The Home Selling Process – What to Expect When Selling a Home

Selling a home is a very involved process so it is recommended that you use the services of a competent real estate professional, and that is what we are going to focus on here. So the home selling process should begin with the homeowner choosing a listing agent.

A listing agent will represent you during the home selling process and they have a fiduciary responsibility, which means that they are legally required to work in their client’s best interest. To choose your listing agent, you don’t want to just go into the nearest real estate office and work with the first person you talk to. If you can get a recommendation from a friend who has worked with a great realtor in the past, that would be a good place to start. Otherwise, you should talk to several agents and then decide which one you think will do the best job for you.

Once you have found your realtor and signed a listing agreement, they will walk you through the rest of the process. The next step is usually to figure out how much your home is worth so you can come up with a competitive asking price. Ask too much, and your home will sit on the market for a long time without any offers. Ask too little, and you’re leaving money on the table.

Your real estate agent will be able to look at all of the comps in the area. These are the homes that are comparable to yours, and they will be able to see what those homes sold for, and how long they were on the market before they sold. This will give your real estate agent a good idea of what the asking price of your home should be.

Before marketing your property and showing it to prospective buyers, you may have to make some repairs to get your home ready. A good real estate agent can give you some tips in this regard as well. They will help you decide whether certain repairs will provide you with a positive return on investment, or if it would be better to sell the house as is and let the new homeowner make those repairs.

Your real estate agent can also give you some tips on staging your home. Staging a home consists of cleaning up any clutter and arranging furniture to make your home look as desirable as possible to a potential buyer.

At this point, your home will be ready to be shown to potential buyers. Marketing the home usually starts with getting some photographs inside and out and putting those photos online to reach as many potential buyers as possible. Your real estate agent may advertise online, in local newspapers, and of course, they have contacts in the industry and may work with other Realtors who have buyers that might be interested in your home.

When someone wants to make an offer, their realtor will contact your realtor and they will hammer out all of the details. If you accept an offer, your realtor will also walk you through the process of opening escrow, ordering title, setting appointments for appraisals and home inspections, and finally closing escrow and completing the sale.