5 Essentials Things Your San Diego Agent Needs to do to Sell Your Home in 2020
Make Sure You Have the Edge Over Your Competition in 2020
2020 is shaping up to be a seller’s market for most price ranges in San Diego County. This means that sellers selling their home under the $1,000,000 price range in the most desirable neighborhoods of San Diego County will get multiple offers on their homes. If your home is under the $700,000 price range your home will be in very high demand. Lack of inventory and plenty of home buyers looking to buy a home in 2020 have made circumstances very favorable to sellers.
When homes are priced in higher price ranges like $1,000,0000 to $10,000,000 or more there are fewer buyers in this price range and these homes can take some time to sell due to far fewer buyers. Areas like Carmel Valley, Carlsbad, and other similar communities have many homes that sell in the 1 to 2 million dollar range quickly and for multiple offers due to their extreme desirability. Most buyers in San Diego County have been qualified to buy a home with a purchase price of $500,000 to $800,000, homes in these price ranges will have multiples buyers previewing them and writing offers on them.
If you’re selling your San Diego home in 2020 your real estate agent should do these 5 essential things to get your home SOLD for top dollar.
- Prepare Your Home for Showings
- Pre-Market Your Home
- Mega Open House
- Make Your Home Available for Buyers to Preview
- Negotiate the BEST Offer for Your Home
1. Prepare Your Home for Showings
From the time your real estate agent sees your home for the first time they should be thinking about the things they need to do with your home to get it sold for top-dollar. A listing agent in looking at things like curb appeal, landscaping, condition, interior design, furniture, odors, paint color, neighborhood as soon as they see your home is the sign of an agent sizing up your home and knowing right away what to do and how to get it done. This is an agent with years of experience and a proven system that has been tested to get the home sold.
Photos are essential in today’s internet based real estate market. The vast majority of buyers will be looking to buy a home online on real estate websites like Realtor, Zillow, Redfin and thousands of others. Buyers will be emailed your listing from the MLS or may be delivered to them in a drip email from a real estate website or agent. The first thing that the buyer will do is look at the pictures of your home. This is why your home has to show well and to show well it needs to be ready for pictures before the photographs are taken.
The first 7 tips in this post “10 Tips to Selling Your San Diego Home for Top Dollar” should be completed before we take pictures and let buyers see your home. We always use a professional photographer to showcase your home and make sure the photos we present to the buyers when looking on-line are the best they can possibly be. You wouldn’t believe how many agents use their cell phones to take pictures of a client’s home to use for listing and marketing photos. It’s embarrassing.
2. Pre-Market Your Home
A listing agent should pre-market your home to get buyers and buyer’s agents interested in seeing it. This way excitement gets built as your home is getting ready to be put on the market. Letting potential buyers know about it and letting agents know about it will keep them interested in seeing it before it even comes on the marker for sale. There are many ways agents can pre-market your home and since we’ve been selling for over 30 years we have it down better than any other agents in town. Knowing how, where and when to pre-market is a process that can get you top-dollar for your home as soon as it hits the market. The “Coming Soon” is a big part of grabbing the attention of a buyer looking in your neighborhood and keeping them interested in your home until we open the doors for them to see it.
3. Mega Open House
What is a Mega Open House? Well it’s kind of like an open house that has the build up from the pre-marketing, usually done over the span of a weekend, Saturday and Sunday, lots of signage and social media, promoting the open house on-line through the San Diego MLS to push out to all of the on-line real estate websites and other marketing regimes. We don’t want to give away all of our secrets!!!!
At the Mega Open House, buyers and buyers agents will be able to “for the first time” see your home. They will also see all of the other buyers and agents there which will allow them to see the excitement so many have over your property. Because you took the time to prepare your home for showings and it’s in great show condition, buyers are enthusiastic about the opportunity to write their best offer. Because we pre-marketed your home to so many they traffic to see your home is plentiful and excitement is in the air.
4. Make Your Home Available for Buyers to Preview
Because not all potential buyers and their real estate agents will be able to make the open house you need to make your home available for buyers to preview. This means when a buyer wants to see your home you need to make it available to them. This means you will need to leave your home for a while to let the buyer and their agent take a good look at the home to see if they want to buy it and what they want to offer for it. Many times a buyer will see your home at an open house but will want to look at it again with their agent without anyone else around. At this point they are serious buyer and you need to let them have access to your home to feel comfortable with writing an offer on it.
Let’s face it they will probably want to see it at a time that doesn’t work for you. You maybe just getting home from work and want to make dinner, you may have to gather up your dogs and get them out of the house, you may have a sleeping child that doesn’t want to get up and leave, and the list goes on and on. I get it, I’ve seen it all. You can always say no but keep in mind you may be saying no to the buyer that wants to write the highest and best offer on your house. You shouldn’t let that opportunity pass you by.
5. Negotiate the BEST Offer for Your Home
This is where an experienced real estate agent in San Diego comes into play. Your agent needs to be a top-negotiator to get you the highest price for your home with the most desirable terms. If it’s one offer on your home or multiple offers on your home, an experienced agent will work with you to get an offer that meets your price and terms. The only way this happens is by using an experienced agent with a proven track record. When I say the highest price for your home, that’s easy, it simply means the most money for your home or highest purchase price. When I talk about terms it can mean things like, closing date, length of escrow, paying or not paying closing costs, rent back or no rent back or even free rent back, paying for items to be repaired or not, termite repair and so on. Many things are negotiable and the terms determine contractually what the buyer will do and what the seller will do. Make sure you are suing an experienced agent with over 30 year’s experience and over 2,000 homes sold under their belt represent you. You’ll be glad you did.
I hope this article helped you pick a good real estate agent in San Diego County and also helped you get top-dollar for your home and a smooth transaction. Being informed on the listing and selling process of a home is essential in the age of such readily available information, not all of it so good. I also love to share my experience with sellers so that they make good decisions and as few mistakes as possible. If you would like to ask me any questions please call of contact me. If you would like to know your home’s value in San Diego please let me know and I will offer you a free CMA to let you know what your homes is worth in 2020.
Dawn Lewis – San Diego Realtor since 1989
619-981-3917
Interested in selling a home in 2020?
The Lewis Team San Diego Real Estate Experts!
