Many factors determine how simple or tedious your home selling process will be.
You may be at a point where you are getting ready to sell your home. If so, this is both an exciting and anxious time. A fresh start can be invigorating. However, the list of tasks you need to accomplish in order to sell can be daunting. What needs to be done in order to make the process smooth and stress-free? A home seller’s checklist can be the perfect tool to check off all of these tasks before and after selling your home.
A home seller’s checklist can be quite different depending on the situation. A person with an outdated, cluttered, and dirty home will have many more tasks than that of a person with a clean, organized and updated home. In addition, selling your home to a cash buyer will have a much, much shorter list than one where you’re listing with a real estate agent. Below, you’ll see the home seller’s checklist for both listing and selling to a cash buyer.
Planning to sell your home? Take the simple route
The Many Tasks: Preparing to List
Listing to sell your home is very different to the simple process of selling to a cash buyer. There are many more things you need to do just to get your home ready; because one thing is most certainly true when you list your home – dozens of strangers will be roaming through your house.
Although, you expect the real estate agents are accompanying their clients, it is certainly not always the case. In addition, these strangers are justifiably judgmental. They are of course, possibly planning on living in the home and will have standards of their own. Just these two reasons alone create several tasks you need to accomplish before listing your home.
Home Selling Checklist – Listing with a Real Estate Agent
Below is the checklist for home sellers planning to pay a realtor to list their homes.
Find a Real Estate Agent
Most people don’t take the time to find a qualified real estate agent. They either rely on a friend that has a license (horrible idea), or hire the first agent they find online, (even worse idea).
Following are the top 10 questions to ask should you decide to go the real estate listing route.
- How long have you been in business?
- Is this your only job?
- What is your average list-to-sales-price ratio? (The higher the better)
- What is your marketing strategy?
- What area of town is your big market? (This can expose a realtor’s knowledge of your area)
- How many homes have you closed in my neighborhood?
- Do you generally represent more buyers or sellers?
- Can you provide references?
- What is your fee?
- What separates you from the competition?
Get your Checkbook Ready
Invariably, you will spend money trying to sell your home with a real estate agent. I’m not talking about the real estate agent commissions either. You will need to do repairs. There will be projects. You’ll more than likely get a home inspection. After all of that, you’ll want to stage your home, assuming you’re going for maximum appeal to potential buyers. The cost for the latter will depend on how much you’ve already spent on “design” accessories.
Keep in mind, none of these expenses or tasks are required if you sell your home directly to a cash buyer.
Prepare your Home
Repairs – There may be several reasons to make repairs to your home when selling through a real estate agent. There may be issues with the home that absolutely need to be mediated before you can sell. This could be structural in nature or possibly code violations.
If you’re all clear there, you then need to objectively look at your home from the buyer’s point of view. Are there any flaws that might discourage a home buyer? This could be things such as cracks in the walls, missing fence slats, missing shingles, peeling paint, water stains, exposed/rotting wood, uneven doors, etc.
Deep cleaning – This could be an additional cost or quite a bit of your time. In either case, it’s necessary to get every corner of your home cleaned thoroughly.
Hire a photographer – This isn’t required but can increase the number of showings. The nicer your home looks online, the more interest you’ll get.
Showing your Home
If you decide to go the listing route, the real estate agent should be able to give you some advice as to what you need to do for the best possible showings.
Depersonalize your home – It’s more difficult for a buyer to imagine themselves living in the home when there are “stranger” family photos or your personal items lying around.
Fresh Paint – This is of course, yet another expense when selling a home through a real estate agent. However, if you go that route, it is definitely gives a positive impression on home buyers.
Staging your home – This was discussed earlier but needs to be repeated as it is an important step to selling a home through a real estate listing. The objective is to think like a designer and as well, simplify your home. Clutter and outdated accessories is the enemy of a listing sale.
Deodorize! – Smells from pets, cooking, garbage and even dirty laundry can completely discourage a buyer from making an offer. Make your place smell like you’re on a first date. Also, don’t just try to cover it up with a scented candle. If there is a smell, get rid of it.
Preparing to Sell to a Cash Buyer
Now that you’ve seen the seller’s checklist for real estate listings, you’re probably interested in seeing the list for a cash buyer. Believe it or not, of all of those tasks and related expenses listed above, NONE OF THEM apply to a cash buyer sale. You literally have to do nothing but find a buyer. That’s it.
Of course, other than the fact that you found one here in ListFree, it has generally not been an easy task in the past to find a cash buyer. This dependency on realtors is why the real estate industry has been so long lived. Now that more iBuyers, wholesalers and hybrid companies like ListFree have become solutions in the real estate selling market, it will certainly help simplify and bring more options to the home selling process.
