Leave a Message

Thank you for your message. We will be in touch with you shortly.

A Step-by-Step First Time Seller's Guide

Putting your home on the market can be a stressful process, especially when you don’t know what to expect. Fortunately, with the help of an experienced team of real estate agents and this easy-to-follow guide, you can smoothly complete the process. Following these steps will help you prepare so you can get organized and sell your home for the best possible price.

main

Step 1: Understand Why You're Selling

What do you want to accomplish with the sale of your home? Do you want to make a certain amount of money that you can put toward a larger or nicer home? Do you need to sell it as soon as possible to facilitate a move to a new city or area? Once you understand your needs, you can better craft your offer. For example, if you need to sell quickly, you might want to price your home lower than if your goal is to make a certain profit margin. Make sure you convey these needs to your team of real estate agents so they can adjust your selling price accordingly.

main

Step 2: Determine Selling Price

Knowing how to price your home is one of the most important parts of the selling process. When you set a fair price in the beginning, you’ll get the most interest from other real estate agents and prospective buyers. Overpricing your home could lead to reduced interest, and underpricing leads to receiving less than what your home is worth. Working with a team of real estate agents is the best way to determine the right selling price for your home. A team of experienced real estate agents can determine what other comparable homes are selling for, evaluate the current market, and may even suggest a home appraisal.

main

Step 3: Start Preparations

If you’ve kept your home in showroom condition since you’ve lived in it, you’re in the minority of homeowners. Once you price your home, it’s time to start getting it ready to be shown to potential buyers. This includes getting rid of clutter, depersonalizing the space so that buyers can envision themselves there, making any small repairs, and doing a deep clean to make sure your home is in pristine condition.

main

Step 4: Develop a Marketing Strategy

We will develop a marketing strategy that is perfect for advertising your home. This involves listing the home and then driving the right people to the listing through social media campaigns, agent-to-agent referrals, traditional media, and/or SEO advertising. Our team creates a marketing campaign that aims to get the most possible traffic to your listing in the first three weeks after becoming a client.

main

Step 5: Evaluate Offers

Receiving an offer is an exciting part of the process, but it doesn’t mean the journey is over. We will evaluate each offer and make sure the party making the offer is prequalified or pre-approved by a mortgage lender and that their offer is acceptable to you. If the offer is too low, you can make a counteroffer. You can also use a variety of other tactics that may help seal the deal, such as covering some or all of the closing costs, making repairs, adjusting the move-in date, or leaving some appliances or fixtures for the new buyer.

main

Step 6: Accept an Offer

Once we deem the offer is acceptable, we will review the proposed contract to make sure it’s all in order and includes the necessary components such as deposit amount, down payment, financing, inspection rights and repair allowances, contingencies, settlement date, and a list of fees and who will pay them. When both parties have agreed to the terms, a final contract will be prepared by your team of real estate agents.

main

Step 7: Get Ready to Close

You have accepted an offer and are now very close to the end of your selling journey. But first, you and the buyer must make a list of what needs to be done before closing. In some cases, your home may need to be formally inspected, surveyed, and appraised. In other cases, major or minor repairs will need to be made before the house can close. We will head up efforts to develop and execute this list, get each action item paid for by the correct party, and make sure everything is in order by the closing date. A few days before the closing date, we will call the company closing the transaction to make sure everything is ready to go. If you haven’t done so already, you also need to make arrangements to move out of the home so the new buyer can take possession.

main

Step 8: Close

You’ve reached the last step in the selling process. When you close on a home you are selling, you are legally transferring ownership of the property to the new buyer. We will meet with the company closing the transaction to sign the final paperwork and go over any issues that have not yet been taken care of. During this time, you can also make plans with your team of real estate agents to handle final details such as canceling utilities, cable, and lawn or trash services, changing the name on accounts that the new owner is retaining, and ensuring the new owner has instructions for all appliances that will remain in the home.

Congratulations!

Once you've sold your home, you're free to take the next step on your journey! Whether this is relocating to a new city, moving into a larger home, or downsizing and enjoying your life as an empty-nester, knowing that all your selling responsibilities have been taken care of will help you achieve peace of mind as you embark on your new path.

Seller
Buyer
Seller
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Colleen is rated in the top 1% of best Real Estate Agents in the entire San Francisco Bay Area and beyond because of her client-centric approach. She is a fantastic realtor who is up-to-date and completely knowledgeable of all aspects of real estate. She listens to her clients’ needs and desires and then provides the best advice using a stress-free approach. Loyalty comes first for Colleen because she un...

— Seller

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

We can’t thank Colleen enough for the perfect job she did helping us find and purchase our apartment in SF. She come to quickly understand what we wanted and found several places to show us. Our viewing days were perfectly orchestrated. In the end, she had to go way over and beyond the normal role of buyers’ agent because the seller’s agent was not from SF, didn’t know the local rules, and was just no...

— Buyer

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Colleen and her team are absolutely FANTASTIC. You cannot find a more wonderful, caring, and professional person to work with. She helped my parents navigate a difficult sell. Being immigrants, my parents were often faced with language barriers in prior experiences, but Colleen was masterful. She was able to connect with them, figure out their goals, set expectations, and exceed those expectations in lea...

— Seller

Work With Us

Whether clients need an architect, designer, stager, contractor, lender, or friendly counsel, Colleen Cotter Real Estate Group offers invaluable referrals and guidance. Colleen Cotter Real Estate Group has partners across the country and Bay Area including Burlingame, San Mateo, Marin, Silicon Valley, East Bay, Lake Tahoe, Wine Country, Chicago, Los Angeles, and NYC.