While we’ve been lucky enough to have had a strong seller’s market here for the past year or so, even a great market can only do so much. The steps included in this article are still vital for any home, no matter what kind of a market it is, so that your home can sell for top dollar. Don’t make the mistake of cutting corners. You will likely end up leaving thousands on the table. 

1. Professional photos are an absolute must. Professional photos are one of the biggest things we see some agents skimp out on when doing a listing, and it is a HUGE mistake. No matter what price point you are selling in, professional photos show the house at its best and give a feeling of luxury. In this online world of digital marketing and buyers looking through websites like Zillow and Realtor, photos are how a house introduces itself to potential clients, and you want to make sure that it does so in a way that makes them want to call their agent to go see it right that minute. Photos with fingers in the shot, bad angles, and non-professional lighting just don’t give off the same impression, and 87% of homebuyers agreed that the quality of photos are one of the biggest elements that make them decide whether to visit a house or not.
2. Cleaning and staging are vital. Staging is one of those magical words in real estate that sets the normal real estate agents apart from the great ones. Never choose a real estate agent who doesn’t take the time to recommend staging tips before photos and showings. After all, according to Forbes, the agents they interviewed said that home staging led to increased offers between 1% and 5% compared to similar homes that weren’t staged.  Additionally, homes that have been staged spend between 33% and 50% less time on the market, according to HomeAdvisor, and the less time you spend on the market, the more money you’re likely to walk away with, so that time makes a huge difference for your bottom line. One thing to understand about staging, however, is that it doesn’t always mean bringing in expensive, high-end furniture. While that can certainly help on a vacant, luxury listing, there is a spectrum of how much staging needs to be done to get you the highest dollar for your home. For lived-in homes with furniture that matches the space, for example, decluttering is usually all you need to do for staging. Check out this article for what decluttering steps you can take in your home. 
3. Don’t overprice your home. While it may seem counterintuitive, pricing your home too high when listing it can cost you thousands in the end. Consider it this way—your agent comes in after pulling the best comps in your area and recommends a list price of 500K. You were really hoping to get 525K, and it’s a competitive market, so you refuse to list at the recommended price and decide to list for 525K. Your agent then does all of the steps a good agent should do—staging, professional pictures, strong marketing, reaching out to other agents directly, and you have 3 showings that first week. None of them love it, but you have another two showings the next week. Good feedback from one, but most say that it’s overpriced. The one who likes it decides to make a lowball offer of 505K with all normal contingencies and protections. You’re excited because you still got 5K over what your agent had recommended—that is, until the appraisal comes in at 500K, and you have to go down to 500K to keep the buyer in the contract since they’re protected by their appraisal contingency. Oh well, you might think! I was probably only going to get 500K the other way anyway! However, this is likely not true, at least in a competitive market. Let’s run the situation back and see what might have happened if you priced where your agent suggested at 500K. Just like before, your awesome agent does all of the same steps—staging, professional pictures, strong marketing, reaching out to agents directly—only this time, because it is in the right price bracket, you generate 10 showings the first week instead of 3, and 8/10 of them believe that it is accurately priced, and 4 of them like it enough to submit an offer. Each of those agents calls and tells your agent that they plan to submit an offer. Your agent then informs them that she is expecting multiple offers, so they will need to submit their highest and best by the following Monday at noon. Since they know there will be competition, all parties offer above asking, and you even get one offer for 515K with an appraisal gap of 10K since they know that it was priced accurately, but they really want to be in this location, and they are willing to pay above the appraisal to get this home. You decide to go with that offer, and when you are going through the appraisal process, your listing agent is able to present not only her comps to the appraiser but also proof of multiple offers above asking, which results in the appraiser agreeing that the house is actually worth above asking at 510K. Since the buyers had an appraisal gap of 10K, they happily make up the 5K difference and you walk away with 515K instead of 500K. This is a situation we have seen time and time again in this market, and while there is no denying that there has been a little more wiggle room for pushing the envelope recently, overpricing is still going to bite you in the butt 9/10 times. 
4. Offer a strong commission.  When people are calculating their bottom line, of of the questions they frequently (and understandably) ask is if they can pay a lower commission. While every listing agent has their own decision to make in response to that question, one things we here at Homes By Valor believe firmly in is offering a competitive co-op commission to the buyer’s agent we will be working with. After all, they have the power to either send the listing along to their buyers or not, and if they see a reduced commission offered for a house, they might choose not to send it to a client they’ve been working with for 6 months to a year because they’ve put in 50 hours of their time and know that their clients can’t afford to pay the difference between what is a competitive commission in their industry and what you have decided to offer. Let’s apply this to our previous example and see what happens. You list for 500K, and your agent still does all the same things. Unfortunately, due to the lowered commission, this time, you only get 6 showings the first week because four decided that they didn’t want to send it along. You still have three people who love it who know that they are in a multiple offer scenario, so you get three competitive offers, and you decide to go with the one who offers 510K with a 3K appraisal gap because that’s the most competitive one you get. The other agent does their part well enough, and yours still works with the appraiser to let them know the multiple offer context. However, they only judge it to be worth 505K because there was no fourth offer to bring that number higher. They make up the difference of 5K, and you walk away with 508K. Still a good number above what you were wanting, but you’ve left some money on the table by not offering a competitive enough amount for all of the buyers agents to advocate hard for your home. 
5. Make repairs ahead of time. There’s nothing like walking in a house with some wear and tear to immediately make you compare what you’re seeing in real life to the beauty promised by the professional pictures. As a homeowner, one of the most important things you can do is to make sure that your home lives up to what it has promised, and to do that, you have to make sure that it shows its best. Touch up paint, wood rot repairs, and other small fixes should all be made before a single showing is allowed in the home. What’s worth fixing? Check out this article for more information. 

We hope this article has helped you learn what it takes to set your offer apart in a competitive market like this one. Please reach out and ask us any other questions you have, and we’ll be happy to help any time. You can reach us at (678) 242-9981 or submit any questions through our contact us question form. We hope to talk to you soon!