Selling your home in a highly desirable market can be an exciting feeling, but a nervous one as well. You want to take full advantage of the hot market and get the most money you can from selling your home.
Even in a white hot market like Santa Cruz, there are still things every seller and REALTOR® needs to know before listing a property. There are a number of ways to maximize your return when selling your home, and by missing a few of them, you might not make as much money as you could have.
Lauren Spencer is a REALTOR® with nearly 35 years of experience selling homes. She knows the real estate game and the Santa Cruz market, which gives her a unique perspective and well-earned reputation for knowing the best way to sell your home in a seller’s market.
Here are some tips she has for selling a home in Santa Cruz while house prices are so high and listings are so scarce.
Take Full Advantage Of The High Demand Real Estate Market
Whether the reason your selling is because it’s time to move on, or because you want to take full advantage of the current market value of your home, you’re going to want to get every last dollar you can. It’s not as simple as listing it for a high price and accepting the highest offer.
The number of Santa Cruz homes for sale are almost certainly less than buyers looking for real estate opportunities. It is important to drive up the demand for your home. Increasing the number of buyers looking at your listing is the best way to do this, and Lauren Spencer uses several effective strategies to market your home.
Prepare Your Santa Cruz Home
Sometimes a home will benefit from a staging, and other times it might be a waste of resources. Lauren Spencer knows the right time to do this. Either way, the home needs to be prepared. Some buyers need to visualize the way a home layout might look, and in these cases, staging it will better prepare the home to attract as many offers as possible.
When staging isn’t necessary, it’s important to have the home professionally cleaned for in-person viewings.
Lauren Spencer also has tips and tricks for preparing the home even when the viewing is not in person -- yet. Professional photography and having 3-D imaging and floor plans are available on MySantaCruzRealEstate.com is to fully showcase your pristine property, in all its glory!
Set The Right Price
There are a few different schools of thought on this one.
There are many who believe in setting the price just a hair under market value, attracting the most offers possible so that you can then negotiate. The other tactic is to list the property at just over market value, hoping to reach the highest offers.
Both of these pricing strategies are effective, but it’s important to know when and how to best employ them. Listing at just under could devalue the property, and listing just over might limit offers that could have been negotiated with to drive the price up.
Lauren Spencer knows exactly when and where to list the initial asking price in a seller’s market.
Attract Multiple Offers
Okay, this one seems obvious...but how do you do it?
Setting the right price and preparing the home are a couple we’ve already covered, but there are certainly more.
It’s important to pick the right day to go to market. Listing the home mid-week will typically mean it’ll get completely lost among the other houses for sale. Friday is the most popular day to list a home because then it will be most prominently featured among the new listings. Even more precise, set the listing to go live right at midnight - so those who are aware of checking for listings on Friday see it immediately.
There’s also useful strategies during the first stages of selling, like encouraging competitiveness by limiting the showings for the home, or declining to set a time for offer presentations. This is a little like playing hard to get, but when done with nuance and experience, can work wonders for selling your home.
Negotiate Effectively (but don’t get too greedy)
With the right approach, you’ll get to the negotiation stage of selling your home in the best position possible, with plenty of fantastic offers on the table.
But what’s the best way to begin fielding those offers, and negotiating with prospective buyers?
Chances are the offers will be quite similar to each other, so how does one counter offer without losing all of the hard work and opportunity?
There are a few different questions a seller might consider at this stage. Maybe you’re incredibly happy with one of the offers and you can go ahead and accept it! You are also free at this stage to submit counter offers, or even ask all interested parties to resubmit but with their best offer. It’s a delicate process, and can be difficult to determine what the best course of action is.
Negotiation takes skill and confidence, and is another great reason to have a REALTOR® with 35 years of experience in your corner!
REALTORS® Are There To Help!
REALTORS® are there to help you sell the house, but also confirm what a good and bad decision might be. They’ve seen plenty of similar scenarios and can often determine the best course of action.
Just because a real estate market is white hot like Santa Cruz doesn’t mean a house will automatically sell. Lauren Spencer has seen it all and knows the best tactics and advice to give. And like any great realtor, she’s receptive to your wants and needs and won’t be happy until you are.
Realtors also have an expertise in drafting the necessary legal documents. In a seller’s market, these deals also tend to happen very quickly and move even faster. Staying on top of everything to make sure things go smoothly is integral to selling your home. Even in the initial stages of appraising the property, a realtor knows the best and most efficient ways to start the process.
Lauren Spencer is a realtor who knows exactly how to maximize the price of your home, and diminish all of the risks -- especially in a lively market like Santa Cruz.
Are you thinking about selling your Santa Cruz home this year? Please contact Lauren Spencer online today, or call at 1-800-226-4717 - she'd love to help you out.
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