Seller FAQ

Marketing of your home begins with our initial meeting where we discuss your plans, goals, needs and timetable for action. As well, we’ll discuss preparing your home to show and sell. Proper pricing of your home is 85+% of the marketing of your home. The nicest home in the most desirable neighborhood is much less likely to sell if it’s not priced appropriately. I look at the current market conditions, trends and inventory to give you an accurate picture of the market demand for your home. When we’ve determined a time and timetable to begin selling your home, I work to expose your home to the entire buying public. Website and internet traffic are major avenues for this and Windermere’s website gets more traffic than any other in the area. Combined with marketing on my own site, the local Multiple Listings site also provides the information with numerous pictures and text descriptions to all of the local cooperating real estate brokerages. The information I publish will be available to all local brokerages to post on their websites so the public can find information about your home on any other local company website besides Windermere. We will discuss a specific plan for effectively marketing your home to the right target market. Communication on what is happening in the market and feedback from our activity is an on going process with regularly scheduled communication check points. It is just as important for you to know our responses in selling your home as me and I strive to keep you in the know. Advertising, mailings, signage and quality marketing flyers and cards are all included and your input on these is encouraged, if you so desire. In all cases, my job and commitment to you isn’t over until your home is sold and you have successfully closed and moved on to your new home. Count on me to foresee, eliminate or reduce any obstacles so you can enjoy a smooth and successful sale and closing of your home. Please give me a call to discuss the right strategy for you.

Everyone’s home and circumstances are different. I’m happy to meet with you to give you a specific, detailed list of projects that will serve you best in meeting your home selling goals. I have a variety of contractors that I can recommend for you and we can sometimes hold off final payment for these improvements until we’ve sold and closed your home. Call me so we can talk about your circumstances. Below are some general ideas for cost effective repairs you might consider before selling your home.

The most cost effective improvement you can make to your home is to clean and open up your home. Clean homes show better, sell more quickly and for more money. Start at the front door or front porch and take a critical look at removing excess décor or items you may find useful but a buyer or their agent will find clutters their pathway. Continue this process throughout the home. You don’t have to remove all your pictures or knick-knacks, just make them less obtrusive. Pay attention to replacing all burnt out light bulbs and if it’s winter time, maybe increasing the wattages of certain lights. Opening up also means to pull open the drapes or blinds, pare down on your furnishings and allow the buyers to envision themselves and their furniture in your spaces.

Next is to paint what won’t clean or what is damaged. You don’t have to repaint the entire interior, just look critically at your home and set priorities. This applies to the inside and outside of the home.

Curb appeal for your home is critical. The goal is to get the buyer into your home with no objections. Look at your landscaping, lawn condition, plant and tree overhangs, etc to be sure guests are welcomed by your home and access, not seeing large lists of items to do or wondering how to even get to the front door.

Many other projects may be beneficial for you, like replacing damaged bathroom floors, carpet replacement, plumbing or heating corrections. Rarely are major remodel projects beneficial to consider if you are planning to sell in the near future. Again, please contact me so we can talk about how to improve your home and any specific projects that will help maximize your appeal and return in the marketplace.

Give me a call or click on the Contact Paul tab to let me know a bit about you, your situation and your home so I can get back to you with the current market value of your home. You don’t have to move immediately and there is no cost or other obligation to you. Just give me a call at 206-948-5885.

Most home sellers want to make a change in their house but still want to stay in the local area. I can help you to coordinate these processes. We can determine what alternatives you have for financing to see if it’s possible or reasonable for you to find your new home first. Windermere offers “Bridge Loan” financing to let you borrow some of the equity from your current home, to use towards the down payment on your new home, before you sell you current home. 80% of our market home sales are from current area residents, so this is not a new problem. I have lots of experience finding solutions for this and many other problems. Let’s talk about your specific needs and circumstances so we can craft a successful strategy to make this work for you.

Buying contingent used to be the main option. This meant finding the home you wanted to buy, then making an offer that basically said, “We want to buy your home but we don’t have the money to buy it until our home is sold and closed”. As you can see, this isn’t that attractive to a home seller. Plus, many of these home sellers are still going to move locally and when do they know that their home is really sold so they can begin looking for a home to move to. The biggest advantage to the increase in home prices in our area is the increase in home equity most of us now have. This allows many of us to be able to borrow that money and be a more competitive buyer in the market. Still, many of us aren’t willing to take this financial risk and would prefer to buy contingent. That’s ok. I’ve helped several people to do this in the past few years as well. We just need to explore all of our options, know what tools are available to us and then see which ones we want to utilize first. I’m happy to help you map out these choices and determine what works best for you.

In our local market the easiest estimate to use is 8%. This will include all real estate fees, state excise tax (a sales tax on real property), title insurance, escrow fee, recording, reconveyance and funding fees. On top of these will be your loan payoffs, possible tax pro-ratings for personal property tax and any specific situational fees you might have, such as loan prepayment penalties or home owner association fees. I will give you a detailed and specific breakdown of all of your costs to sell before we begin to sell your home.

The tax rules have changed in recent years so we no longer have any requirement to reinvest or buy another home when we’ve sold our current home. We are entitled to a $250,000 gain as a single person and a $500,000 gain as a married couple on the sale of our primary residence, if we have lived in it for 2 of the previous 5 years. This is a great advantage for home sellers that aren’t ready to make a decision on where they will move to but want to sell now to free up cash or just to take advantage of market conditions. As usual, the IRS has many more details to this situation, but for most of us we can sell with confidence that we aren’t triggering any major debt payment to the IRS. If your home sale should net a larger gain than these amounts, again, let me know and we can craft a strategy to minimize your tax liability and maximize your profits.

Many people today have invested in real estate as part of their retirement planning or just as an investment vehicle. I’m happy to meet with you and discuss how you can improve these investments or make them work more effectively for you. I have experience doing 1031 exchanges, exchanging one investment property for another, and would be happy to work with you, your tax planner and or financial advisor to put together a winning strategy for building or liquidating an investment portfolio.

I’m happy to supply these to you. You can look under my “Resource Center” tab or give me a call for a specific need you have. It’s likely I have experience with a competent professional to help you.