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Move Out Date Considerations

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Part of preparing for the close of escrow is making sure you’re fully moved out by the closing date. While there aren’t many set-in-stone rules about how to handle the move out, a little effort can go a long way with buyers.

You’ll likely be exhausted after finalizing everything and preparing all your furniture for the move. Remember, your buyers will be equally tired and will appreciate it if you’ve nicely prepared the home for the transition. Here are some things you can do during your move out to help both your buyers and yourself.

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Closing Escrow and Transferring Home Ownership

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Ah, closing escrow, nothing else feels quite like it! If you’ve made it this far, congratulations are in order. After preparing your home, pricing and listing it effectively, you’ve gone through the endless showings and gathered offers. You’ve gone through initial negotiations and selected the best offer, followed by more negotiations and the opening of escrow.

Then you successfully navigated the inspection and appraisal process, provided the necessary documentation to the title company and weathered the waiting period. Finally, the time has come to transfer ownership, and most importantly, to get paid!

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How to Prepare for a Home Appraisal and Buyer Inspection

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Part of the escrow process is the ordering of an appraisal by the buyer’s lender. Another major aspect is the ordering of a home inspection by the buyer themselves. It’s important to understand the goal and function of each of these. It’s also important to know what to expect as the home seller from each of these buyer-side actions. 

Keep in mind, even if selling to an all-cash buyer, they’ll likely still require a home inspection prior to closing. They may request a home appraisal too, even though there’s no lender involved in the sale. While you can potentially negotiate for no contingencies, it’s rare that buyers will move forward without at least an inspection.

Thus, it’s important to be prepared for both a home appraisal and buyer inspection, regardless of the circumstances of the sale.

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Required Documentation and Funds for Escrow

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Although escrow is an inevitable part of any financed home sale, most people are unfamiliar with the process prior to going through it for the first time. Obviously, it behooves you to fully understand all portions of the sales process prior to jumping in with both feet. Let’s start by summarizing what escrow is.

An escrow is a neutral location in which to store documentation and funds related to the purchase/sale of real estate. The escrow officer—which in California is the title company—acts as the arbiter of this account. They serve as both an unbiased third party enforcing the rules of the process, and to coordinate the mountain of documentation and actions needed to close out the sale.

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Employing Strategic Negotiation Practices

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For most sellers, it’s important to define what strategic negotiation looks like during the offer response phase. Without employing effective negotiation strategies, sellers end up selling their homes for lower prices and/or with more contingencies in place. This obviously means lower profits and a higher chance of headaches, which is the opposite of what we’re going for.

While it’s definitely possible to get a great offer off the bat, it’s not usually the case. However, it is more likely to occur in a seller’s market. Buyers are less confident that they’ll be able to bring the price down lower than asking when there’s a multiple offer situation. In a very hot seller’s market, multiple offers become the norm. Thus, the impetus for better initial offers increases.

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How to Navigate Multiple Offers and Bidding Wars

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You’ve properly prepared your home for sale, and you’ve listed it at a fair market price. Showings are well underway, with a successful open house and several private showings. At this point, you should start receiving offers from prospective buyers.

Market conditions and the specific circumstances of your own listing will dictate how you proceed. This includes the optimal method of collecting such offers and subsequent negotiation strategy. Understanding these variables and how they should impact your approach is quite important.

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Scheduling Appointments for Individual Home Showings

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As we’ve discussed previously, open houses are a crucial element to any home selling strategy. This is because they’re the most efficient way to get as many buyers through your home as possible. However, it’s often private home showings that result in the serious offers. Therefore, it’s important to plan for incorporating both approaches into your home sale process.

It’s not unheard of for sellers to receive offers directly from open houses. Still, it’s reasonable to expect that a serious buyer will want to schedule a second showing first.

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Traditional Open House vs. Broker’s Open vs. Virtual Open House

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Showing your home can be the most stressful part of the sales process. It’s hard enough having strangers constantly walking through your personal living space. When you combine that with the stress of selling your home in general, it can become a lot to handle.

The good news is that with a little creativity and strategy, you can limit the burden on your family. Better yet, you’ll be able to maximize the chances of getting a great offer at the same time. Other than making your home available, this part of the sales process should be managed completely by your agent.

Open houses are one of the “bread and butter” marketing tools in a real estate agent’s belt. Recent advancements in technology and internet services have made it easier than ever for home sellers (and their agents) to connect with home buyers.

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Coming Up With an Amazing Home Listing Description

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Just as the listing photos and videos provide the visual context of your home to prospective buyers, a well-written home listing description tells the story. This is your chance to guide the home buyer’s imagination towards seeing themselves living comfortably and enjoyably in your home.

A great property description consists of four main elements. It begins with a captivating headline and a powerful opening statement. This is followed by a keyword-rich features list, and everything is wrapped up with a solid call to action. Let’s go through each in turn and what differentiates an effective example and an ineffective one.

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Why Home Listing Photos and Videos Are So Important

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Ok, you’ve rolled up your sleeves and handled all of the groundwork. Now, it’s time to list your home for sale. This is the point at which your real estate agent really needs to shine. The majority of the workload now falls on them to get your home through to as many home buyers as possible.

One of the biggest myths that permeates the real estate industry is that houses will sell themselves. While a well-priced, thoughtfully-staged home is a good start, keep in mind that there are many other options for buyers out there as well. It’s important that your home is elevated above the competition, and that its advantages are showcased far and wide.

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The 3 D’s of Preparing Your Home for Sale

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Your potential buyers’ imaginations are one of your biggest allies during the home selling process. It’s important that you fully understand this fundamental concept while preparing your home for sale. It will help bring to light why it’s so important that you keep the place spotless and remove any personal touch before anyone steps inside of it. There’s three main concepts to keep in mind that I like to call the 3 D’s: declutter, depersonalize, and deep clean.

Make sure to schedule time to perform all three—and recurring attention when warranted. You’ll notice that you get better overall feedback from showings and open houses than you will if your home is kept in a “lived in” state. Let’s go into each of the three in some depth to explain how they will impact your selling efforts.

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Developing a Winning Home Sale Preparation Strategy

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For most home sales, getting your home in order is one of the most important things you can do. Doing so will help quickly increase perceived value and ensure you get fair-priced offers. Accomplishing this goal starts with taking the time to define a home sale preparation plan. As is often said, first impressions are everything. Thus, you want to put your home in the best possible light and amaze anyone who comes to an open house or private showing.

Before you focus on the finishing touches, you’ll need to deal with the basic aspects of home sale preparation. The scope of this prep will be individual to each property. Factors such as the property condition, existing furnishings and issues discovered during the home pre-listing audit all play a large role in what needs to be done.

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Buying and selling, simplified.

We believe real estate transactions are about more than just completing the sale at all costs. A great experience leaves both the seller and the buyer feeling confident that they made the right choice. For sellers, it's all about providing pre, during and post-sale support to help close sales quickly and for the desired sales price. For buyers, we look at the unique needs and desires of our clients to find the best properties available, and to help them close within the desired price range.

Our Approach

We imagine the above sounds like it can probably get complicated, and it most certainly can! However, we take care of all of the details involved and guide our clients through the entire process, so that they can sit back and enjoy a simple experience from start to finish.

It's what we call our hoLISTic approach to real estate, and it's what separates us from the rest of the crowd.