Guest Post: How to Sell Your House

Y’all, I have good friends. Friends who are more than happy to enable my laziness. A few weeks ago, Lyra wrote a guest post for me about her move to Cleveland. This week, continuing with my series of posts about home-buying, my friend Nova volunteered to write a guest post about her recent experience selling her home, which might be useful if you want to sell your house. It also means I don’t have to try to write a post right after returning from Cleveland! Bad news for you guys because you have to wait a week to hear about how that visit went 😉

Anyway, Nova and I met in high schools and have been besties ever since. She’s awesome and super smart and a wonderful person. Without further ado: Nova’s guest post.

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My husband and I bought a home in Wisconsin a couple of years ago, with plans to stay there for decades. But, after applying to a number of law schools around the country (including my alma mater in town), I decided to attend law school out of state (editor’s note: My girl is too modest to say it, but she’s going to Harvard. Your friends aren’t as cool as mine). So, we undertook the not at all stressful or emotional process of selling our home.

Having purchased a home very recently, I was pretty familiar with the real estate game in our town. Yet the process was still super overwhelming. Luckily, our sale ended up being really smooth for us, and I wanted to share a few important decision points/lessons learned:

Who to Sell with: Realtor vs. Online or Low-Cost Firms vs. FSBO

Working with a Realtor

As a seller, your realtor’s main job is to market your home. They do market research and help you set the right price. Their goal is to get as many potential buyers in there as possible and generate excitement about your home. They talk up your home with all the realtors they know (I swear realtors network more than MBA students). They also help you work through the process and can help you find home staging resources.

We signed a contract with a realtor, and it definitely was the right decision for us. First, she helped us price our home competitively. Realtors have access to databases that I don’t (mainly MLS), and the significant market research I’d done was… garbage. Although it’s true that you can get market research and an estimated sale price from a realtor for free, it’s also true that sometimes realtors can give you a high listing price to get you to sign with them.

Second, our realtor brought in a great stager and photographer (more on that below). Photos are what get people into your home.

Finally, our realtor marketed the hell out of our house and really worked the open house. I don’t remember all of the places that she posted our listing, but we decided to list our home on a Wednesday and not have any showings until our open house on Sunday. Dozens of people showed up at our open house, which was really significant for our neighborhood. She told prospective buyers that we’d be reviewing offers that evening. We got four offers by midnight.

I do not have the type of personality that could have gotten four offers by midnight. As long as people are still showing up to see a house before they buy it, it really helps to have a great-but-not-pushy salesperson with them at an open house.

The main disadvantage of hiring a realtor is of course that realtors are the most expensive option, generally taking a 3% cut of your sale price.

Flat-Fee Firms and Online Buyers

There are agencies that will market your home online, help you get photographs, and host an open house for a fixed price. It can be really appealing to do this because it could potentially mean an extra 3% in your pocket. I think it’s important to remember that you get what you pay for – less experience and fewer contacts. They are also less motivated to try to get you the highest offer.

I think whether this idea is right for you will be based on your current market. Our housing market this summer was hot for Wisconsin, which is very different from a hot market in New York or San Francisco. Before going this route, I would try to talk to people in your area that have used this service. Did they get a lot of prospective buyers? Did they receive an offer at or above their asking price in a reasonable time frame? How was the negotiation process? How did their sale price compare to other recent sales in the area?

There are also sites that literally buy your house from you, which seems insane to me. Am I just getting old? Do people just sell their home to an online firm that’ll likely lowball you and charges higher fees than a realtor just to avoid the stress of putting their house on the market? I understand the anxiety, trust me, but this is likely your largest investment. Don’t think that you will get a great deal going up against an expert investor on your own.

Perhaps eventually, realtors will be obsolete (feel free to read dozens of think pieces on this topic). However, I personally think the value add was worth it for us, and would be for most people who aren’t marketing and negotiation whizzes.

FSBO

As for FSBO, or For Sale By Owner, I’ve literally never heard of that going well for anyone. I remember as a kid there was a house up the street that had a For Sale By Owner sign for all eight years I lived there. It was the scary house on the street, and I wasn’t allowed to trick-or-treat there. That’s not the important part. The important part is that I lived in a cute NYC commuter town with a good school district, and a house walking distance from the train station did not sell for eight years. Scary house or not, that’s too long.

No, you should not try to sell what is, again, likely your largest investment with no experience. Yes, it’s weird when the owner is showing you around their home at an open house. Don’t be that person.

I’m not going to try to spend more time convincing you, because there are a lot of articles that will tell you why FSBO is a bad idea. Here’s an example.

How to Find a Realtor

If you decide to use a realtor, the next step is, of course, finding one. We knew our realtor because we bought our house with her just two years ago! We trusted her and we knew that she was an excellent saleswoman and had tons of experience and industry contacts. If you already know an excellent realtor, you’re all set!

When we were buying our home, I mainly researched realtors online – I think mostly on Zillow. Most of our friends hadn’t ever purchased a home, and of those who did, none had realtors that they were excited about referring. The online research worked well for me. If you see tons of rave reviews over many years, you know that the realtor has been in the game for a while, knows a lot of other realtors, and leaves their clients happy.

Try to find a realtor with many years of experience in your market. Ask them what services they provide – do they hire photographers and stagers? Do they pay to actually stage your home? Ask them about their marketing plan. Over 90% of buyers search for homes using online MLS-based listings. But if your realtor doesn’t market on social media, that’s a red flag. It’s 2019.

Staging Your Home

Our realtor paid for a stager to help us out. A lot of her tips were similar to things we had read online. However, I think a huge benefit of having a stager in your home is they see things that you don’t see. You love your home, you have an emotional connection to all your stuff, and maybe you never thought that some people might be turned off your 7 ft. tall artisan-made cat tree in the living room. We got recommendations for cheap ways to add interest and brighten up the space, as well as things to hide in the basement. Like, what the stager referred to as our “cat paraphernalia.” (editor’s note: How is this a NEGATIVE? I’m all about the cat paraphernalia).

As we were going through the to-do list, I kept thinking that this was a waste of time. Each task seemed so minor. But in the end, our house looked nicer than it ever had.

Our realtor thought that our staging helped us get four offers after the open house. People could really picture themselves living in our home. Definitely worth the two weekends we spent organizing and the $400 I spent on home decor.

We were lucky to have a large basement in our house, so we packed up everything we didn’t want out and stored it in the basement. If you don’t have extra storage space, I would recommend seeing if you can store your extraneous boxes at a friend’s place or rent a small storage locker. Having a well organized, clean space (including closets) makes a big difference when showing your home.

Now please let me brag about how pretty my house was:

Choosing an Offer

If you are in the very fortunate position to be choosing between multiple offers, you’ll need a strategy for choosing between those offers. It seems like the best way would be solely based on price. That may be true in many cases, but there are two other factors you’ll want to consider, especially if you have similar offers:

1. Financing/Risk – How are the buyers financing their home? All cash offers are generally the lowest risk, but, like, who has that money?  We received two nearly identical offers – one put 50% down, one put 3% down. We took the offer with 50% down because it seemed much less likely that the sale would fall through. We actually did receive a cash offer (how.), but it was much lower than the others.
2. Closing Date – When do you want or need to close on this home? Maybe you’re trying to buy a home and need this house sold as a contingency. Or maybe you have a massive tuition bill due in August that needs to be paid… That could impact your decision when choosing between multiple similar offers. Your realtor can let other agents know your preferred closing date. Ours did, and 3 of our offers used that date.

Although selling your home is stressful, there are a number of resources that can make it easier for you. As I’ve said, our selling agent was a huge help to us, and really smoothed out the process. I really think that working with an experienced agent is the best option for most people. If you’re thinking about selling your home, I hope this information clarified some decision points for you!

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Ok other veteran home buyers/sellers–does this track with your experience? Is there any other advice you would recommend? I’d love to hear it!

And, of course, a huge Thank You to Nova for writing such a thorough post of her experience. Love you, friend!