Buying your first home is a huge milestone in life, but selling it is also just as important. When you are considering selling your home, either to move into a larger one or relocate to another area, it is important that you get the best price possible for your home. While you can go it alone and sell the home on your own, it is better to get an experienced real estate agent involved to help you navigate all the tough spots.
Finding a Real Estate Agent
The first step is finding a real estate agent you like and are comfortable working with. If you can't agree on things or your personalities just are compatible, working on selling the home together will not work. Talk to a few different real estate agents and when you find one you really like, let them know you would like to work with them to list your home.
Staging Your Home
This is one point that not everyone agrees on but staging a home for sale does not have to mean adding a lot of fake items to the home. It can be as simple as moving the furniture to make the flow of a room feel more friendly or reducing the clutter in a home. Staging the home makes it ready to be shown at any time, allowing the real estate agent more flexibility in scheduling, and hopefully that equates to a quicker sale for you.
Photographing Your Home
Another hotly debated point, photographing your home to advertise and list it can be coordinated by the real estate agent. Some agents will photograph it themselves, so talk to them and see what the plan is for photography. There are professionals that specialize in real estate photography that will provide you with images for your listings if you prefer, but if the real estate agent is an accomplished photographer, you might save some costs and still get great pictures of the home.
Open Houses and Your Agent
Opening your home for potential buyers to come through and see it is great. It brings a lot of people to the home in a short amount of time and promotes competition between the buyers. Often, the agent will set up an open house on the weekend and ask that you make plans to be away for the day. A good agent can gauge the level of interest in your home from a couple of open houses, so work with them to get these done. They can be a great marketing tool and may make the difference in whether the house sells or not.