If you’re thinking of selling your house, you probably have a lot of questions that need answers. In fact, asking the right questions is key to selling your home successfully and for the best price.

Here are some of the most important questions to ask:

• “How much is our house likely to sell for on today’s market?” “What should the listing price be?” “What are the selling costs?”

• “How long will it take to sell?” “What happens if our house takes longer than expected to sell?”

• “How do we prepare our house for the sale?” “Will we need to make any major improvements?” “Will we need to hire a contractor?”

• “What’s ‘home staging’?” “Will we need to hire a professional stager?” “Can we do some of that staging work ourselves?”

• “What happens when we get an offer?” “What if the offer price is lower than we can accept?” “How does the negotiation process work?”

• “What happens after an offer is accepted?” “What happens on closing day?”

• “How do we find a new home while selling our current one?”

• “Besides a good real estate agent, what other professionals do we need?” “How do we find them?”

• “What can we do to make the selling process easier and less stressful?”

Once you have answers to those questions, you’ll find you’ll be able to go into the selling process with a lot more confidence.

So, if you’re thinking of selling this year, get the answers you need. Then, get the process started!

Depending on your decor and furnishings, some rooms in your home may appear to be smaller than their physical size. Since buyers are typically looking for as much space as possible, it’s important to make all your rooms seem, well, roomy!

Here are some tips that will help:

• Consider removing any unnecessary pieces of furniture.
• Experiment with rearranging the furniture. Determine which set-up makes the room look its best.
• Position tall furniture, such as armoires, on the longer walls.
• Lighten up on knick-knacks and similar items on tables and surfaces.
• Use mirrors to help create the illusion of more space.
• If possible, remove double or queen size beds from small
bedrooms and replace with twin beds. (Beds can be rented for home staging purposes.)
• In smaller bathrooms, keep shower curtains open.
• During viewings, open the window coverings. This leverages the most spacious room in the world – the outdoors!
• Make sure each room has ample lighting.

Your goal is to make each room in your home seem inviting, spacious and comfortable.

If you own a stock, you can probably go online and quickly look up its current value.

What about your home? That, too, is an important investment and probably your most valuable one. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could “look up” its current value in just a few minutes online?

Well, despite all the real estate data available on the internet these days, there is no site that will calculate your home’s true market value – at least not accurately. So, if you were to put your home up for sale tomorrow, how would you determine what it would likely sell for?

Your home’s probable selling price is influenced by the following factors.

• The type and style of your home.
• The condition of your home. (Is it “move in” ready?)
• How well your home shows? (Is it staged?)
• The desirability of the neighbourhood.
• Recent selling prices of similar homes in the area.
• The current demand for a home like yours.

All these factors, especially recent solds in the area, need to be considered in order to come up with the price range within which your property will likely sell. Why is this information important? If you plan on listing soon, the benefits of knowing the probable selling price is obvious. But even if your plans to move are far down the road, it’s still a good idea to know what your home is worth – today. That information enables you to plan ahead and make better decisions. It’s something worth thinking about.

For some people, the thought of listing their home for sale is stressful. They worry about all the things they have to do — and all the things that might go wrong.

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some tips for making your home sale go smoothly:

• Give yourself time to prepare. If you’re thinking of selling six months from now, start preparing your property now. Do any necessary staging, and get it looking its best. Avoid doing these tasks at the last minute.

• Set the right price. Pricing your property too high will likely result in few, if any, buyers coming to see it. You might end up having to lower your price later, causing your home to linger even longer on the market. That’s stress you don’t need!

• Have a flexible viewing schedule. If you make it too difficult for buyers to see your property, they might lose interest or simply choose to buy another home. Be as flexible as possible when a buyer wants to view your property.

• Plan get-away activities. When a buyer comes for a scheduled viewing, don’t be home. Instead, plan some fun activities for your family. Think: playground, shopping, cycling, the zoo, etc.

• Accept the ups and downs. Prospective buyers might say they love your home and plan to make an offer. Then you don’t hear from them again! It happens! Accept the inevitable ups and downs of selling your home.
• Get help with repairs. You’ll probably have things that need to be fixed around the home, like a dripping faucet that needs repair or a room that needs painting. If possible, hire a professional to do some of that work.

• Finally, work with a great real estate agent. That will make the biggest difference in ensuring your move goes smoothly and stress-free.

Looking for a real estate agent like that? Call me!

Do you ever buy products that say, “some assembly required”? If you’re like most people, that statement makes you worry that you’ll end up spending hours struggling to put the item together. In some cases, you might even decide not to buy it, just to avoid the frustration!

As a homeowner, you might have a similar concern when it comes to selling your home. You may be thinking of selling, but the process of getting your property ready and putting it on the market seems overwhelming. It may even make you hesitate.

Those listing jitters are understandable. Fortunately, there’s a cure. You simply need to get informed about the process. You need to get the facts about:

• Exactly what you need to do, to prepare your home for sale. • What your home is worth on today’s market.
• How long it will likely take to sell your property.
• How viewings and possible open houses will be handled.
• What the ideal strategy is for selling your home quickly and for the best price.

Once you have all this information, you’ll know what to expect and the selling process will be easier and less stressful. If you need help finding this information, call today.

When you’re having a garage sale, one of the toughest tasks is pricing your items. If you put a price tag on your old golf clubs that’s too high, no one will buy them. If you make the price too low, they might sell quickly, but you’ll spend the rest of the day wondering if you could have gotten more!

It’s similar to selling your home — except with your home, the stakes are much higher. You want to price your property to sell, but you don’t want to leave any money on the table.

How do you accomplish that?

Setting the right list price for your home requires a combination of skilled calculation and industry savvy.

Let’s start with the “calculation” part...

When you work with me, I’ll review recently sold properties that are similar to yours in type, size, features and location. Then, using that data, we’ll calculate a range that represents your property’s “current market value.”

For example, consider a spacious 15-year-old detached home in a nice neighbourhood. If similar homes in the area have sold for $750,000-$850,000 in the last six months, then a list price above or below that range would be in the danger zone.

But skilled calculation is only half the task.

Setting your list price also requires expertise in the local market, which comes from being on the front lines of many property transactions.

That’s why working with a good real estate salesperson is so important, when you’re deciding on the list price for your home.

Want to discuss selling your home? Call me.