Selling a home and getting the highest dollar takes a combination of good marketing, home presentation, and pricing the house correctly from the start.

Getting a Competitive Market Analysis

A competitive market analysis, CMA for short, is a report performed by your agent to compare your home to homes that have sold recently in the area. This helps determine the probably market value of your home. A good CMA is essential in determining the right price to list your home at.

Request a free Competitive Market Analysis for your home.

Marketing Your Home

Effective marketing will get the word out to as many potential buyers as possible which increases your chance of the right buyer(s) finding your home. An effective agent will make an good marketing plan and market your home in as many avenues with potential buyers as possible. There is a potential buyer out there for your home, the question is getting attractive advertising out there to the buyer so they can find it.

Making Your Home Showable

A key ingredient to selling your home is how well the home shows to prospective buyers. Most buyers are looking for a home to live in. When they look at homes which they will live in, buyer's have an emotional response to each home they view. The size of the home, the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms, and whether it has the desired features all appeal to the logical side of the buyer. Whether or not to purchase the home also has to do with the buyer's emotional response and how they feel walking through the home? If your home is clean, tidy, and not overcrowded, this will add to the buyer's emotional response as they view the home. Buyer's have walked away from a home without even viewing the inside, simply because the door to the home unkempt with a few dings and scratches. I don't know how many buyer's walked away from the home for the same reason, but there is a chance that it was more than just that one. A simple thing such as repainting the front door of the home may have helped the seller show their house more and potentially would have sold it to one of the buyers who had walked away, all because of the problem with the front door. When making your home show nice, there are a number of things to be considered. When you are ready to start preparing to sell your home, lets sit down and talk and discuss making your home look and show great.

Price It Right

Pricing the home correctly is also essential. When a home first comes on the market, there is a period of initial interest and excitement generated. When the home is priced too high, the home will likely sit on the market through that initial interest period and then even if you lower the price, potential buyers may begin to wonder if something is wrong with the home because it has been up for sale for so long.

If this becomes the case, many potential buyers will just pass on even looking at the house because in their mind, something must be wrong with the property to have kept in on the market so long.

Pricing the home right from the start will enhance your homes marketability and also the size of the market for potential buyers. In some cases, when a home is priced right from the start, several buyers become interested in the property and then begin to compete to get the property. I have seen prices go up to $30,000 higher in some instances as the buyers competed to get the property. If the seller had initially asked even $10,000 or $20,000 more for the home, the home may not have even come up on the potential buyers' searches or they may have passed it on by before even having seen it thinking that the price was too much for the money. Remember, they didn't become emotionally involved until after seeing the property and falling in love with it. When discussing the initial pricing with your agent, remember to bring this up.

When Problems Arise

Most every real estate transaction has hiccups or even outright problems. Sometimes issues arise in the inspection period that catch both the buyer and even the seller off guard. As issues arise, negotiate the issues calmly with the other side. Often deal breaking problems can be turned into a win-win situation if both sides will come to the table and discuss the problem and potential resolution calmly.