FAQ – I signed the listing documents and the house is on the MLS; what’s my role now?

Understanding the Real Estate Process from A – Z – A Seller’s Guide to Real Estate – Part 4

This is the fourth post of a series in an FAQ format that I hope will help would be sellers better understand the real estate process that they are about to go through. There will be a follow-on series for real estate buyers.

FAQ – I signed the listing documents and the house is on the MLS; what’s my role now?

There’s a tendency to think that you have no role in the marketing of your house; but, that is not CONDITION, CLUTTER and CLEANLINESS? That was not a one-time commitment on your part to get the house ready for the market; those three things must be maintained through the listing period and until closing. Success during the listing period is dependent upon the “three P’s” of real estate – PRICE, PERSISTANCE and PERSERVERANCE.

correct. Remember the “three C’s” from the second post in this series –

If you followed the advice that I gave in the first post you got yourself a GOOD Realtor® and during the listing process, he/she produced a Market Analysis that gave you good advice on the market value of your house. Hopefully you heeded that advice and have priced the house properly IN the market Price is not an issue. If he/she hasn’t already done so, you might assist them in taking the interior pictures. If it’s winter now, perhaps you might have some summer pictures that they could use. The main thing is that is be straightened up and neat for the pictures.

and not just thrown it ON the market at some overvalued price. So, let’s assume, for the moment, that

That leaves Persistence and Perseverance, which are things that the agent is counting on you for during the listing. You must persist everyday with the necessary straightening up and cleaning that are necessary to make sure that the house is show ready when you leave for work or start the rest of your daily tasks. The realtor is also counting on you to preserver through the persona hardships that may occur during the listing. Life cannot go on with “business as usual” when you rare listed. There will be showing request that conflict with something else that you or the family would like to do. Those requests must take precedence, since every showing request was made by the person who will want to buy your house (or at least that is the way you must think). 

Listing the house can be especially hard on families with small children or with pets. They don’t understand what is going on and it can be frightening and traumatizing for both children and pets.

Some families have turned the morning routine of straightening up and putting away toys and things into a game with their children to help make it easier on them. You will need to make a special effort to help children understand why you are selling the only home that they may have ever known and why it’s going to be alright, maybe even better, where you plan to live next. It’s also a time to get them used to packing up their stuff for the coming move. That will help de-clutter the place for showings, too. 

It is important that visitors be alerted by the Showing Appointment Center that there are pets in the house, if they are to stay in the house during showings. Some visitors may have severe allergies to the dander in the air from pets and need to be alerted. Don’t be surprised if some showings get canceled because of that issue. It may be necessary to arrange for pets to go to day care at a local kennel, if you can’t take time out to go home and remove them for showing or crate them for the day. Cats pose their own problems for Realtors and visitors (would they have it any other way?) and it may be necessary to confine them to certain rooms if they behave aggressively with visitors or may

aggressively try to escape when visitors open the door. Even docile cats who may run and hide when strangers come into the house and may surprise visitors later if they run out from under a bed or hiss at a visitor who gets too near. Certainly extra attention must be paid to cat litter boxes during the listing, so that the odor does not become an issue for visitors.

Many Sellers ask what their role in during showings and the answer is simple – BE GONE! I’ll cover that role of the seller in more detail in a follow-on post.

Another role for the seller during the listing is working with their Realtor to evaluate the feedback that they are getting and to take the necessary steps to adjust the listing. The adjustment recommended most often is to the price, but there may be other suggestions that come out of the feedback, perhaps about something that was missed during the preparation to list and still needs to be fixed. Perhaps the feedback will finally convince the seller to clean to replace the soiled carpeting or do something now about the cracks in the basement walls. It is likely that a GOOD Realtor would have already mentioned those items, but was initially ignored by the owner/seller.

Your Realtor will be executing his/her marketing plan, which will include publicity and exposure in a variety of media but that doesn’t preclude you from letting your friends and family know about it being listed. Quite often someone in that circle may have had a secret desire to get into your neighborhood for year, maybe they even wished they could be in your house. Help make their dreams come true by telling them it is for sale. They may have friends who have told them to keep an eye open for any homes that come up in the neighborhood.

One thing that you can be almost certain will happen is that would-be buyers will want to know what your utility bills run per month and for the year. If you haven’t already done so, save some of those bills and go back and see what you paid during the winter months for heating. Buyers will also ask to see the Master Deed and By-Laws, if you live in a condominium complex (including site condo developments in Michigan) or just the HOA By-Laws if you live in a platted sub with a mandatory HOA. You should have those or can get them from the association. Make a copy and get that to your listing agent.

Another thing that might help with buyers is a list of the improvements and updates that you have done within the last 2-3 years. Don’t go back 5-10 years because those improvements will be old by now. While a new roof or a new furnace are important, they are considered to be more about maintenance than upgrades. A new granite counter top or an updated bathroom will be more important to would-be buyers. A fresh coat of paint is not an update; it is just something that is almost expected when you go to sell a house.

So, your role, now that the house is listed is to be diligent about keeping it in great, show-ready shape, being patient and persistent, and working with your realtor to make it as easy as possible for buyers to go through. I’ll cover more on that in a later post.

How do I get my house ready to list?

Part 2 in a series of 12 posts for people who want to list their house for sale.

Let’s look at getting your house ready for market. Here are some tips:

GET RID OF CLUTTER! The biggest thing that I see, both as a listing agent and when showing houses to a potential buyer, is unbelievable clutter in many houses.  Junk everywhere. Clothes everywhere. Dishes and food lying around everywhere! Too much furniture in every room. Get rid of it! It is hard for most buyers to look beyond the clutter to see the underlying house for what it might be. Your stuff, no matter how much it might mean to you is just getting in the way. Get organized to attack this problem.  

If you don’t have enough room to neatly store stuff away, consider renting at a local storage facility (size depends on how much clutter you have). Box everything up that you don’t need to have right at hand up and move some of your stuff out. Even consider moving some furniture out, if you have rooms that are too full of furniture. Your precious collection of Beanie Babies all over the bedroom just looks like clutter to someone else. Get them out! Even your knick knacks and hobby stuff may just look like clutter to someone else. Store them off site.. If you don’t want to store it, have a garage sale and get rid of your excess stuff. Read this article on getting rid of clutter before you even attempt to spiff the place up a bit for listing.

Clean the place up. Beyond clutter there is just common cleanliness. If your place smells bad or is excessively dirty, it’s a turn off that will sink the chances of anyone wanting to buy it or will cause them to low-ball the house, since they see a big clean up ahead. This is particularly true of anything that smells of mold or rot. Clean it up. Disinfect and get the smells out! Pay to have the carpets cleaned, so that the buyers won’t automatically be subtracting for replacing the carpets. Cobwebs, spider webs, dust bunnies, dirt tracked floors and other obvious signs of un-cleanliness are red flags to potential buyers that there may be other issues caused by the same slovenly behavior. If you have to, hire a cleaning crew to come in and give the place a good deep cleaning. Here’s a link to a house cleaning guide that can be downloaded. It was put together by professional house cleaners.

Paint or touch up the paint. A $20-30 can of paint could add thousands to the perceived  “value” of a house. I see many houses where the walls are nicked or marked, due to normal wear and tear and the owners have done nothing to make them look better. How cheap can you be? Repair the walls and paint them if they look bad. If you have walls with tons of pictures hanging (especially family pictures); take them down and repair the holes in the wall and put on a fresh coat of paint. Kids’ rooms, especially teenager’s rooms are usually riddled with holes or places where tape has pulled off the paint. Buyers hate to think of having that kind of project right away after moving in and they don’t care about your pictures.

Many kids’ rooms have also been painted in colors that only a kid cold love. Dark purple or black rooms may appeal to a moody teen, but they are a turn off to would-be buyers. The cute clouds with stars on the ceiling of your little Princess’ room also need to be painted over, as well as the mural of the Unicorn on the wall.  Good clean, repaired and painted walls are inviting to buyers and they can envision putting their tons of pictures up. If they want to have clouds and stars for their little Princess, they’ll put them up later.

Get on the “deferred maintenance” items. That’s a polite way of saying to do all of those little things that

you’ve been meaning to get to or which you’ve just learned to live with; but, that need fixing. Put plug and switch covers on those open wiring boxes or replace the ones that broke. Replace that piece of shoe molding that the dog or cat crewed or clawed up or that door molding that got roughed up when you were moving something in or out. Replace those light bulbs that burned out and you never got around to replacing. Put up a new curtain rod to replace the one that pulled out of the wall when the cat got snagged on the curtain. Replace or fix that dripping faucet in the laundry room or in the bathroom. If you need help identifying these little projects, ask your Realtor to walk through the house and make recommendations. You know that those little maintenance jobs are there, but maybe you’ve been in denial so long that you just can’t see them anymore.

Be an informed seller. Get a professional home inspection done. Here is link to a Home Inspection Checklist that you can use yourself to do an “inspection” of your home. It is not meant to substitute for a professional job, just to get you thinking about all of the areas of your home that an inspector will be looking at later. You can make these visual inspections without having to get into the depth that the inspector will, but they will tell you a lot about your home and what may need attention. A good home inspection will cost $300-500 depending upon the size of the house, but it is well worth it to avoid show stopping discoveries later. Once you have a buyer in hand you do not want them finding something during their home inspection that will cause them to walk away. Many times this inspection will uncover something that is also bad for your family’s health and must be fixed anyway. It’s better to find out now.

In the next post, we’ll look at whether making major updates at this point make any sense.