What to Look For When an Agent Markets Your Home

As a home seller, the top priority right out of the gate should be to determine who your listing agent will be. This choice will dictate how quickly your home is sold, how much you profit, and how much stress you will have to endure throughout the process. Here’s what you should expect for your home from a great agent’s marketing plan.

Seeing Is Believing

When it comes to selling your home, time is of the absolute essence. Numbers show that homes listed longer than 30 days have a much more difficult time being sold. This means you’ll need to bring on a driven and talented team who has a fire lit underneath them. Your property needs to be listed quickly and the word must get out with light speed.

Once you choose your listing agent and sign your agreement with them, you should expect to see immediate action to get your home listed with MLS and other sites including their own. The more eyes on your property the better. Web presence is a huge factor as most prospective buyers are searching online versus driving around the neighborhoods as they did in the old days.

Then What?

Good question. This is where average agents will stop their marketing. They put the sign in your yard, do the “quick” online listing, and then pray for rain. Unfortunately, that’s not going to cut it nowadays. A home sale is a contest and your neighbors (i.e. your competition) are pulling out all the stops. Make sure your agent is also.

Print advertising is not dead. Any agent that tells you this is simply not willing to put in the work you need. You should expect print marketing for your home which may also include direct mail pieces when agreed upon. Print can be yellow pages (some areas still have them) or even the local ‘home for sale’ publications you’ll find at a grocer.

The Buyers are One the Way

Once the buyers begin to call, your agent needs to be prepared to set up appointments for home showings. This is extremely important because it means the price was alluring in the initial listing (a deal breaker), the photos/videos were enticing, and now the buyers want to see your home live. This is the opportunity to really ‘wow’ them.

Your agent should advise you at this point of keys to staging your home to help appeal to the emotion of the buyers. The more experienced and successful agents will even hire a professional staging company to do this so that nothing is left to chance. A successful home viewing can lead to what you’ve been waiting for: offers.

Make the Dollars Make Sense

As the offers begin to come in, prepare yourself by not viewing the offers through emotional eyes. Low offers from buyers can indicate a buyer may not qualify for the full mortgage needed (in which case you can move on to the next one) or if it’s a respectable lower offer, it should be where your agent begins negotiating it higher. The more experience your agent has in negotiating, the better. They should be communicating with you at every turn here.

When you find the offer you like and accept it, the agent must be prepared to walk you through to process of how Closing and ultimately the Settlement process works. They should have all of the paperwork prepared and error-free to make sure all goes smoothly as an error here can severely delay the sale. This includes following up with you, the buyer, the titling company, and others.

From ‘For Sale’ To ‘Sold’

As you can see, there’s nothing simple about selling your home. This is why you deserve to have the right team by your side during this transaction. The Kristy Hairston, REALTOR® is here to partner with you to get your home sold fast and with a solid profit. Contact us now and make us prove it.