house. staging helps a lot. We live in our house with our lifestyle and our decorations and things like that. So with the help of staging, you can potentially get more price and potentially sell it faster. According to Raisa real estate staging Association, more than 5% of the homes get anywhere from five to 23% more price over the list price, because of staging. So the staging goes a long way, especially in this day and age where the buyers will go online first look at homes, and they look at the pictures and don’t like the setup. Or if they feel like the room is looking smaller than it is then you lose that buyer. So staging is very important in this market. One other stat that I want to share from the real estate staging Association, they say that if you invest 1% of your sales price, there is a good chance that 75% of the sellers will get five to 20% more on the price, then extra two or three or $4,000 that you spend staging will get you much more price. That’s a great stat. So we should listen to them.

So let’s move on to the next tip, which is photos and videos with the COVID-19 with the social media with so many people going online, according to the National Association of Realtors, of which I’m a member, and I’m a member of the California Association of Realtors, they say that 90% of the buyers start their search online so imagine a buyer comes to see your house and does not like the photos or videos because they are not professional or they don’t give you the exact showing of the room layout or or whatever. They’re gonna move on to the next one. buyers are busy like sellers are they go online and they move on. So it is highly recommended today with the COVID and social media, the high impact of social media and the Googles  and the Yahoos  where they do all the search and also the Zillow and realtor.com and Redfin websites, they all go there before they even come to the house. So taking great photos, great videos is very critical to get a top price and to sell it faster.

The other thing in today’s world post COVID-19 and in the social media world, the other things that you may want to do or which is highly recommended, is not only do a video tour, but do a walkthrough of the house. So we actually take through the buyers through video and explain to them the kitchen the features or the living room or any of the features and benefits. So A video and a walkthrough video is different. So do those. And we also recommend a virtual tour, where a lot of the homes take what we call the 3d matterport tours, where it shows you the 3d dimension, the room size, the layout, that they can measure the size of the wall, the height and width, right into the video. So those are highly recommended. So hopefully, when you think about selling your home, you will use a realtor or a company that uses those features. I use them too. And if you want to see some samples of those, be glad to send them over, just make a comment below and I’ll send it to you.

The next tip to maximize the price on your house is to price it right do not overpriced your house. I’ll give you a quick example. If a house is worth a million dollars, and you listed for $1.1 million, chances are you will have less showings from the buyers will see online because today they can check online that hey, you’re asking $1.1M but the one down the street or $4 million. All this is public information. The second thing is the agents who work in the neighborhood, they know that the comps are 1 million, and you’re asking $1.1M. So yours will be the last home to show because you’re overpriced, which lets the buyer know that hey, this sale is not very motivated, or the comparatives are a million dollars, and he’s asking for $1.1M. So the better thing to do in this market is possibly list your home for $950k or $975k, where the fair market value is a million dollars and get several offers. So you have a bidding war, or just prices and market value, do a lot of pre marketing, which I’m going to talk next and do a lot of advertising and create a buzz word and sell it at fair market value a little bit before. So pricing right is a way to get more price, the concept of selling it high and lowering the price is gone. That’s so 1990s before 2000. So let’s not go there.

The other tip I want to mention to you when it comes to pricing and right is that even in this market hot seller’s market properties don’t sell what we call the expired listings or the cancel listings. I have been listing cancelled listings and expired listings for years and years. What that means is if there’s a house for sale, and after three months or four months or five months, the house does not sell, which is called cancel listing or an expired listing, another company or agent will list the house reduce the price because usually the home does not sell because of the list price, then that agent will listed lower and sell it. So that tells you that not all properties sell even in this low inventory market, even in this fast paced market. So pricing it right is key to getting the maximum price, I have another video, it’s called the six steps of selling your home.

So the next tip is what we call pre marketing. This is a very critical step of all the steps to maximize your price. Pre marketing is very important. So what is pre marketing, pre marketing is to start marketing your home when it’s legal to do that. So once the agent has to follow the multiple listing service guidelines on when you can start marketing. So once that period has come to start marketing, so let’s say in two weeks, you’re going to put the house for sale on the market. Because you’re doing some touch ups or doing some things or waiting for school to get over or work to get over. An agent can start pre marketing a week before two weeks before and let the word out that this house is coming for sale. And the open house or the first showing is let’s say 15 days from now. So you blast the social media, advertise on YouTube, promote your walkthrough videos, promote the virtual tools, send out letters, let other local agents know that this house is coming let the buyers know that this house is coming. So all this buzz creates a momentum creates a want for these buyers to come and see the house. First of all, it is price, right? It has great pictures and photos. It is staged, right, and it’s ready to show. So when all this pre marketing creates this anxiety to come and see the house, a lot of people a lot of the buyers and agents are going to come and see the house. Hopefully we keep an open house, let’s say on a Saturday and Sunday. And we have 10, 20, 30, 40, people coming and take a look at the house. And I can guarantee you that if you have that many people coming the first day of showing you will have not only one offer, but possibly two or three or four offers. And the offer is going to be higher than the fair market price with strong conditions and strong buyers so that it will sell so pre marketing, in my opinion is more important than marketing. In fact, I do so much pre marketing that I bet I spend more money on pre marketing than pretty much a lot of agents that sell total marketing Pre marketing and marketing. So pre marketing is very key in today’s post COVID market, and in today’s social media and online market.

The other tip and a very important tip, which comes towards the end, after you do your marketing and your staging, and your showings is now you have some offers, maybe have one offer, maybe you have three offers. So once you get the offer, you want to pick the buyers, number one who has shown you that they are pretty much approved, they have a deal underwriting approval, which means that the lender or the banks have checked all their tax information, the wage information, everything is done is called desktop underwriting. And they are pretty much approved to get a loan once they find the house. So once you pick a buyer that is do approved, and also pick a buyer that is not going to worry about appraisal because in this market, a lot of homes are not appraising at the list price. Because as you know, because of the shortage of homes, a home that is listed for a million dollars may sell at 1,050,000 or $1.1 million. So if the appraisal comes in low, you want to pick a buyer that has that extra cash, what we call the price gap on appraisal to pay the difference. So you also want to check that to make sure that when you check the proof of funds, because one is that the buyers have to put a down payment, and then you want to make sure they have 30k 40k 50k extra in case approval does not come in. The other things you want to look at to maximize your price is that you want to pick the strongest buyer with the least contingencies. You possibly don’t want to pick a buyer Whose house is for sale. And it’s not even up for sale or it is for sale. But it’s not in escrow that wants to buy your home that weakens your offer. Because if that house does not sell, then you’re not going to sell your house, it’s going to cancel and you have to put it back on the market, which means that you may get a lower price later on. So you want to pick a buyer that is approved will pay your appraisal difference has the least contingencies. And possibly if you as a seller want to find another house and need time to stay in your own house, then you want to pick somebody that will let you stay in the house for 30 days, 60 days, what we call the ring back. So to maximize the value is not always the price. You may have a million dollar Offer Versus 1,000,050 offer but the 1,000,050 does not have an appraisal contingencies or these it’s contingent on selling their home. So that may not be a best offer. So maximizing your price is also your terms and condition which is very critical.