The Top 5 Ways To Get More Money When Selling Your Home!

Are you looking to sell your home and get the most money possible?

Follow these top 5 proven strategies to sell your home as fast as possible and for the maximum price.

1. Invest in a professional photographer that provides HD quality pictures and a video home tour.

When we say HD picture quality, we mean using professional photography to capture those high-quality images needed to sell your home. 

If you browse MLS listings, you can see examples of listings that have used low-quality photos or images shot on a cellphone. These listings are not as attractive to home buyers and tend to sit on the market longer.  

Although hiring a professional photographer might seem like a bit of a hassle, the stats don’t lie when it comes to using good quality photos. Here are stats to prove you should be using high-quality pictures in your real estate listing:

• 97% of home buyers used the internet to search for a home.

• Higher quality images help sell a home 32 percent faster.

• Having more photos on your listing helps sell a home faster. Listings with one photo spend 70 days on the market, but with 15 or more images, listing spends 32 days on the market.

• Homes in the $200,000 to $1 million range that use high-quality photos for their listings typically sell for $3,000 to $11,000 more. 

• 87% of homebuyers searching on the internet find photos to be the most useful tool.

Benefits of Hiring a Professional Photographer

There are numerous benefits to hiring a professional to photograph your home. First, professional photographers already have the proper equipment, including high-quality cameras, professional lighting, tripod, drone, and professional editing software. 

Each industry has experts, and a professional real estate photographer is an expert in making your home look fantastic in images. They will know the angles and lighting tricks to best showcase the rooms in your home to their best potential. 

Here is a comparison of a bad vs. good photo. It is the same room, however the one on the left looks dark, cluttered, small and unappealing.

The photo on the right looks bright, spacious, clean spacious and inviting.

Which one would you book a showing to see?

If you are stumped on finding a professional real estate photographer, Homepie.com makes it easy, with their professional photography service. Homepie can connect you to a photographer in your area. 

Having professional photos will help you attract potential homebuyers and get your home sold faster.

2. Professionally Stage Your Home

Professionally staging your home will help sell your home faster. It is more than decluttering or depersonalizing your home. Staging professionals know how to reinvent the spaces in your home to make them visually appealing to potential buyers. 

Still on the fence about using professional staging for your home? Let’s look at some stats:

• homes with no staging sat on the market for 143 days on average. Once these homes were staged, they sold in 40 days. However, homes staged from the beginning went online and sold on average in 23 days.

• 40% of buyer’s agents stated staging affected buyer’s views of the home. 

• Homes that are not staged typically sit on the market 3 to 30 times longer than a professionally staged home. 

• 83% of buyer’s agents stated home staging made it easier for potential homebuyers to visualize a property as their future home.

Benefits of Professionally Staging Your Home

The statistics show that professionally staged homes present and show better on the market, which translates to quicker sales when compared to homes that haven’t been staged. Photos of professionally staged homes look better on MLS listings and in advertising material. 

Take a look at the example of how professional staging can change the look of a room. The first photo shows an empty space, but the bottom picture, with staging, allows prospective buyers to visualize living in the home and makes the space more inviting.

Professionally staging your home might seem like an expense, but it really is a return on investment. Non-staged homes sit on the market longer, and properties that do not receive an offer within the first month will experience a price reduction. Price reductions cost more than the initial staging investment. The cost for not staging can add up to a price reduction of 5 to 20 times more than a professional staging investment. 

3. Sell Your Home Yourself Before Working With An Agent

Selling your home privately can be done and has many benefits, but there is a learning curve. You need to be familiar with legalities and avoid making costly mistakes that waste time. So why sell a home privately?

People decide to sell privately to save on estate agent commission fees, saving them between 3% and 6% of a home’s asking price. On average, the typical real estate agent receives a 6% commission on a sale. If you sold your home for $400,000, you would have to pay $24,000 to the real estate agent.

Luckily, there are services that you can use that help you sell your home. Save 6% in agent fees by listing for free on Homepie.com. 

How to Sell Your Home Privately

To sell your home privately, you should closely follow the traditional-home selling process to maximize your chances of success. Private home sales can require a considerable time commitment, but you can receive a fair market price by following these steps:

1. Prepare your home for sale – you need to view your home from the buyer’s perspective. Buyers are looking at flaws and general appearance. Your home may require some home improvements before it’s ready to sell. The most common enhancements needed are:

• Minor repairs – leaky faucets, windows that stick, loose door handles, lights, or electrical switches that don’t work correctly.
• Repaint or touch-ups – a fresh coat of paint can help any room that looks tired. Choose neutral colors when painting. 
• Decluttering – declutter the entire home, including the attic, closets, garage, and basement. You want to minimize the furnishings and items in the house, which helps with the perception of flow when trying to sell. 
• Ensure the home is clean – a clean and fresh-smelling home is more enticing to home buyers.

2. Determine Home’s Asking Price – you need to have realistic expectations of the value of your home. When you work with an agent, they will determine your home’s value, but to figure it out and avoid fees of a surveyor, do the following:

• Research similar homes to yours to see their listing price. 
• Use an online real estate valuation site, such as Homepie.com to give you a quick estimation of what your home is valued at based on square footage, location, and the number of bedrooms and baths. 

3. Negotiate the sale – you will oversee any negotiation directly with the prospective buyer.

Be prepared for offers that are below your asking price, which even might include unreasonable conditions.

That’s ok!  If you are not happy with the initial offer, you simply go back and forth with the buyer, and if they are not willing to meet your terms you just wait for the next offer.

Homepie.com has services that allow you to list on MLS (where most of the buyers come from) starting at $99 (additional options required), and their AI-assisted negotiation tool and concierge service helps you with all your questions while you negotiate directly with your buyers! 

4. Handling the Closing – the closing of your house is a legal affair, meaning there is a process, and it is either handled by a closing attorney or the title agent. When you decide who the party will be, they will provide you with the required procedures. 

Selling your home is a large financial and legal transaction, so you want to make sure that you use recommended professionals.  It’s always a good idea to Google the business that is recommended and read the online reviews. 

4. Run Ads on Google and Social Media

If you want to get more for your home, you need to create a buzz. The best way to increase your potential sale is by having buyers competing over your listing. Marketing your home is the only guaranteed method for getting top dollar for your home. Investing a couple of hundred dollars in online advertising exposes your listing to tens of thousands of interested buyers. 

Social media, such as Facebook, is a great way to drive online traffic to your listing. You can post multiple ads in Facebook groups and target your audience for people looking to purchase a home in your area. Experiment and have fun with advertising on social media, especially since you can run an ad for $5 a day and get it in front of many people. 

Why Use Google?

Google is a top-rated search engine, and by using Google AdWords, you can potentially have your listing at the top right of the search engine page, getting more traffic. These adverts are linked to the seller’s property and operate on a cost-per-click basis. 

You can keep costs down by creating highly targeted ads that only show when searching Google in a specific region. The average per click prices will vary, but you can budget keywords to never go over your set budget. You can also monitor your campaign and adjust it to make sure you are optimizing the ads’ performance with the highest clicks for the lowest price. 

Homepie.com is currently offering a promotion where you can get their $500 social selling campaign for FREE when you use their free marketplace.

5. Choose the Right Time to Sell

The best time to sell you home is when you are ready.  Don’t try to time the market. 

Many people fail to realize that when you sell in a hot spring market to maximize your selling price, you have to pay an inflated price on the other home that you are purchasing so the over gain to timing the market is negligible.

Some sellers will want to take the time to do home improvements and increase their sale price while other sellers will want to just list their home as is and get right into the market to save time.  Both are totally ok. 

To make the most money on the sale of your home you want to make sure that you start the staging and home repair projects on your home as soon as possible.  It’s a wise plan to have your home “market ready” even before you are fully ready to list your home.

Consider the major repairs or improvements that you can make to increase the value of your home.

Often these areas of the home that represent the greatest price increase to the value.
– Kitchens
– Bathrooms
– Curb appeal and landscaping
– Roofing
– Furnace and HVAC

These are all areas where people will spend more money for something they love rather than just like about your home.

So there you have it!  The Top 5 Ways To Get More Money When Selling Your Home.

Make sure to share this blog article with your friends and fellow home buyers on social media.  Sharing this can be a great way to startup discussions and home improvement ideas with friends inside your groups.

To experience the future of real estate visit homepie.com It’s a free marketplace for home sellers and buyers where they can save 6% by buying and selling for free.  They offer all the tools agents use at a fraction of the cost including the MLS marketing services you need to promote your home on both search and social.