There’s much more to selling your home than having a sign on the lawn and having it advertised on the MLS. In fact, on average only 60% of homes that are listed on the MLS actually sell within the first listing period. Having and Real Estate Agent on your side that has an organized, systematic, tried-and-true plan to sell a home makes all the difference in the world. When the odds of selling your home are less than perfect, it’s risky to leave anything to chance.

When you’ve decided that this might be the right time for you to sell your home, we’ll have a meeting where we can discuss, in full detail, what your goals, priorities and timelines are.

I’ll explain the selling process to you, from start to finish, so that we don’t leave ourselves open to a negative experience. We’ll discuss topics and issues that include:

• Who works for whom in a transaction.
• Potential conflicts of interest and ways to work around it.
• The Listing Agreement and Realty Fees.
• Understanding contractual and fiduciary duties that the Buyer has with their Realtor®.
• Steps we’ll take to prevent legal problems with a potential buyer (disclosures, measuring standards, proper understanding of your contractual obligations, etc.).
• What documents, permits and reports you’ll need to provide.
• Whom, besides you and I, needs to be kept in the loop and provided with documentation pertinent to the sale of your home.

Once you’ve got a good idea of what is involved in the selling process, we’ll go ahead to the next step, which is the Marketing Plan. This is a step-by-step strategy that will give your home every advantage possible so that it will compete successfully against other homes for sale, realizing the highest price in the least amount of time.

Did you know that after a buyer has decided how much they want to spend on a home, and here they want to live, 90% of their buying decision is emotional? Home builders understand this: that’s why their show homes always look so nice.  I will give you a good sense as to what types of things typically appeal to a potential buyer’s emotions, so we can properly prepare your home for showings. The Marketing Plan that we’ll execute will cover on how we will be:

• Determining who is the most likely buyer for your home (target market)?
• Foreseeing potential objections that buyers may have to your home and discuss ways to address them beforehand so that they don’t even become an issue.
• Preparing your home for showings (room-by-room evaluation where I will make suggestions on how best to stage your home, what repairs or touchups would be beneficial to you, and how you can maximize on curb appeal).
• Maximizing on exposure through social media  print and cross marketing.
• Presenting your home in its best light with professional-grade photography.
• Preparing well-written remarks that highlight your home’s features and benefits with an aim to intrigue potential buyers enough for them to want to come and take a look at it.
• Showing you exactly how your home is going to appear on the MLS and give you the opportunity to offer feedback and make changes before we go live.
• Preparing attractive feature sheets on your home.
• Making sure that potential buyers find the good features of your home and then remember them once they’ve left it.
• Turning our completion into our friend.
• Engaging your neighbours into the process by asking them if they know anyone who might be interested in your home.
• Finding potential buyers by networking with Realtors who have recently sold a home in your neighbourhood.
• Putting my organization’s referral network to work for you.
• Responding to enquiries from potential buyers and Realtors, inviting qualified buyers to view your home.
• Handling viewing appointments.
• Holding open houses (upon request).
• Following up on all showings and providing you with direct feedback and suggestions (based on actionable feedback)
• Presenting regular progress reports and regularly communicating with you.
• Being transparent with you, disclosing all relevant conversations and communications to you during negotiations.
• Providing you with copies of all contracts and (with your permission), liaising with mortgage brokers, banks, appraisers, inspectors, lawyers, surveyors and insurance companies to ensure that everyone has what they need to facilitate a smooth transaction for you.
• Advising you of your obligations to your buyer to avoid last-minute complications and unnecessary negative surprises.
• Keeping you posted on the progress of a deal and work with all parties to deal with any hiccups that may arise.
• Handling key release to buyer upon authorization from your lawyer.