PALM SPRINGS REAL ESTATE, PALM DESERT REAL ESTATE, PALM SPRINGS REALTOR AND PALM SPRINGS REAL ESTATE AGENT 

HOME SELLING TIPS

How To Sell Your Home  or House Fast For the Most

That's what you want in a nutshell. Your home is for sale and you don't want to lose one nickel of your home's appreciation, if you can avoid it.  You want to sell your home fast so you can buy something even better or a piece of real estate that is more convenient to your lifestyle and the place you want to live at this point in your life.

At Sebastian Gibson Properties our Realtors will show you how to do just that. While some of the tips we have for you will be told to you in secret, once you've signed a listing agreement, we can definitely tell you the two most important things that will help you sell your home faster than other properties are (1) the right price, and (2) the right marketing.

Other real estate agents with more important things to do with their time than to focus on your home will want to run a comparative market analysis without taking into consideration the improvements that make your property more valuable than that of your neighbors. We won't run our analysis until we know all of the selling points of your home and can then determine the best selling price for your home and obtain the most for you.

It's important to know that the most important price you put on your home is the opening price. When your property first comes onto the market is the time it will receive the most attention. We have ways of maximizing that attention to your home even further. Therefore, the perfect price to sell your home fast needs to be chosen with care and analysis. If the price set for your home is too much, other Realtors will ignore it. If the price you set for your home is set too low in hopes of starting a bidding war that doesn't come to pass, it may be impossible to sell your home later at a higher price. But a price that is set just right can result in a flurry of activity and the thing you want most, a quick sale of your home at a good price.

How to Make Your House Impossible to Resist

First, clean up your house. We don't mean just sweep the floors of your house. Hire some professional cleaners to clean the carpet, wash the windows you can't reach and to clean everything else you would otherwise not think to clean in your house.

Second, get rid of any clutter. We don't mean just the clutter on the tables and counter tops or that you should shove it into drawers. The clutter in the drawers needs to be cleaned up too. Home buyers have a nasty habit of opening those drawers and cabinets and a messy house can make them a lot less interested in buying your home. So get some boxes and put your things into your garage. The garage should look neat too, but another few boxes won't hurt.

Clean out the cabinets under any sink fixtures. New home buyers will want to look for plumbing leaks. And if you have a plumbing leak, fix it. Clutter won't hide it, it

If your closet is crammed so full, it looks too small, take out the clothes and shoes you don't wear and either store them or give them to charity. You want your buyers to see all the extra space they will have for their things.

Are your patios bare or uninviting? The cost of a bench or two and some potted blooming flowers can change that quickly and the cost of these items to the sale of your home is negligible.

Negotiating Tools

At Sebastian Gibson Properties, our Realtors are negotiating and marketing specialists.

If your house is an expensive one but is not newly built, we may wish to have you consider offering either a bonus to the buyer's agent who finds a buyer for your home or a free home warranty to the buyer themselves. An offer such as this that takes some of the worry out of buying an older house can go a long way toward getting that deal accomplished. And the cost of a free home warranty is likely to be a lot less expensive than reducing the price of your home if it is not selling quickly.

Things to Fix Up In Your Home Before You Sell

Make sure all the plumbing in your home works perfectly and shines like the sun. If you can't get them to shine, purchase new fixtures. You don't need to buy something fancy, just something new and shiny. Stains on the porcelain in many cases can be removed by your professional cleaning crew.

Don't spend large sums of money on your home fixing things up. But painting walls can be one of your best opportunities to spruce up your house and is something that you may be able to do yourself. Remember to choose colors that will appeal to the greatest number of buyers. Think in terms of neutral colors.

If the carpet is dirty, have it professionally cleaned. If it is really dirty, have it cleaned twice. Tiles that are broken or stained should be replaced or cleaned too. The doors should all open and close perfectly. If the entrance door handles to your home are worn or discolored, change them or have them changed. You know what they say about a first impression, and it will be formed as soon as the buyer grips that door handle.

Air fresheners are a bad choice. People are allergic. Everyone dislikes certain smells. And air fresheners can be overpowering. If your house has odors you want to remove those odors, not cover them up. If your house still doesn't smell that great after cleaning and airing it out, place fresh flowers around the house when you are showing it. There's nothing like the smell of fresh roses.

Use your money wisely. Remodel what you must, repair whatever is necessary. Try not to incur major expenses that will affect your ability to purchase a new home.

Things to Fix Up Outside Your Home Before You Sell

How does your landscaping compare to that of your neighbors? If it doesn't compare, spruce it up. Blooming flowers won't set you back and a few rows of color can make your house the one that stands out on the block.

If you have a lawn that isn't green, use the type of watering fertilizer that doesn't smell but quickly adds color and health to an unhealthy lawn. Where necessary, either re-sod or plant new seed.

How does the exterior paint compare to the houses around you? If it isn't equal to the houses owned by your neighbors, you may need to repaint. This can be a major investment but is probably worth it unless you are willing to sell your home as a fixer-upper. The same goes for the roof. If it leaks, you will have to disclose it. So you need to either fix it or again be willing to accept a reduced price by disclosing the problem and selling the house as one in need of repair.

If you have a pool or spa, it needs to be kept clean and sparkling. Avoid using too much chlorine.

All of the exterior doors and entrances need to be freshly painted for that great first impression. Door handles should gleam, and the doors and gates and keys should work flawlessly. Finally, be sure to remove any name tags. You want the new buyers looking at your home to think of your house as their home, not the Smith Residence or what your shingle states.

There is a thin line between making a home attractive to a new buyer with fresh flowers and making a home look too homey and lived in such that a new buyer may be unable to imagine their furnishings amidst your clutter and homey touches. A Sebastian Gibson Properties agent or broker can help you in making these choices.

All Realtors Are Not The Same

You want a realtor who will listen to you and one that can also offer you good advice. You want a Sebastian Gibson Properties agent or broker. There's plenty of time after we've learned about your property and what your needs are to have you sign a listing agreement.

First, we want to hear from you everything you've put into your property. We want to hear what additions you made, what type of carpet you installed, how you picked the wallpaper and how many kids you raised in your home. A comparative market analysis of homes without the improvements you've made is about as worthless as yesterday's newspaper.

Only after we know everything there is to know about your property and have taken a good dozen pictures to see how well we can show it off, will we run a comparative market analysis of homes similar to what we now know you are selling.

Then we will listen to your needs. You may have a price that you simply must obtain in order to purchase another home you have your eye on. You may have a deadline for moving and need to ensure that the opening price you place on your home ensures that you will receive the maximum interest from other buyers.

In an extreme situation, we may want to offer other agents a further incentive for finding a buyer, such as a bonus.

While many sellers seek to obtain a reduced commission from the realtor they hire, what they fail to realize is that by similarly reducing the split of that commission to the agent who finds a buyer, they are probably ensuring that their home will receive a much reduced interest from other real estate agents.

The fact of life is that real estate agents look at what properties have the highest commission rates. A million dollar property with a six percent commission that will give three percent to the agent who finds a buyer will give that agent ten thousand more dollars than a similarly priced property with only a four percent commission split evenly between the buyer's and the seller's agents. With that in mind, you can guess what properties the buyers' agents will focus on and if your house has a reduced commission, it won't be yours.

Choosing A Price For The Sale Of Your House That Is Right

If you pick an agent who doesn't know how to price your house and overprices it, again you may cause other agents to shun your house. They may not even want to take the time to preview your house as opposed to homes that are priced more realistically.

Once you have to drop your price, it carries a stigma that something is wrong with it. The longer it sits on the market, the more it becomes yesterday's news. Another price drop and agents will really think there is something wrong with your house and no amount of coaxing will cause them to want to preview it.

Sebastian Gibson Properties

At Sebastian Gibson Properties we want to strike fast, strike hard and sell your home while there is the maximum amount of interest in it - and that is when it is a "new listing."

Perhaps the most common mistake we see other real estate agents make is at the worst possible time. They have that most prized possession - a new home listing. Instead of taking it and running for the goal line, they drop the ball.

The first thing they do is put the listing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). That's fine. But they take virtually no time to write it up. Instead of describing your home in terms that will excite other agents to want to see your home and sell it to their buyers, the real estate agent writing the listing will make your house sound no different than any other property.

Then they make the worst mistake of all. Without waiting to take the best possible pictures of their new listing, they take none or one or two horrible pictures of the house and only post their dull listing with no photographs whatsoever, or only one bad photo of the back yard view.

Just when the new listing has appeared on the MLS and real estate agents are looking for a hot property to recommend to the buyers they are working with, the real estate agents who should be salivating at the pictures of your home instead can't tell a thing from the listing.

Sebastian Gibson Properties agents or brokers won't make these mistakes. Once you've signed a listing agreement with SGP, we begin planning our advertising campaign on multiple fronts, including making a listing for the MLS that will stand out among all the other boringly described properties and which will offer beautiful photographs of all of the best views of your house, inside and exterior.

We will begin planning our advertising program on the internet or in the Desert Sun or other select local publications and we will feature your property on the  Featured Homes  or  Land for Sale  pages of this website.

If you found this website, you know other buyers are also finding it and looking to see what houses we are featuring at the present moment, and yours will be featured prominently.

We may arrange for broker previews, open houses for dates convenient for you, and while food and drink aren't necessary for open houses, we know that nothing attracts brokers to you home like the offer of free food and soft drinks and SGP offers food that entices brokers with discriminating tastes.

Most likely we may also want to send announcements to the other homeowners in your neighborhood. It is not uncommon that your neighbors may have friends interested in moving into your neighborhood and who may want to purchase your home before someone else does.

An open house will also allow your neighbors to see you house and start a buzz among all of their friends about that wonderful house they saw and how beautifully it is decorated (not to mention what your price means to the value of their home if it sells quickly).

The listing contract we use is called an Exclusive Right to Sell agreement. With this type of agreement, an agent has a reasonable expectation of earning back the money we spend marketing your home and makes it in our interest to market your home not just to buyer's agents but also to buyers looking on their own without an agent.

We want to list your house and market it such that it not only achieves the goal price we set in our discussions with you, but a price and a marketing campaign that has the possibility of causing a biding frenzy for your home.

At Sebastian Gibson Properties you will receive the full professional services of a real estate specialist who is a realtor and who can direct a full range of resources to the marketing of your home. Your property is unique and it takes an organization such as SGP with the marketing experience that we have to help you achieve the result you desire.

And when the sale of your home is complete, our services don't end there. Our specialists will follow up with you to see if there are any further service needs we can offer you in either the sale of this property or the purchase of your next home.