Listing your property – real estate agents, price and listing tips

Prepare your home as you would for a buyer before inviting real estate agents to inspect you home. First impressions count and while most real estate agents can anticipate what the presented product may be, they may well be influenced in their value judgement by the presentation that they meet.

Remove unnecessary furniture to give your home a more spacious feel and de-clutter as much as possible touching up any obvious defects such as chipped paint, broken doors and windows, torn carpets etc

Selling your house – setting a price

Depending on the scale and complexity of your property a report from a registered valuer can cost as little as $600 and will provide some confidence when setting a listing price with real estate agents. There is no necessity to reveal the valuation, nor indeed the fact that you have one, but it serves to ensure that you neither undervalue nor overvalue your property when listing.

The first month on the market is very important as buyers often perceive that properties which have been on the market for long periods of time may be defective or overpriced. Buyers often need market vindication of their choices and if your property has been rejected by many prospective purchasers, they may well be reluctant to commit.

Choosing a real estate agent

You are probably dealing with your biggest asset in selling your home. It is imperative that you place responsibility for the marketing of your property in the hands of someone who is competent and is someone you can comfortably relate to and trust.

Interview real estate agents, don’t necessarily take the first one who calls. It is good practice to interview a few real estate agents and ask them to submit details of their marketing plan for the property, the resources that they are prepared to commit and a detailed report justifying their assessment of the value of your property.

Listing Your Property on the market

There are many ways to present your property to the market.

Typically a real estate agent will set out to secure exclusive or sole rights to market your property. This ensures that they will receive some recompense for their efforts in marketing your home when a sale is achieved. Committing to a sole or exclusive agency will generally ensure that you receive the focus that you deserve and the real estate agent should commit more resources to achieving a sale than would otherwise be the case.

Prior to entering into an agency, ask the real estate agent what he or she is prepared to commit to achieving a sale in terms of advertising, onsite billboards, flyers and an open to view
programme. Ensure that they confirm in writing their undertakings and set out your rights of cancellation of the agreement in they fail to maintain their undertakings.

It is extremely important at this stage to also ask the agency’s policy in working with other agencies, known as conjunctional sales, and what is their commission split policy. The ideal is a 50/50 basis so that other agencies are not dissuaded from bringing prospective purchasers to your property.

Sixty to ninety days is the best period for a listing as it will give you the opportunity to review your real estate agent’s performance after that period if a sale has not been achieved. You then have the option to either extend the agency, open it up to more than one agency or change agencies altogether.