6 Things You MUST DO Before Selling Your Home

Posted by on Wednesday, March 28th, 2018 at 9:51am.

Selling your home is a big step, and a necessary one to move on to the next stage of your life! Whether you’re downsizing after children, relocating to a new neighborhood or are due for an upgrade, the process of selling your home can be a tricky one if you aren’t prepared. Having sold more than our fair share of homes, here is our best advice for selling your home: 

Choose an experienced Realtor

Your home is one of the largest investments you'll ever make in your life, so it's extremely important that you choose the right agent to represent your interests. Choose someone who is experienced and knowledgeable about the market. Your realtor will have information like how many houses are currently on the market in your area and the average number of days they have been listed. A good realtor will also look at comparable homes in your neighborhood to get a general idea of what the competition looks like.

Price your home to sell 

Pricing your home correctly can make or break your selling experience. Although we’re currently in a seller’s market where you can price your home more agressively, it should still be within reason. At The Torgerson Team, we run a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) to find homes similar to yours in your area and to learn what they sold for and when. Based on an evaluation of your home and these comps, we find the best selling price for your home from the get go! We are proud to say that we sell our listings faster than the market average and closer to the asking price than most other agents in our area—that means we save our clients more money! That fact can be credited to diligent research and experience on pricing homes in our market. Find your home value here.

Make simple improvements

One turnoff for potential buyers is a really long to-do list! If you know your home is in need of some TLC, go ahead and start taking care of those things before it hits the market. A few easy improvements would be a deep clean, replacing popcorn ceilings and a new coat of paint. Another valuable improvement is sprucing up the curb appeal of your home. Tidy up landscaping, repaint a chipping front door or plant some colorful flowers—just be sure that your home leaves a great first and last impression!

Clear away the clutter

Be sure to go through your home before photos are taken and potential buyers start coming through to tour the home. Keep only the essentials, and put everything else in storage or give it away. And don’t forget to purge closets as well! Buyers want to know there is a lot of storage space in a home, and if yours looks like it’s bursting at the seams, it’s not going to be appealing. 

Represent your home with quality photos 

One easy tip off to see if your realtor is doing their job well is your home’s photos. According to a recent Forbes article, ’90% of buyers start their search online and make a decision about whether to come see your house based on a quick skim of your listing photos. If there are few or no photos, or if the photos look bad because they weren’t professionally taken or because the house is cluttered (which shows in the photos), many buyers will move on to the next listing.’ That’s just the bare minimum your realtor should be doing to promote your home, which brings us to #4. 

Make sure your home has an internet presence

With the advent of new technology, the ways to market your home are endless. Your realtor’s marketing plan shouldn’t stop at just putting a sign in the yard and putting your listing on the MLS. Our proven 14-step marketing plan includes a buyer capture system where buyers can text a number placed on your “For Sale” sign to gain information about your home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their phone number will be sent to us so we can follow up with them. We develop a dedicated property website for your home with mobile capabilities, distribute a  “Just Listed” postcard to the surrounding area and neighborhoods and target other real estate agents by sending an email blast to all licensed agents in the Greater Chattanooga and North Georgia area. To make your home more searchable online, we produce a virtual tour of your home and place it on multiple websites to attract local and out-of-town buyers. We also advertise your home on over 350 search engines and over 76,000 websites to make sure your home has the best chance of being seen. If your home isn’t selling, it may be time to ask your realtor what kind of marketing they have done for your home. There is a buyer out there for your home—but they’ll never know about it if your agent doesn’t find a way to tell them.  


Looking to sell your home? We would love to help! Contact us for more information: 

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