How to Sell Your House: The Role of the Listing Agent
What does a listing agent do? This is the question most home sellers ask themselves before making the investment in a real estate agent.
It can be tempting to try to sell your house without the help of a real estate agent, especially a local Chicago realtor that is familiar with your specific neighborhood. But doing so can often lead to missed opportunities and lower profits. In this blog post, we'll discuss the listing agent's role in helping you sell your house. We'll also explore some of the benefits of working with a real estate agent. So, if you're considering selling your house, read on!
We like to break down the selling process into three stages.
Pre-market
On market
After an offer is accepted
The Pre-Market Phase: Preparing to Sell Your Home.
The first step is having the real estate agent come over and take a tour of your home, so they can understand what they are selling.
We've been in thousands of homes, and a “feel” of a home matters. Layout, flow, light, the street, it all matters. You can also check 15 Tips to Prepare your home for sale from a top chicago real estate agent.
After touring the house, your listing agent will prepare a comparative market analysis of your property, considering all of the homes sold in the last six months and have very similar features to yours.
Once your real estate agent understands exactly what your property has to offer, they want to understand the local Chicago real estate market. If you're selling in the winter, the market will perform differently than if you're listing in March. So understanding what the market is doing in a very micro sense will be a big part of the listing agent's job.
I can't stress enough how important it is to ignore larger national trends.
You need to be concerned with the data relating to your zip code or even your street, not what the Midwest real estate market looks like. Therefore, you need to find a local Chicago real estate agent that is familiar with your neighborhood and the local Chicago real estate market.
Once your agent analyzed the market, they'll determine your list price. Your real estate agent will create a comprehensive analysis of your home's data, showing where comparable properties stand and the ideal asking price to attract prospective buyers.
Your agent will usually give you a range of prices appropriate for the home, but ultimately you are the boss, and you get to determine your home's asking price.
Next, your agent will help you decide if it's worth staging your home.
It's not secret that first impressions are a big deal to potential buyers. Some data suggests that home staging can get you up to 5% more money for your house. Not to mention decreasing market time, which will reduce the amount of taxes, insurance, or other expenses you may have to pay.
I think this is the right time to consider something called compass concierge. Compass concierge offers an interest-free loan to pay for the staging and home upgrades that will supercharge your marketing efforts. The best part is that the loan is not due until the transaction is closed, it is completely cost-free, and you get to choose your own contractors. Too good to be true? Trust me, I thought so too. It's a wild program.
The Marketing Plan
After your agent finished understanding the market, setting the price, and making some changes to the property, they will produce a marketing plan to make your property shine.
Any good agent will take professional photography and create a floor plan. But we separate ourselves by including virtual 3D floor plans, drone photography, and a video walkthrough in our standard package. And if you're reading this, there's a good chance you've seen that our social media is second to none in Chicago.
Read more: Ranking the Best home buying sites
Testing Off-Market Channels
At this point, it's time to test your listing on off-market channels. Of course, everyone is very familiar with Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, realtor.com, and Compass. However, there are channels open to a select few agents where we can test your property and spread it across just the agent community.
If your agent has access to these listing avenues, they can potentially get some feedback from interested buyers and even sell new listings off-market. Our team sold 200 properties last year, and 10% were sold pre-market or off-market.
So your agent tested your property on off-market channels. Maybe they didn't sell it, that's normal. It's time to set a list and launch date and finalize your listing price. Once you do that, we usually suggest listing on a Wednesday so that the buyer's agent has a little bit of time to schedule their weekends with their buyers.
On the Market Phase: Launch to all the listing websites.
Congratulations, you're on the market! As your listing agent, I will usually follow up on that Wednesday launch by hosting open houses for two to three consecutive weekends.
The launch date is when you'll finally see your property on every single channel that you're familiar with (Compass, Zillow, etc). A good listing agent will make sure to put money behind it on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to get that maximum exposure. Plus, your local chicago real estate agent will probably follow these 3 tips for holding a successful open house.
Once your home is on the market, your listing agent will schedule showings with interested buyers. It may be a little challenging, but they may ask you to have the property ready on short notice. If that's not possible for you, your agent can usually black out some showing times for agents and buyers.
If the property does last on the market for a little while, your listing agent should send you a weekly email detailing everything you could want to know about how your property is performing.
Every week there is a new strategy. Maybe you decide to stay the course. Perhaps you were testing a slightly higher price and need to adjust the price. A good agent can make these tweaks to ensure that you're putting your property in the best position to sell for the most money the next week and the week after.
The Offer is More than Purchase Price
At some point, your listing agent will generate one or more offers they'll present to you. That's where an experienced agent comes into play a ton. The offer to a good listing agent is more than just the purchase price.
It's essential to understand some other factors. For example, you may need to sell quickly; the buyer may have something called a home sale contingency, and they may need to wait until their property sells; the buyer may have an agent with a bad reputation or a lawyer we know is notorious for killing deals.
The Accepted Offer Stage
Your listing agent will help you select the offer with the highest likelihood of closing. But, believe it or not, generating an accepted offer is only half the battle. Keeping the deal together requires more effort than you may think.
Your real estate agent should ensure that, even after the deal is accepted, you maintain your position and guarantee the best possible outcome for your property.
Once you make it through inspections and the attorney approval process, your buyer will be clear to close. This is when your attorney will send you a massive package of documents that you'll sign, and you'll send it in.
You probably won't even go to the closing table. Just sit back, relax and wait for that money to hit your bank account.
Congratulations. You just sold the property.
