Listing your home for sale is a process often thought to be pretty straightforward and easy on the seller’s side. After all, you just announce your home sale or go about the listing house process and wait for a buyer to come along, right? If only things were that easy!

Unfortunately, that’s not everything that has to do with the house selling or home buying process. Learning how to list a house for sale and getting it sold involves many different moving parts involving you, and also ones that you have no control over.

When it comes to assessing factors that will or won’t let your home sell quickly, you’ll need to look at factors that are controllable or uncontrollable. For example, you can control the price of your home, but can’t control how the location will impact how desirable or undesirable your place might be on the market. Factor in fluctuations in the market, and selling your home could include more strategy than you’d initially anticipated!

However, listing your home doesn’t have to be an overly arduous process if you plan properly and accurately figure out what you’ll need to take into account before actually putting it on the market. Learn more about how to make sure your home sells quickly and easily with our complete guide on things to know before listing your home for sale.

How to Prepare to Sell Your Home

Gearing up to sell your home properly and with the right attention to detail will ensure that you have a quick and easy sale and an overall smooth selling process. Even something as simple as having the right real estate agent to help you out in the selling process can help you out a lot in maximizing your home’s appeal and potential to sell.

So how do you prepare to list your house for sale?

• Hire a Real Estate Agent

Though you think you might save on costs by not hiring a real estate agent and just by selling your house on your own, you might underestimate how complicated selling a home can be, and how tough it can be to sell your house without professional advising and helping you out along the way. Thankfully, finding the right real estate can be easier than you might think.

When looking for a real estate agent to help you out with your relocation, look up agents’ online profiles to gain a little understanding regarding their experience or expertise level, their accreditation, designations, or affiliations, as well as how many sales they’ve successfully closed. Try to learn about how and where their listings are usually located and what market they’re listed and marketed to, plus whether they take photos or videos themselves, or have professionals come into doing so.

The process your real estate agent uses to show your home and to get sales makes all the difference in how fast or slow your home will sell, as well as how many potential buyers it reaches. One of the biggest perks to using a real estate agent for your home selling process is the networking and connections they have in the industry, as well as the experience in knowing how and where to market your home.

If you’re not too sure that you want to use a real estate agent still to sell your home, consider this: though you have to pay a commission to your agent when your home sells, real estate agent fees are at their lowest rates ever, and having a professional by your side will allow your home to sell much faster, and will allow you to get the best selling price for your home. This will let you not only sell your home quickly and make the most money off it but will also make sure that your process will be as smooth as possible.

• Make a Selling Timeline

When gearing up to list or sell your home, you should always have a plan or timeline set in place to determine when you’ll want to hire your agent, list your home, have inspections done, schedule any repairs, and close on a sale.

Depending on the time of year and the current market conditions you’re listing your house during, the entire process of selling your house can take anywhere from two to four months – possibly even longer (again, depending on current market conditions).

As soon as you decide to go through with selling your house, start looking up real estate agents in your area with the experience level you’re looking for right away. Try to also schedule a home inspection before you list your home so that you can identify and correct any problem areas and repair any issues that might stop your home from selling as quickly.

1. • Try to get your home inspected around two months before you plan to list it so that you have plenty of time to have these repairs carried out – especially if they’re structural or mechanical.

Once you’ve taken care of repairs and are closer to being ready to list your home, you’ll want to start the staging process around a month before you list. Deep clean your areas and try to make your home as impersonal as possible for photos and future viewings. Though this may sound terrible, staging your home is all about creating an environment that buyers can project a vision onto, so that they can see how they might make the home their own.

Since you’ll already have gotten your home inspected and have gotten heads to start on any repairs, you might be able to carry out the staging process at the same time as any repairs that need to be done, which will save you a lot of time during your process.

• Get Photos Taken

Though you might think that taking photos yourself or having your real estate agent take photos of your house will be an easy way to save money on your selling costs, not having professional photos taken can hurt your home’s appeal and potential to draw in buyers.

Instead of trying to take photos yourself, have high-quality, professional ones taken by a photographer. Sometimes, a real estate agent will already work with one or have professional photography and videography for online tours as a part of their services, but it’s not always the case.

Having photographs taken by a professional with a good portfolio will ensure that your home is shown in the best light and has maximum appeal.

•  List Your House for Sale

Now that you’ve properly prepared your home for sale and have the most attractive photographs taken to go with its listing, it’s time to discover how to list your house for sale! Your real estate agent will do everything they can to make sure that your house has maximum online appeal to draw in tours and interest from buyers.

On your end, you’ll want to keep your home staged and cleared out of personal belongings. If you haven’t moved out yet, or are in the process thereof, this can get a little tricky. To clear out excess furniture, try investing in storage or seeing if you can start moving things into your new home early.

Some people hire professional home stagers to make their home appeal to buyers, but this can run you anywhere from $500-$2000. If that’s in your budget, you’re in luck! If not, try to make the place look as best you can.

Additionally, when it comes to viewings or tours of your home, try to make yourself scarce or be around as little as possible during open houses or showings. Your agent should always be present at your house showings and will make sure things go smoothly. If you’re around, it can make potential buyers feel a little awkward.

• Review Offers

Once you’ve received and are reviewing offers for your home, it’s time to determine whether you’d like to negotiate or accept the offers or stipulations you’ve received. When going through offers, you’ll always want to have your real estate agent or attorney help you go through the paperwork involved and advocate on your behalf.

If your local housing market currently favors sellers, you’ll probably receive an offer that’s above your initial asking price, to be competitive against other potential buyers. However, if the current market favors buyers, you might have to negotiate.

After receiving an offer on your home, you can choose to accept, reject, or present a counter offer back to the buyer. If you make a counteroffer, the potential buyer will usually have to respond within a couple of days as to whether they accept or pass on your offer.

If you get multiple offers on your house, remember to not only look at the highest bidder but other factors involved in the sale and closing of your home. Consider how they’re paying, the financing they’re using, their down payment, special requests, and the proposed closing date. If they’re using financing versus paying for the home upfront, the property will have to get appraised and inspected before closing.

• Closing Process

After accepting an offer, keep in mind that you’ll also have to anticipate closing costs (on both ends) for your home. You’ll have to pay your agent’s commission, transfer taxes, recording fees, liens, and any attorney fees you may have accrued. If the buyer has also anticipated you taking on additional closing costs (which can amount to 2%-4% of the total cost of the home), you may have to anticipate these costs plus any associated fees.

Now that you’ve successfully prepared for the process of selling your home, it’s time to get the ball rolling! Whether you already have your new home locked down or are in the market to move, make sure you have Cord Moving & Storage Company on your side for all of your relocation needs.