Seller’s Guide

This is a game of educated guess work. We do not have a crystal ball. We study the market in a rear-view mirror and do our best to predict how your home will perform. If Time is your main concern, then pricing the home lower than current market value to make it appealing may be advisable.

While I may make suggestions to help you prepare your home for sale, it’s up to you if you wish to do those projects or incur their costs. My job is to equip you with ideas and resources that fit your selling desires and yield the best outcomes, making this process go as smoothly as possible. We are also a full-service brokerage, so if you need a painter, moving company, or another glass of wine, just let me know; we are here to help!

If maximizing your financial outcome is your main goal, it is vitally important to position our asking price competitively to start with, drawing as much interest as possible. Sometimes, a little bit of elbow grease goes a long way when you are trying to get top dollar. You ultimately need to decide how much time and money you want to spend on your home before listing. The current market determines your home’s ultimate selling price.

A CMA is like an Archaeological dig, but instead of answering questions about an ancient civilization, we unearth relevant information and clues in the marketplace to pinpoint a Sales Price for your home. To do this, we consider several factors, including:

• Condition
• Features
• Market Conditions
• Locations
• Circumstances

A well prepared CMA will help us determine the most likely sales price for your home. To achieve that end, an effective Comparative Market Analysis involves:

1. IDENTIFYING MARKET TRENDS
   Are prices rising or falling? Is supply and demand in balance or out of kilter? We carefully
   inspect the trends not only for metro Denver but also for your specific vicinity.
2. ANALYZING RECENT SALES
   We identify properties sold in your immediate area and analyze the ways in which they are similar and different from yours. Monetary adjustments are made to reflect how much more or less buyers would have paid for those properties if they had been exactly like your property.
   
   
3. FINDING PENDING SALES
   We look for properties currently under contract that are similar to yours to see if they indicate improving or declining market conditions.
   
   
4. SIZING UP COMPETING PROPERTIES
   We size up other active listings to determine your competitive advantages and weaknesses.
   
   
5. RECONCILING ALL DATA
   Finally, we make sense of all this information. We also take care to explain “noisy’ data – that is, any conflicting or confusing information that comes to light in this process.
   

1. Make any updates and repairs to your home.

2. Begin decluttering; rent a storage unit if necessary, and Clean, clean, clean!

3. Continue to watch the market and determine our listing price.

4. If staging is needed, a staging consultant is a huge asset to make your home present the best. They only offer an opinion, but can have very valuable insights. Staging can use your furniture and decor or rented pieces.

5. Chris will take the most amazing photos to make your home look its best on the internet. You can see some of his work on his website: orchestratedlight.com.

6. Put together all the marketing material, build the internet listing, and take care of all the boring paperwork. My team and I take care of all of this.

This is the waiting game. Your home will go live on the MLS, realtor.com, Zillow, Redfin, and every other real estate website in the West. We will execute all our marketing efforts and start getting buyers in your home for showings.

Remember, buyers will be accompanied by their own real estate agents for showings. They will have access to your home through a lock box. It is important to remove all firearms, prescription medication and valuable items from your home. Try to keep the home clean and as accommodating as possible for showings. You never know when the right Buyer may stop by!

If we need to adjust anything, such as price, we can make those adjustments while active on the market. We will use data like the number of showings per week and buyer feedback, compared with local market activity, to decide on adjustments.

Once we are under contract, we will typically have around 30 days to get the home ready to close. You will need to make plans to get your belongings out of the home and get ready to move. Don’t hesitate to lean on our Vendor’s list again for help with this. Here is a list of typical Dates and Deadlines:

Day 1 ACCEPTANCE OF AN OFFER After careful review of price, terms, and Buyer qualifications, you have chosen a great contract!

Day 1-3 EARNEST MONEY DEPOSITED The title company will hold the Buyer’s Earnest Money funds in their trust account until Closing.

Day 1-3 DISCLOSURES SENT TO BUYER We review and sign all the required documents before going on the market, and then pass these along to the Buyers.

Day 1-4 TITLE COMMITMENT PROVIDED The title company will pull all records associated with your property. We will go through them and remedy anything that needs to be corrected.

Day 2-10 BUYER’S PROPERTY INSPECTION The Buyer will hire a company to perform a thorough inspection of your home. This will include everything in and outside of the home, the roof, the sewer line, and radon levels in the basement or crawl space. Negotiations will begin on any repair requests made by the Buyer.

Day 10-20 REPAIRS ON PROPERTY We schedule repairs on items agreed upon by both parties.

Day 10-20 APPRAISAL OF PROPERTY An appraiser arranged by the lender comes and evaluates your home in order to prepare a valuation report for the Buyer’s lender. This is compared with our contract price.

We will sit down with the buyers at the title company and sign the property over to the new owners. You will get paid all your proceeds immediately!

This is the first thing people are going to see when they enter your home. If carpet is old or has a bad smell, it’s very important to get it replaced for that first impression, and it is cheaper than most other updates. I have a carpet installer on my list of vendors. Otherwise you can use Home Depot or similar and get the installation included.

Any holes in the drywall of the house or small touch ups are an easy fix, and add a lot of value. You can call off my vendor’s list if you need help with this item.

Getting your furnace and AC cleaned and serviced is a good way to get ahead of the picky buyers. It helps the systems run most efficiently, and otherwise buyers sometimes ask us to replace it.

Keep your green thumbs moving. Anytime it’s warm, get that yard looking as good as possible, and maintain as much as you can to wow those Buyers before entering the door!

Damaged or leaking roofs and grading problems like gutters are one of the top inspection issues if your home has an old roof.

Any unsafe, unlabeled, or dangerous electrical wiring should be properly serviced before the Buyer’s inspector potentially makes it a much bigger deal down the line.