Selling your home in Milton

“A good first impression can work wonders”
J. K. Rowling

To attract buyers and get top dollar for your home it needs to make a good and lasting impression – follow these 5 steps to get your home ready to show:

1. Realtor Assessment
2. Tidy and Clean
3. Renovate and Repair
4. Stage your home to sell
5. Home Inspection

Step 1. Realtor Assessment

Your first step is to invite Milton Realtors to your home to give you an assessment and to help you make the most of your time, money, and resources to sell your home and get you the best possible return for your investment.

Step 2. Tidy and Clean

Getting your home tidy and clean will make it more inviting and welcoming – think of this as getting your home ready for critical parents and in-laws to visit.

Tidy, organize, de-clutter:

• Tidy up: make your beds and put your clothes away
• Get organized: straighten up your closets, cupboards, and shelves
• De-clutter: empty out your basement and garage
• Less is more – don’t just hide your stuff, get rid of everything you can.

Clean from top to bottom:

• get rid of cobwebs and dust
• wash the walls and clean the windows
• professionally clean the carpets
• mop the floors
• clean out and sanitize the fridge

Step 3. Renovate and Repair

You need potential buyers to see how well you are caring for your home and maintaining it – selling a home that is LOVED is so much easier than selling a home that is neglected. Time to get out the ‘honey do’ list and check off anything you have been putting off. If your list is too long or there are some items you are not comfortable doing, consider hiring people to get things done right and quickly. Also think about painting as a fresh coat of paint - even just a few accent walls – is an easy way to make your home look newer, brighter, happier. A little time and money put into fixing the little things will go a long way to seeing your home sold faster and for more money.

Step 4. Stage your home to sell

Staging is aimed at getting your buyers to fall in LOVE with your home, and that begins with removing everything personal to you like photos, your collected bric-a-brac, and everything stuck on your fridge door. You will want to consider bringing in a professional stager to make the most of every space so more potential buyers instantly see themselves living in your home – think of this as getting your home ready for a photographer from a magazine like ‘House & Home’ or ‘Style at Home’.

Step 5. Home Inspection

Having your home inspected before showing it to buyers has many benefits to help you sell your home, including:

• Less stress when you are in the know
• Price your home more accurately
• Get more offers and fewer negotiations

Your buyers are going to have your home professionally inspected so it is a good idea to first have your own inspection done so you are better prepared and can either fix things before hand or know what repairs and issues you will need to address in order to sell your home.

We can help get your home ready to sell

We are here to help you at every step and we will always tell it to you straight.

We know what it will take to get your home showing better than the other homes for sale in your neighbourhood.

We will work with you to plan what is needed to showcase your home’s unique features and highlights and determine the best improvements for maximum profit.

We will help you co-ordinate with reliable, trusted, and certified professionals from our network of contractors, cleaners, electricians, gardeners, handymen, inspectors, painters, plumbers, stagers, and many more.

You have questions: How do we know what our is home worth? Should we price our home low to generate more interest and maybe a ‘bidding war’ or price it high and negotiate? Should we price our home with 9s or 0s … 999,900 or 999,999 or 1,000,000? When can we change our asking price?

Milton Realtors will take the guess work out of pricing your home after assessing your home and comparing it with how similar homes have sold and are selling in your neighbourhood. Before listing your home and choosing your initial asking price, we will consider many factors in pricing your home including:

• how well your home shows
• how your home compares to similar homes listed in your area
• the price of similar homes recently sold and for sale in your area
• time of year and market trends
• how motivated you are to sell quickly

Keep in mind that your initial price or ‘asking price’ is a starting point to generate interest and can be changed depending on offers received and changes in the market. When receiving offers, Milton Realtors will help you negotiate to get the best possible value for your home so that it sells and so you don’t leave any money on the table.

You can begin marketing your home after getting your home ready to show and pricing it. Effective marketing will:

• showcase your home so it looks like a better value than competing homes in your neighbourhood,
• get the attention of everyone interested in buying a similar home in your area,
• result in more of the right kind of buyers visiting your home and making offers to purchase.

Milton Realtors will know how to market your home so the right buyers find it and will use some or all of the following approaches:

Email Newsletters and Networking: even before listing your home to the public on MLS, your Realtor can find buyers interested in your home.

Add to Public Listings: listing your home to the public on MLS so it will be found when searching the internet for matching criteria such as number of rooms, location, and price range.

For Sale Sign: while putting a ‘for sale’ sign on your lawn is not a requirement you will want to consider having one to give your neighbours, who already choose to live there, a chance to let their friends and family know about it.

Printed Materials: having brochures, flyers, and postcards are helpful in sparking interest for your neighbours and other Realtors to show their buyers – and also helpful for after a potential buyer has looked at your home as a take away reminder of how great your home is.

On-line Materials: creating custom web pages with more information such as floor plans, high quality photos, and videos can help sell your home to more people and be a landing page for all your marketing approaches to point to.

Open Houses: opening your home to the public allows buyers and other Realtors with many buyers, and your neighbours a chance to see your home without having to book an appointment – and sometimes you find a buyer who wasn’t even in the market for a new home.

Your home is ready to show, is priced right, and your marketing is effective, and now potential buyers are asking to see it – in person! Milton Realtors will work with you to schedule when they can show your home to prospective buyers and you can help by following these tips:

Keep your home tidy and clean – it helps to keep your things in order at all times so you will have less to do when a prospective buyer wants to visit.

Be ready to leave your home for showings – you can’t stick around when potential buyers are looking at your home, so be prepared with some places you can go: go visit friends and family, go take the dog for a walk, go shopping, go out for dinner.

Respond to feedback – in showing your home Milton Realtors will gather feedback and share it with you so you can resolve any concerns that are stopping buyers from making any offers.

Your home is ready to show, is priced right, your marketing is effective, buyers have been shown your home, and now you are receiving an offer or multiple offers. Milton Realtors will help you understand the details of an offer and help you decide what to negotiate and when to accept it or reject it.

We will receive the buyer’s written ‘Agreement of Purchase and Sale’ which is the legal binding agreement detailing:

• the price they will pay,
• the deadline to reply,
• the closing date,
• what is included such as appliances / furniture / window dressings,
• conditions such as financial approval / passing inspections / who pays for repairs, and
• everything that is needed to make the deal go through.

When you receive an offer, you can:

• accept it,
• reject it, or
• send a counter offer

Milton Realtors will work with you in this negotiating process to make sure you understand:

• what you are compromising in order to make the deal go through,
• how to win the deal, how to deal with multiple offers, or a ‘bidding war’, and
• when to reject a bad deal

To make the deal go through all conditions in the ‘Agreement of Purchase and Sale’ must be met and then the buyer needs to provide a deposit that is held in trust until closing.

You accepted an offer, all conditions have been met, the deposit has been paid… and all that is left is ‘closing’ and moving out. In ‘closing’ your lawyer will confirm the paperwork, verify the payment is received, transfer ownership, and get the keys to the new owners.