How To Get Top Dollar On Your Home Sale
Did you know that traditional selling practices won’t get you the most money for your house? In this video, I’m going to show you how to get the most exposure on your property so you can get top dollar on your home sale. We’ll find out why marketing is vital and how to tell if your agent is the right one for you.
Choosing Your Agent
Any agent can take your home, put a sign in the yard, pop it on the MLS, and get your house sold. If you want to get top dollar, however, there’s more that needs to be done. Because not all real estate agents are the same, one of the first questions you need to ask your realtor is what they’re doing to market your house appropriately. Their answer should be different from the rest of the industry.
There’s a difference between a real estate agent that knows what he's doing in marketing and your cousin Jed who just got his real estate license. If you don’t choose the right person to work with when listing your property for sale, it could cost you tens of thousands of dollars.
To ensure you make the right choice, I'm going to show you how we get our properties ready for sale. I’ll also explain how we get top dollar so you can walk away from your investment with the most amount of money possible.
Professional Pictures
The first thing we need to do is get amazing pictures of your property. Once your property is for sale, we need to get them in place because everybody's going to be browsing the internet. They're probably going to see your property virtually before they ever show up in person to make an offer.
Taking pictures with your cell phone is a big no-no. Rather, we want to get a professional in there with a camera so they can make sure that everything is on point. Statistically, properties with photos that are HD enhanced sell 45% faster than homes that don’t. They also sell for 75% closer to listing price.
The pictures are going to show the main features of the home, such as views from the backyard, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the master bedrooms. These are places where people spend a majority of their time and are the main selling points of the home. We also need to capture the emotions of the rooms with the best lighting and photography possible.
Video Walkthroughs
Professional video is equally important when listing your house. The video is going to work with the photographs to give you the flow of the home as you walk through, allowing buyers to see what it's like to experience the property. For example, you don't want to take pictures of the walkthrough closet. In the video, though, you'll be able to see and experience how big it is.
If you're like most of my clients in the military, the garage is a really important spot. You don't want to take pictures of the garage, but walking through it is extremely important. That's where we keep all our gear, and most people keep workout stuff there. It’s where we spend a lot of time just being ourselves, so buyers need to know what it’s like.
The video is also going to get more attention than a property with just photos. As a buyer, would you want to look at a property that you can see photos and a video or just one or the other? All statistics show that the more opportunities you have to show visuals—whether it's video or photography—the more chances you’ll have to show your property.
Listing Your Home
Once the video and photographs of the property are shot, it's time to showcase your home online to your sphere of influence—the people you know love and trust. It’s also time for me to go to work and try to find the right buyer to bring to your property. Once we get the photos done, it's key that we share your listing to all the popular websites like Zillow, Trulia, or realtor.com. We want to make sure we can showcase all of the features of your home and get it in front of as many buyers as possible.
Behind the scenes, I'll be listing this property on the MLS. This is super important because that's where all the real estate professionals are. So whether you're looking for investors as your buyer or you want to get it out to all the other agents, we communicate through that platform. They'll instantly know all the details on how to show that property when it's for sale. They’ll also have all that good information that we're all looking for.
The reason why this is so important is that the vast majority of buyers are represented by an agent. That's a category of people that we want to market towards, getting on their radar. They can then bring those buyers to your property. Additionally, the key to listing on the MLS is how we position your property for sale. We need to get all the essential values of the property that you love in the content of the photography and videos. We then need to get it out to all the buyers and the agents that represent them.
When we list your home, we also want to capture all the things that you love about your property. This includes things like school systems, the daycare that you're close to, how close you are to the grocery store, and whatever activities you love to do in Southern California. The list can go on, but the important part is communicating to the buyer's agent so they can bring in a buyer. This will help us get top dollar at the closing table.
Strategic Marketing
The next step in the process is social media. We're going to need to post your property—including all the content we got from the photographer and videographer—on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and any place that you would interact with people. This is where the video truly comes into play in your marketing program. We can use it to run ads on your property and really gain momentum.
In addition to online marketing, we'll do the traditional things that every agent does. For example, we’ll still post a sign in your front yard. This is important because sometimes, marketing to your sphere in the neighborhood where you live is key. While somebody might be driving around and looking to buy a home, your neighbors are going to be driving by that property every day. They’re then going to call their best friends and try to get them to move into the neighborhood.
No one can sell a home like those who already live in the neighborhood. Your neighbors could easily paint the scene of their school-aged kids riding their bikes in a cul de sac with their friends, fulfilling that lifelong dream of living by their best friend. It always helps to have more ways to get the word out that your home is for sale.
The First Two Weeks
One of the most important factors that goes into this is how quickly we create the buzz, especially in the first two weeks. The best chance for you to bring top dollar to your house is the first two weeks of listing. To create that buzz, running ads during the first two weeks is really key to our success.
Now that we're back to having open houses, we're going to host a whole bunch of them in those first two weeks. Our goal is to get as much traffic through your property as possible. This will also help us create more buzz to get your home sold quickly and for the most profit.
Getting Top Dollar On Your Sale
I hope this helped you understand some of the things that we do to mark your property. Of course, there’s a lot of other things that go into it to get you top dollar on your sale. If you have questions or are thinking about listing your property, I’d be happy to walk you through the whole gamut of opportunities that we have.
I love helping our veterans and all people relocate to and from San Diego County around Camp Pendleton and in Southern California—and I’d be happy to help you, too. Simply feel free to reach out to me and I’ll be happy to connect! Don’t forget to also subscribe to my channel so you never miss an episode of my show, all about real estate and San Diego living. Stay tuned to see what I feature next!
