Local Selling Tips

Selling a home is not as easy as it looks! You need a professional real estate agent (not your best friend’s brother-in-law) who knows how to price, stage, market, and sell your home in a timely manner while getting you the highest price the market will bear.

To sell your home, hire an agent (like me!) who will:

Do this… Not this…
Price your home correctly based on current market conditions and the condition of the home. Over price the home so that it never sells or under price the home so that you don’t get every dollar that you deserve.
Help you stage your home so it outshines your competition. Ignore the basics of real estate and tell you that it’s okay to let your house smell like a vet clinic.
Take and post as many large, high-quality photos of your beautiful home as possible. Post only a few low-quality photos of your home that are too small to see.
Write descriptions of the rooms presented in each photo pointing out all the special features the home has to offer. Leave photo descriptions blank…so what if the buyer can’t figure out whether a bedroom is upstairs or down or has hardwood floors or carpet.
Create a real video tour of the home so that potential buyers can “walk” the home ahead of time and get an idea of the floor plan and layout before setting an appointment. Skip the videos…who cares if the Seller has to waste time and leave the house for appointments with buyers who will not ever buy the home because the floor plan doesn’t work. 
Bonus: Out-of-town spouses can view video tours even when they are not available to view the home in person. (This is common in Sugar Land where we have a high number of relocations.)  
Advertise your home throughout his/her social network including Google+, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.–and help you do the same.  Post your home only on the MLS and ignore all other forms of Internet advertising (where over 90% buyers look). But does have a newspaper ad that only other agents will see.
Enable you to sign contracts and documents for the transaction online and in the privacy of your home–at midnight and in your pajamas if you so choose. Ask you to sign, scan, and email pages and pages of documents over and over again when your scanner only does one page at a time.
Set you up for automatic feedback after every showing, weekly Internet reports (to know how many people viewed your listing), and frequent emails and phone calls so you always know what’s going on with your home’s market activity. Ignore you for weeks at a time and only contacts you to ask you to reduce the home’s price.
Helps you negotiate the inevitable home inspection and repair requests…setting you up with a Seller’s Home Warranty Policy ahead of time to cover you as much as possible. Tells not to worry about obvious repairs and lets your deal fall through due to unreasonable denial of small repair requests.
Ensures that you meet all your contractual, legal obligations (survey, disclosures, resale certificate, etc.) in a timely manner. Expects you to keep up with your own legal obligations and forgets to order things like surveys and resale certificates.
Has the strength of a large legal team “back home” at the Brokerage’s corporate office…just in case the buyer decides to become difficult after the sale.
» See Texas Deceptive Trade Practices		 Works at a small mom-and-pop real estate “boutique” shop who doesn’t even carry Errors & Omissions insurance.

ADVICE: Before you hire a Realtor, check as many of his or her past and current listings online to see how well he or she photographs, describes, and markets the home.