5 Steps to Making Your House the Best on the Block

February 2, 2022 by Cary Perkins

Serious About Selling? 5 Steps to Make Your Home the Best on the Block

If you’re looking to sell your home fast and for the most money possible, you’ll need a strategy to set it apart from all the other listings competing for buyers in your area. That’s why we’ve outlined our proven, five-step plan for serious sellers. Use these five tactics to help your listing get noticed, win over buyers, and net a higher sales price!

STEP 1: Stage Your Home to Show Its Full Potential The average seller will do the minimum to prepare their home for market: clean and declutter, fix anything that’s broken, mow the lawn. And while those tasks are essential, today’s buyers want more than just a clean house and tidy yard. When they dream of buying a new home, they envision a designer house with modern finishes. Help them see your property’s full potential by staging it. Home staging is one of the hottest trends in real estate—because it works! According to the Real Estate Staging Association, homes that are professionally staged spend 73% less time on the market. So what exactly is staging? In a broad sense, staging is the act of preparing your home for market. The goal is to highlight your home’s strengths, minimize any deficiencies, and help buyers envision themselves living in the space. When staging a home, you might rearrange the furniture to make a room feel larger or remove heavy curtains to make it appear brighter. We bring in a professional home stager, who has specialized training and experience, to maximize the appeal of your home to the largest number of potential buyers. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to rent furniture. Often, sellers just need to edit and rearrange. We can help you determine the appropriate budget and effort required to push your home ahead of the competition in your neighborhood. The good news is, an investment in staging pays off. Surveys found that 85% of staged homes sold for 6-25% more than their unstaged neighbors homes. STEP 2: Draw Buyers in with High-Quality Listing Photos You only have one chance to make a first impression with potential buyers. And almost all buyers will view photos of a listing before they decide whether or not to visit it in person. Poor-quality or amateur-looking listing photos could keep buyers from ever stepping through your door. Since good photography plays such an important role in getting your property noticed, we have a professional photographer on our team. But we don’t just rely on his photography skills when it comes to showcasing your home. We go the extra mile to ensure your listing photos showcase the true essence of your home. We’re always on site during the photo shoot to help the photographer capture the best angles and lighting, and to let them know about unique or compelling selling features that they should photograph. The extra effort pays off in the end. In fact, listings with high-quality photography sell 32% faster than the competition … and often for more money! STEP 3: Price It Properly From the Start Even in a strong real estate market, there are homes that will sit unsold for months on end. This can be the “kiss of death” in real estate, as buyers tend to imagine that there must be something wrong with the property, even if that's not the case. But why are those houses still on the market in the first place? It’s because they are often priced too high. Every buyer has a budget. And most will be viewing listings within a particular price range. If your property is overpriced, it can’t properly compete with the other houses they’re viewing that are priced correctly. Which means it’ll sit on the market until you’re eventually forced to drop the price. Alternatively, if you price your home aggressively, it can be among the nicest homes that buyers have seen within their budget. This can lead to emotionally-attached buyers, who are often willing to pay a premium or settle for fewer seller concessions. And in this year's market, it can lead to a multiple-offer situation, or bidding war. The end result? More money in your pocket. We can help you determine the ideal listing price for your home in the current market. Pricing it properly in the beginning is the best way to ensure a fast and profitable sale. STEP 4: Put on a Good Show at Each Showing Once buyers are interested enough to schedule a visit, it’s crucial that you put on a good show at each showing. The first step is to make your home readily available—and often on short notice—for buyers to see it. A missed showing is a missed opportunity to sell your home. If you set too many restrictions on when it’s available to view, busy buyers will simply skip over your listing and move on to the next one. Part of making your home available means keeping it relatively show-ready as long as it’s on the market. Most of us don’t live picture-perfect lives, and our homes reflect the day-to-day reality of our busy (and sometimes messy) families. But a little extra effort spent keeping your home clean, fresh-smelling, and ready for buyers will help it sell faster … which means you can get back to your regular routine as quickly as possible! STEP 5: Use a Proven Promotion Plan 93% of buyers search for real estate listings online. That’s why we invest in the latest training and technology—to ensure your listing appears in the places where buyers are most likely to look. Our dual-level promotion strategy includes both pre-launch activities designed to seed the marketplace and post-listing activities to ensure your home stays top-of-mind with potential buyers. By utilizing online and social media platforms to connect with consumers and offline channels to connect with local real estate agents, your property gets maximum exposure to prospective buyers.

LET’S GET MOVING Are you thinking about listing your home? Get a head start on your competition! Contact us for a copy of our Home Seller’s Guide, which offers a complete guide to the home selling process. Or call us to schedule a free no-commitment consultation. We’d love to put together a custom plan to maximize the sales potential of your property!