Tips for Preparing Your Home for the Spring Market

Are you thinking about selling your house this spring? Here's how you need to prepare your house for the market.

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If you plan on selling your house this spring, there are a few things you should do to prepare your house for the market here in Pittsburgh.

For starters, I'm big on home inspections because they tell you about any problems that would come up during the time your house is listed. If your home doesn't need any additional repairs when you put it on the market (because you already had a home inspection), you can pretty much stick to your price.

Next, you have to prepare your yard after the Pittsburgh winters that make our yards look horrible. Put out mulch, rocks, and plants to make your landscaping beautiful and add some fresh flowers for color. You should also furnish your porch and patio—bring out wicker or white outdoor furniture and add bright cushions. You want to make your whole porch or deck pop and show that there's space for entertaining.

Cleaning is also a necessary task that must be done. When your home goes on the market, you need that spring cleaning. Make sure everything is sparkling clean from the windows to the jambs to the floors and walls. Get rid of cobwebs in the basement and bring some flowers inside for a fresh smell to show your house in its best light this spring.

Let in as much natural light as possible—buyers love natural light!

You also want to power wash your sidewalks and driveway, as well as the house itself if you have siding, to bring back their vibrancy. If you don't own a power washer, you can rent one for about $50 to $60 a day.

Finally, make sure that when you're showing your home that you open the curtains and blinds to let the sunshine in. Let in as much natural light as possible because people love natural light.

If you have any other questions about selling your house this spring or you're looking to buy a home in the area, give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help!

What to Expect When Selling a Home

The process of selling a home can be overwhelming, but even just knowing what to expect will make things go more smoothly for you.

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Do you know what to expect during the home selling process?

The first thing you'll do is meet with your agent, sign your paperwork, and prepare your home to go on the market. Then, your agent will have you clean your house, stage it, and get a photographer in to shoot photos of your home. Then, they'll install a lock box for keys and put a sign in the yard. After all that, your home will go live on the market and, for the next three weeks, you're going to have a lot of activity.

Those three weeks are the most important time to be on the market. That's when all buyers who haven't bought a house and any new buyers are going to come look at your home, and that's also when we're going to see the most serious offers come through the door.

If your home doesn't get a lot of activity in the first three weeks, you need to go back to your agent and find out why. You need to figure out what's going on with your home that caused you to not get a lot of activity since that activity is so important. It could mean a lot of things; buyers might not like the photos, they might not like your interior, or your house might need work that they're not willing to put in at your given price.

Remember also that buyers will always negotiate in their favor. That doesn't mean that they won't come up to your asking price or that you're going to have to give away your house. All it means is that they're going to try to negotiate the best deal for themselves.

The first three weeks on the market are the most important.

The next thing you'll do is go through inspections, which are there for buyers to be able to find out everything that's wrong with your home. Do not think that the home inspector isn't going to find issues–that's what they are hired to do! That doesn't mean that you have to repair all these issues or even that you have to agree with them. The buyer will request a ton of items to repair, and we'll go back and only fix the ones that are absolutely necessary for your home to be purchased.

After the inspection comes the appraisal. The appraiser works for the bank, not for you. The appraiser's goal is to value the home for the condition that it's in for the current market. If your house is overpriced and doesn't match the appraisal but someone is willing to pay that price, we can go back and fight the appraisal, but most of the time, the appraisal is the last word in the sales agreement. The bank will not lend more than what the appraiser says the home is worth.

When the appraisal is done, you then have moving and closing disclosures and everything that goes along with closing. This can be stressful for you and it can get delayed. In fact, it's happening more and more on a daily basis. Lenders aren't ready, appraisers get backed up, and disclosures don't go out on time sometimes.

When you move, remember to allow yourself two to three days to move, because it always takes longer than the one day you think it might take. You need to give yourself enough time to move and clean the house for the buyer at the time of closing.

It's a substantial process, but just knowing the steps and being prepared for the process of selling your house will help you out immensely. If you have any questions about the selling process or you're just thinking about selling your house, give me a call or send me an email. I'd love to help you out!

What Not to Do When Selling a Home

When you sell your home, there are a lot of things you have to remember to do. However, there are a few things you should not do.

Here is a list of common home seller mistakes to avoid in order to have a successful transaction:

1. Hiring the first Realtor you meet. You don’t want to hire the person just because they offer you the lowest commission. You need to get recommendations from friends and family, go online to read customer reviews, and ask each potential Realtor you meet specific questions to determine if they are the right fit.

2. Ignoring the market data. It’s there for a reason. Just because your home is in a $300,000 neighborhood doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll get on your home. You could get more, you could get less. Each home is unique.

3. Overpricing. When you overprice your home, nothing good will happen. You will either end up coming down in price eventually because you have received no offers, or the offers you do receive will be lowballs. Pricing right from the beginning is the key here.

Nothing good comes from overpricing.

4. Ignoring your agent’s advice. If you completed step one above, you should have a capable Realtor that you trust. They know the market data, the trends, and have experience buying and selling homes in the area. They are trying to get you the most amount of money possible, so listen to them and what they say.

If you have any questions for us, don’t hesitate to reach out. Give us a call or send us an email, we would love to hear from you!

Simple Tips to Land You a Better Real Estate Agent Now

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During a listing presentation, it can be easy to lose sight of what you’re looking for in a real estate agent, but there are key things you should know before you hire. Here are some important questions you should ask the agent:

What are your home sale prices? What are your days on market? What is your list-to-sale ratio? The answers to these three questions will help you weed out the agents you wouldn’t want pricing your home. For example, if you find an agent that has 50 listings, their average days on market is 300 and their list-to-sale ratio is 87%, you’ll know that this is not somebody you want in your corner. Ideally, you want an agent whose days on market is fewer than 30 and whose list-to-sale ratio is at least 97%. This is an agent that will price your home properly.

What kind of exposure are you going to give my home? Which websites will it be listed on? Websites will drive traffic to the house, but also ask the agent what other courses of action they’ll take beyond website listing. Do they work with other agents? Do they market to other agents? This is important because other agents need to know that your home is available.

Do you do open houses? Open houses are ineffective because they usually serve only as a way to get the agent more business. The biggest issue with open houses is that they tend to bring in a lot of unqualified buyers who only want to come in to snoop around your home. With all of the technology available to home buyers today, if somebody is interested in seeing your home, they’ll make a private appointment.

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Open houses are often ineffective.

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Which factors will raise the value of my home? The agent should be able to tell you what you need to do and have contractors available for you to make the necessary repairs.

What might buyers dislike about my home? There are some elements of your home, like pools, worn-out carpet, or bad countertops that may deter buyers from buying your home without you even knowing. These are the things you need to discuss when deciding on a price for your home.

The bottom line is that a good agent should have answers to these questions immediately, and without telling you that they will have to get back to you.

If you have any follow-up questions on this topic, please feel free to email me or call me. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Save Money with a Pre-Inspection on Your Pittsburgh Home

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If you’re listing your home, it might be a good idea to get a pre-inspection. Most buyers have their own inspection done, so why is this important? Well, most buyers won’t take your home inspection, and they will do another inspection. However, they will take your pest inspection, and 9 times out of 10, they will take your radon inspection.

Those aren’t the ones I want you to concentrate on, though. I want you to concentrate on the home inspections. In real estate, you list a home, get an offer, you negotiate, the buyer does their inspection, and you negotiate again. Wouldn’t it be better just to negotiate once?

When you have a pre-inspection on your home, you know exactly what’s wrong with it and exactly what needs to be fixed. You can either price your house according to the repairs and disclose them, or fix the repairs that will come up in the buyer’s home inspection. If you take that latter route, you can negotiate to your number, because you know all the repairs have been fixed and there’s nothing wrong with your home.

When you negotiate twice, you leave money on the table. Be smart and do a pre-inspection.

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you.