How to Sell My House Fast

5 Simple Steps in Selling a Home Quickly

Selling a home can seem like a complex and overwhelming process, especially if you are under pressure to do it quickly. Though there are many steps involved, they can be navigated smoothly if you plan ahead and work with knowledgeable professionals to avoid mistakes. Your real estate agent can help you with important steps like creating a timeline for selling your house, prepping it, listing it, advertising it, and getting to a sale.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

What is the process for selling a house?

If you’re getting ready to sell a home or want to be prepared for that time in the future, we’ve got you covered – our top real estate agents have chipped in their thoughts on how to sell your home fast painlessly while still getting the most value.

Home Prep

As soon as you are ready to sell your property, getting it to top aesthetic quality is crucial in order to maximize value. You will need it to look good for listing, marketing, showing, and appraising your home. With that in mind, here are our quick six steps for a sparkling home:

Prioritize Pristine Landscaping: This means get your lawn even and green, trim trees and hedges, and even consider adding some plants to spruce up the space. Natural accessories make for great accents to any plot of land, and can raise the value via tour perception and curb appeal (how good the home looks from the street). Many prospective buyers will also drive by the home at night. Landscape lighting is an affordable option that really improves the home’s charm when nightfall comes.
Make Every Repair: Obviously if you have glaring deficiencies such as holes in walls, broken windows, damaged doors or flooring, those need to be addressed ASAP. However, you should also take care of little things that might not bother you personally; no one wants to hear ‘oh, it’s just like that’ when shopping for a home. These include things like cleaning fixtures and vents, touching up appliances and surfaces, freshening or replacing old carpets, and repainting walls. These simple fixes will not only help your home faster, but you’ll get every dollar spent back through an increased sales price.
Remove Clutter: Your house needs to look as though it is ready to welcome in a new lifestyle and/or family. If you have all of your personal belongings, it will be hard for a prospective buyer to envision the potential of living there themselves. Put excess furniture in the garage and clean out those closets.
The kitchen sells the home: Make sure you put out fresh flowers, remove everything from the counters and take down those adorable refrigerator magnets. Put out colorful placemats and light a candle to make the whole house smell fresh.
Light and Bright Is Key: Open the blinds and curtains. Takedown those old fashion cornices, (sorry nobody wants those anymore). Wash the windows and put those dusty screens in the garage. Now turn on every light in the home and we are ready for the next owner to start living the dream.

Once you have prepared your home for sale, you are now ready to get it some exposure on the market.

Hire a Listing Agent

This is a step that can help create the most value over the life of a sales plan if you are working with the right professionals. There are ‘cost-cutting’ options or time-saving mechanisms that eschew traditional agents, but they all have hidden downside or opportunity costs.

A listing agent’s job is to get you the best possible price for your home, in the shortest amount of time. They are bonded and insured and they are licensed by your state government. In addition, an Agent is required to study and pass continual educational certifications and is bound by a code of ethics to always put your interest first. This means they are acting as a fiduciary and are duty bound to disclose all information they have about your home, the housing market, the buyer, and the transaction surrounding it. This process will include forms that only licensed agents will have available, including a binding contract to provide you as the seller with a litany of protections.

When compared to iBuyers, amateur agents, discount brokerages, or self-selling, there are also large tangible benefits. iBuyers such as Zillow, Offerpad, and Opendoor build in the costs of marketing and re-selling your home, and have to minimize what they pay you so that there is a profit margin when they resell your home. This is a drain on your equity and ultimately reduces the amount of money you have leftover when the sale is complete.

Finally, a professional agent will be able to list, show, market, and negotiate at the highest level for you. If the home needs repairs they will recommend contractors and even manage them to ensure you get great work at a fair price. When it all comes out in the wash, a listing agent’s fee is usually far less than the return they yield with their full suite of services, and remember they only get paid when the sale successfully closes.

Home Valuation

Once you have a listing agent and have established a time frame for selling your home quickly, the next step is to get a market valuation. This helps create a likely sales price range that your agent can work within to yield the results you are looking for and the closing costs in Arizona.

During the evaluation process, the appraiser will look analyze factors such as the age, location, and structural integrity of your home. They will check the roof, gutters, siding, and peek around the neighborhood for its overall quality. Next, they’ll review your upgrades and the overall condition of your home. They’ll look for features like pools, views, and proximity to things like schools and transportation.

Additionally, an evaluation will verify your house’s square footage, how functional the layout is, assess the room configuration.

Once all these have been accomplished, they’ll compare this information to other properties in the area that have recently sold. Now they simply perform calculations to add or reduce the price of the sold comparable to equal the features of your home. When complete, they’ll arrive at a likely sales price range and you will decide the list price.

Marketing a Home

You and your listing agent should work in conjunction to market your home through all possible avenues for a fast property sale. We recommend using traditional and modern platforms so you can reach all types of buyers before your agent vets the best responders. Consider these tactics:

Social Media: Your immediate network, your agent’s social media connections, and local marketplaces are all extremely powerful tools. Your sphere of influence is a great place to solicit interested parties.
Youtube: Video is the soup de jour of marketing pro’s and youtube has become one of the highest performing search engines. People are looking for everything from advice to entertainment and products and now even homes. Make a quick video showcasing your property and the neighborhood and share with this world wide audience.
Photos, Fliers, Print Media: With much of the attention on digital platforms, a marketing edge can still be found by creating an interesting flier or displaying a unique sign in the community. The whole goal of marketing is to attract attention and begin a conversation, so make sure every photo you take and use in these displays is high quality, well-lit, and up to professional standards.
Website: This is an uncommon move that has shown to create significant yield for sellers in many markets. If your agent is savvy enough, you can create a professional looking website to market the specific sale of your home. There are plenty of template-based sites that require no coding, and from there it is a matter of your picture quality, professional content, and marketing ability. You can use your custom website to supplement your social media listings as well!

All told, there are dozens of ways you can market a home. What matters most is that you and your agent implement creative, professional, and easy-to-understand marketing practices.

Closing

The contract stipulates the terms of the closing and the Agent will guide you through each step. Once the contract is executed it is delivered to an impartial third party called a title agency. The title company will then officially open escrow and assign an Escrow officer.

The escrow officer will review the contract, and make sure all parties adhere to its terms. They will research the homes history to ensure you have the legal right to sell and that there are no incumbrances or liens on the property. If the title is clear, they will order an insurance company to protect the buyer and the seller if there are future claims pertaining to ownership of the property.

When the loan documents arrive from the lender, the Escrow officer will prepare a settlement statement and instruct all parties as to the amounts needed to close. The parties will then each schedule a time to sign the deed and other documents.

Typically at this time, the buyers Agent will also schedule a final walk-through of the property to ensure its condition is satisfactory. When complete the Buyer’s Agent will instruct the Escrow officer to proceed to close. The escrow officer will record the sale with the County Recorder and the property will no longer belong to you. Hoorayyy!!!

Hire a Professional Agent

Century 21 has been representing clients in the greater Phoenix area for decades, and our track record of quick and easy sales is unmatched. We pride ourselves on our market knowledge via experience and dedication to keeping up with the fast-paced changes so that you can get the best value on selling your home.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help make a stress-free and profitable home sale a reality, reach out today – it’s a conversation well-worth starting.

How to Sell My House Fast

5 Simple Steps in Selling a Home Quickly

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