A realtor friend of mine once told me, “As soon as a house is listed on the MLS, it’s the belle of the ball.” If it looks good online, agents in the area will want to show it to their prospective buyers. As the saying goes, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
To make sure your house is ready to go, be sure to consider the following Dos and Don’ts to get your house sold as fast as possible:
- Do make sure that there are no punch list items remaining, the property has been cleaned and staged if necessary, and all of the landscaping looks great. Don’t list it early or ahead of it is 100% complete.
- Do a thorough review of the comps with an appraiser or experienced broker that knows the area, to determine what the property can be sold for based on the current market value with the improvements you have made. Don’t overprice the property! Doing this can have a negative impact on activity.
- Do hire an experienced agent that understands the market in your area, and meets the following criteria stated in this blog here.
- Do make sure your agent uses CSS (Centralized Showing Service) so the showings can be automated and tracked. This makes your property easy to show. Don’t hire an agent that has to be called directly to set up a showing at a specific time. This makes it difficult to show the property and receive offers.
- Do follow up with your agent within a few days after your house goes live on the MLS to see how many showings you received. Showings indicate that you are priced correctly. If you have no showings, you are probably priced too high.
- Do follow up with your agent to hear what the feedback is from the showings (i.e., everyone liked the house and said they were submitting offers, bedrooms were too small, etc.).
- Don’t drop the price by a large percentage of you are not getting showings or offers. Large price drops can give the impression that something is wrong with the property, and not just that you are priced too high. You and your agent should determine the process ahead of time regarding price reductions. Use an experienced agent to help you with this.
- Do try to make that first offer work.
If you follow these steps, rest assured that you’re bound to get the highest possible offer in the shortest possible time in your market.
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Mike Hanna is a real estate investor, mentor, author, and public speaker. He has been an active real estate investor since 2002 in both single family and multi-family properties, and has been in the hard money business since 2005.