There are a lot of things that go on during the Home Selling Process. Not all of it is apparent at the beginning, even then it seems like such a huge task to accomplish. Sometimes you need to take a step back and look at a birds eye view of the process.
Step 1: Prepare Your Home For Sale
Once you decide to sell your home the first step is to prepare it for sale! This can mean a whole number of things, really. You could start with a Home Valuation Consultation. This is where an agent looks and your home and prepares a Comparative Market Analysis, a report that give the agent’s professional opinion on how much the home is worth based on recent sales of comparable properties. After that is a whole lot of cleaning, repairing, and repainting to freshen up your home and make it show ready. How much you do is up to you, but usually the prettier it looks the better! For tips on all of that please take a look at our Preparing Your Home For Sale! guide!
Step 2: Listing Your Home
Once you have your home all ready to go, it is time to list your home! Listing your home allows for it to be seen by as many potential buyers, and buyer’s agents as possible. When you list your home your agent will put it on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) where sites like realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, and others pull information from. Additionally, most agents do other forms of advertising through emails, craigslist ads, and more.
Step 3: Showing Your Home
After your home has been listed and advertised you can expect to start receiving showing traffic through your home. These potential buyers are looking through your home to see if it suits them. It is important that your home provides a good first impression, so make sure you have finished Preparing Your Home For Sale!. If one of the potential buyers decides they like your home, they will submit an Offer to Purchase. This is where all the negotiation happens, and pretty much everything is negotiable. Once you and your buyer come to an agreement, you are under contract!
Step 4: Removing Contingencies
Once you are under contract you enter a weird sort of waiting game. There are several contingencies and things that need to happen before closing. The Home Inspection, Appraisal, and the Survey are the most common. All of these have to be done by licensed third parties, and can take time to finish. The important part is that these contingencies allow the buyer to walk away without repercussion if they come up with anything that is unsatisfactory. But once they are removed you are clear to close.
Step 5: Closing
This is the easiest step out of them all. Show up at the title company at the closing time, sign some paperwork, and get your check! Easy. Make sure you are moved out by then, because the buyer gets to move in on the day of closing.
It may seem very daunting to sell your home, but with the right agent it can be a breeze. Trust that you will not see all that your agent does for you though. It’s their job to make things easy for you, and many things are handled without you needing to see it. Are you Ready To List yet?