6 Steps to Selling a Home

When you’ve made up your mind to sell your house, you want to sell quickly and get the highest return on your investment. There are specific steps to follow to accomplish those goals that can also help alleviate stress and ensure your success.

Here are six steps to follow when selling your home.

Step One: Hire the Best Agent

You’re going to be in a semi-long-term relationship with your real estate agent. You’ll also be trusting them with important decisions, legal guidance, and you’ll trust them to bring in tens of thousands of dollars in profit. If you hire just any agent without first interviewing several, you could be setting yourself up for failure.

Ask your friends, family members, associates, and co-workers if they have a seller’s agent they’d recommend. You can also look at for sale signs in your area to get an idea of which agents are active in your community. If you find one agent on more than one sign, that’s a good indicator. 

Read reviews and ratings left online by previous clients to find out what others are saying.

Interview agents to find out how they communicate, how they’ll market your property, and how they can help you earn more money with strategic pricing and staging.

Also, ask about the exit strategy in case your business relationship isn’t working. Some agents have contracts that lock you in for a specific amount of time, which could cause your house to stay on the market longer.

Step Two: Price Your House Competitively

The most critical element when selling your home is getting the price right the first time. Here’s why:

If your house experiences price drops, buyers begin to wonder why your house isn’t selling. The same is true when your home stays on the market for extended periods of time. Buyers lose interest. Furthermore, if a buyer decides to take a chance and make an offer, it’s likely to come in far below the asking price because they sense the desperation to sell.

On the flip side, if you price your house too low, people may be concerned about underlying damage that could equate to expensive repairs and upgrades. And, naturally, if you price the home below fair market value, you’re guaranteed to lose money.

Your real estate agent will assist you by providing a comparative market analysis, which is a report that shows data about recently sold homes in your area. The CMA includes information about houses that are similar to yours in size, structure, age, neighborhood, and more. It also shows asking prices vs. selling prices and how long the houses were on the market before they sold.

Coeur d’Alene	Hayden
Post Falls	Rathdrum
Athol	Spirit Lake
Sandpoint

Step Three: Stage Your Home for Best Results

Staging a house for sale is a similar concept to getting yourself dressed up for an important interview or meeting, a date, a business engagement, or other reason to present yourself in your best light. 

You want to prepare your house to woo potential buyers, to romance them with your home’s charm, and to have them swooning over a clean, move-in-ready house to make their own. To do this, you’ll prep, polish, and accentuate the best features of your property.

Staging happens in four steps:

• Declutter
• Depersonalize
• Deep Clean
• Decorate and Accentuate

Ask your real estate agent about how to properly stage your house for sale or consider working with a professional staging company.

Step Four: Showing Your Home

Showing your home used to mean hosting an open house with dozens of people parading through your personal space. Now, there are safer, more convenient ways to show your house for sale.

First, show your property online with professional photographs, high-end video, and intricate details of the home’s best qualities.

Second, allow your agent to schedule private showings where only the buyer’s agent and potential buyers are in the house at any given time. 

Your agent may also opt for live virtual showings through social media such as Facebook Live, where multiple interest buyers can engage, interact, and ask questions.

Step Five: Navigating Offers

Don’t let the money matters cloud your vision when it comes to reviewing offers on your house for sale. The amount offered might also come with contingencies, which, for you, might be deal-breakers.

For example, you may receive an offer that’s slightly above the list price, but it’s only valid if the buyer sells their current property first.

Another contingency might be that the offer is only valid if the buyer gets approved for their home mortgage loan. For this reason, it’s best to look for buyers who have been pre-approved for their home mortgage loan.

Timelines are another factor. Your buyer may need more time to close or may request to expedite the process, pushing you to move before you’re prepared.

Ask your agent to carefully explain the differences between each offer so you can make an educated decision.

Step Six: The Closing Process

The buyer’s lender requires that the house be appraised and inspected before they’ll finalize the loan. They do this to protect themselves by ensuring that the house is valued at what you’re borrowing and that the structure and property are in sound condition.

This is the tricky part. If there are any problems revealed during the inspection, you might find yourself re-negotiating – or worse, having the offer withdrawn. However, once the home has passed the inspection and appraisal, the deal is locked in and can’t be canceled.

There’s also a title check and transfer to make sure there are no holds or legal reasons why the house can’t be sold.

The Bottom Line

Your real estate agent makes all the difference in the successful sale of your home.

They’ll help you price your house strategically, stage it for powerful first impressions, will market and show your home to potential buyers, walk you through complicated offers and contracts, and will walk you through the processes of having the house appraised and inspected.

Talk with your agent about more ways you can sell your house fast and for the highest sales price possible.