Listings That Maximize Seller Proceeds
When you sell your home, you can do anything from nothing to a full home remodel. So how do you figure out the right balance of listing preparation to maximize your net seller proceeds? Lets go through your selling options. For each example, we are going to use the assumption that your home is worth $400,000 and your outstanding mortgage balance is $250,000.
Option #1: For Sale by Owner
This is by far the toughest way to sell your home. You will need to learn all of the forms, laws, rules and regulations. You will also need to figure out how to attract buyers that do not have Realtors. On average, FSBO's sell for 23.4% less than homes listed by Realtors.
Estimated Sale Amount: $306,400
Commission: $0 (0%)
Closing Costs: $4,600 (1.5%)
Loan Payoff: $250,000
Net Seller Proceeds: $51,800
Option #2: The Guaranteed Offer
This is by far the easiest way to sell your home. No effort whatsoever. However, it is estimated that you will get about 20% less on the sale price. Extremely easy and extremely expensive when it comes to your bottom line.
Estimated Sale Amount: $320,000
Commission: $0 (0%)
Closing Costs: $4,800 (1.5%)
Loan Payoff: $250,000
Net Seller Proceeds: $65,200
Option #3: Discount - High Volume Realtor
It's not hard to find a discount Realtor that will list your home for 4% or potentially even a small flat fee. The upside to this is you do get some online exposure just as you would with any other realtor. The downsides are the discount realtor is going to spend almost zero time on your home. This is becuase they have to do such a large number of listings at discount prices to stay afloat. You will not receive excellent listing prep, the photography crew will be low cost, the online listing presence will not showcase your home in it's best light and most importantly the listing agent will not be as committed in the negotiation process. They will also very likely lower the buyer agent payout to 2% or less which sadly motivates the average buyers agent to encourage their clients look elsewhere.
Estimated Sale Amount: $385,000
Commission: $15,400 (4%)
Closing Costs: $5,775 (1.5%)
Loan Payoff: $250,000
Net Seller Proceeds: $113,825
Option #4: Full Service - Experienced Realtor
A full service - experienced Realtor is going to take the time to evaluate your home sale in depth. Determining everything that makes sense in terms of listing prep, providing staging advice, home cleaning, top notch photographers and an overall understanding of the target market for your home and how to market your home to that target market. This type of realtor has will negotiate at a high level to squeeze every penny out of your homes sale. Buyers agents will be fully motivated to sell your home as they will be paid a full 2.7% of the 6% total commission.
Estimated Sale Amount: $400,000
Commission: $24,000 (6%)
Closing Costs: $6,000 (1.5%)
Loan Payoff: $250,000
Net Seller Proceeds: $120,000
Option #5: "Luxury" Realtor
Often times the high priced "Luxury" realtors end up offering the same exact service as option #4. They market themselves as luxury realtors with the advantage of having experience selling lots of luxury homes. It's pretty common for these Realtors to have only sold one or two luxury homes and now brand themselves as the luxury expert.
Estimated Sale Amount: $400,000
Commission: $28,000 (7%)
Closing Costs: $6,000 (1.5%)
Loan Payoff: $250,000
Net Seller Proceeds: $116,000
Summary
Through 7 years of consistently studying and steadily tweaking his listings, Chuck has found that Option #4 is by far the highest value listing approach. Netting the seller more money than any of the other options with limited effort from the seller. Note: the sellers still have to vacate the home for showings but overall feedback has been the relative small effort to list this way is absolutely worth it when considering massive difference in seller proceeds.
Note: Every home sale is different and exact dollar amounts will vary. These examples are based on market data along with Chuck's personal experience.
Chuck's Listing Process
Every seller is free to go with whatever process makes the most sense to them. If you are interested in absolutley maximizing every penny you can get out of your home, this is Chucks process:
1) Home Evaluation: Chuck personally comes to your home for a home tour to get a full understanding of your homes condition.
2) Listing Game Plan: Chuck develops a full roadmap for getting your home photo ready. Depending on the home, this typically includes decluttering, staging advice from his team of stagers, a full home deep clean and advice on what repairs are worth while to net you more on the home sale than the cost of the repair.
3) Execution of Listing Prep: Chuck's listings include the cost of staging and decluttering advice, full home deep clean and up to $1,000 in repairs to get your home looking market ready. Once the home is market ready Chuck brings in his team of photographers from spacecrafting (arguably the best real estate photography in MN) to get all the best angles of your home. Chuck leverages these photos and video to build out a full online marketing package that most importantly showcases your listing in it's best light, but also pushes your homes exposure out over social media channels.
4) Go Live: Studies and Chuck's experience have determined the best way to bring your home to market is to go on as "Coming Soon" on a Tuesday and go live on the Market Friday morning. This allows buyers to have plenty of time to schedule their showing for the weekend and provides the perfect setup to generate multiple offers for a Sunday evening deadline. A lot of home buyers will shy away from Weekday deadlines because they don't know if they will be available to make any last minute decisions while at work.
5) Communication: You will receive a daily brief from Chuck every single day throughout the home sale process. It's pretty common for listing agents to disappear after the home has been listed but Chuck understands how frustrating that can be. Whether there's no new or a ton of news, you can rest assured he will provide you a summary of what's going on with your listing.
6) Closing Process: Throughout 7 years of listing homes Chuck has assembled an incredibly experienced and professional title team. His team assures they will do everything in their control to make sure your home closes on time. In Chuck's history with this team, they have never once had to push back a closing date.
If you wish to schedule a free, no obligation home equity evaluation, send Chuck a message below and he'll respond promptly to get it on the calendar.