When you partner with a listing agent, there are six steps they must follow in order to earn you top dollar.
In order to earn you top dollar on your home sale, there are six things your listing agent must do:
Ensure that all potential buyers are pre-approved. Before even looking at an offer’s terms, your agent should verify that the buyer behind a given offer has been pre-approved. This will help ensure that all potential buyers can actually afford your home.
Perform an offer breakdown. Real estate contracts have become very lengthy, so a quality agent should be able to summarize the important points of an offer in simple terms when they present it to you. This will help make sure that you understand exactly what’s on the table when you review your various offers. On our team, we format this breakdown as a simple-to-follow spreadsheet, which we send to our clients along with an email copy of the buyer’s pre-approval letter. After that, we schedule a call with you to cover the important terms. Better yet, we include our opinions on the contract terms directly on the spreadsheet so that you can understand what is and isn’t beneficial to you before even speaking with us.
Communicate with the buyer’s agent. A quality listing agent will connect with the buyer’s agent and get answers to relevant questions on your behalf.
Follow up with buyer’s agents who have shown your property. On our team, we use our centralized showing system (or CSS) to keep track of all agents who have shown your property to buyers. We use this system to follow up with agents and encourage them to submit offers on behalf of their clients by a given time and date.
Present counteroffers to the buyer. Once interest has been generated in your home and multiple offers are on the table, your agent should reach back out to all interested parties and ask that they re-submit their highest and best offer. This will ensure that you earn the best possible deal on your home.
Speak with the lender. This step will allow your agent to verify some of the buyer’s relevant assets. It’s far better to know if a buyer isn’t qualified up front than to find out later on in the deal.
Each of the steps we listed today are things we at the Alexis Weigand Group follow for each and every one of our seller clients. If you’re interested in seeing them in action, we would be happy to help you earn top dollar for your own home sale.
And, as always, if you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you soon.