The Gist:

How does selling your house actually work? Obviously you just put a sign on your front lawn and wait for the money, right?

• Technically that would qualify as an approach, but it wouldn’t achieve most seller’s goals because anyone can sell a house. It’s selling a house for the most the market can bear that takes skill.

Here is how selling a house works:

1. Buyers need to know about it!

• The competition for buyers attention when it comes to real estate is one of the most competitive pools out there.

• Because the stakes are so high, there are many marketers with great skills and big budgets that are competing against you.

• Even the MLS is a competition, where there are close to 300 fields to enter data about the house.

2. Buyers need to feel good about the house while they are walking through it.

• Show experience has a huge impact when getting a buyer to part with the most money they will pay.

• We find that this can actually be disruptive when we work with buyers. Sometimes someone will want to buy a property that feels better to them over something that may be a better example of real estate.

• Alternatively, houses that show families struggling with storage space and lack of cleanliness is probably the biggest thief of resale values.

3. Buyers need to see that the house brings them more value than the other things they can buy at the same price.

• Marketing gets you to this final test, and show experience is how you compete to be a buyers final choice, but they are normally walking through 6 other houses the same day that they see yours. These properties usually have two things in common: Price and location.

• So if your house makes it to the showing list, then to the final three… List price is going to determine your outcome.

• If you price more than the average distance between list and sale price above the market, you’re pretty much out of the running.

When it comes to real estate, it’s interesting to see the variance between the people that compete in the market. Imagine that real estate was NHL hockey, but anyone could play and no one was forced to retire. That means that someone who is just learning to skate is in the same competition with Connor McDavid.

This is why we suggest interviewing multiple agents, and why we suggest that if you are going to do it yourself that you work hard to prepare!

Want to know how much your house is worth?

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