Sell Your Home Confidently, With a Massachusetts Real Estate Professional

When you’re selling anything, you want to get fair market value it, but since your home is likely your largest investment, it’s even more important to feel like you made a good sell.

One of the first and most important steps to selling your home for top dollar is to get the place deep-cleaned from floor to ceiling, including washing the windows and scrubbing down all of your kitchen appliances.

Get rid of any clutter or personal images; it’s much easier to clean a room that doesn’t have a lot of furniture or objects in it, so even if you’re hoping to move up to make space for all your stuff, it’s a good idea to start cleaning out the items that you know you don’t want to move with you. If there’s still a lot left, consider a shed or an off-site storage facility where you can stash things without packing it all in your closets (where buyers are most definitely going to be looking). If you have a junk drawer or even a “junk room,” now is the time to start corralling that beast.

There may be quite a few additional projects you could tackle to increase your home’s value, such as adding a deck, remodeling the kitchen, or even adding entire rooms in some cases. Those are good opportunities to discuss with a real estate professional, who can share feedback about whether the project is going to be worth the eventual return on investment when you sell the home — and what projects will net you more money for your property.

As your real estate professional we also have access to home stagers and home photographers. When a buyer falls in love with your home, it’s most likely going to be from an online listing, so your listing photos should be as high-quality as possible — that might mean bringing in a stager to spruce up the rooms and a photographer to capture the results.

Ultimately, it depends on what the housing market is like in your area, but there are a lot of anomalies within a housing market — even in markets that seem red-hot, sometimes sellers make a mistake and overprice a home that then languishes for weeks or even months longer than more realistically priced homes. There are neighborhoods or even specific blocks where buyers seem to be willing to do just about anything to get their foot in the door — and other geographies where they might need to be lured in a little more aggressively.

The number of days that homes stay on the market gets shorter and shorter as housing heats up, but that number is absolutely contingent on the initial list price. Homes that need to reduce their prices to attract qualified buyers will remain on the market significantly longer than homes priced competitively from the start. It’s really important to get the initial list price right if you’d like the home to sell quickly. (And remember: The longer that house takes to sell, the longer you as the seller will be responsible for keeping it in showing condition for buyers — seven days a week.)

So even in markets where houses seem to be flying off the shelves, it’s smart to talk to your agent because they are up close and personal with home sales every day. We can give you an educated estimate about the amount of time it should take your property to get from list to close.

We will help you find the best price for your home, list it for you on the MLS, and handle all the marketing — from photos to open houses to glossy brochures to Facebook ads. Our agents can manage your showing schedule for buyers who want personal tours and can help you decide which offer to accept if you happen to receive more than one … and a licensed real estate professional is absolutely essential during the negotiation process, especially if the buyer is making demands that the seller isn’t prepared to address.

As an expert real estate professional, Travel Home Realty’s agents can refer plumbers, electricians, and general contractors in the area who might be able to make any repairs or changes to the home before it closes. We will help to manage the transaction timeline, alerting you when an inspection or appraisal is about to happen and keeping you in the loop regarding financing and every other aspect of the deal.

We can also help you do all of this while you’re simultaneously looking for a new place to live and can help you manage that, too — including what to do if you find a home before your current house sells.

Selling a home isn’t as simple as listing it on the MLS and waiting for an appropriate offer to come in — but there’s so much more involved that most sellers can’t handle it on their own. Answering these questions will get you a head start, but don’t skip calling us early so when you’re actually ready to list that home; we can quickly point out what you didn’t know you were missing.