- Pick the right agent.
Choosing the right agent is the very start of a successful transaction. Choosing the wrong agent ( your nephew's girlfriend with 7 months experience and no sales, no hope, no nothing) is the start of a gigantic financial nightmare that's only going to cost you money! No matter what deal you're getting on a commission not having the right experience will cost you more 100% of the time.
2. Your home is worth what the market dictates, not what you emotions think.
Your home isn’t worth what you feel it is—it’s worth what a buyer is willing to fork over today. You can love your avocado-green kitchen, the blood, sweat, and tears you put into that DIY deck, or the ‘vibes’ your house gives you all you want. But the market doesn’t care about your nostalgia. It cares about comps, interest rates, and cold, hard demand. Your memories don’t add zeros to the appraisal.”
3. Your parent isn't a home inspector, and if they are I'll eat my pen....
We all love a steady hand when it comes to making big decisions and buying a home is one of the biggest. As much as you want to share this with family to help your confidence during the process, dad widening his stance and rocking back and forth to test the quality of the flooring might not be the most accurate metric of your soon to be dream home. Home inspectors are neutral parties that get paid regardless of your decision so you can absolutely trust the extraordinary detail you'll get from a good home inspection. No lender out there will sign off on an inspection based on "pops" rooting around in the crawl space looking for God knows what. Are home inspections expensive? yes and for good reason. Like hiring your agent, quality over price is the key as unseen home repairs later on will definitely be more expensive!
4. Bench your agent for this part.
Kinda stuck on the home inspection piece here but this is super solid advice. You should have your agent open the door on inspection day and then tell em to kick rocks. Agents get paid via commission and if your agent is really needing a payday that rough around the edges home inspection might be glossed over with rose colored glasses. Without even thinking about it, some pretty serious defects or needed repairs can be downplayed if your agent is handling the inspection aspect. Instead of waiting to hear what they think, after you get your inspection, contact a handyman or skilled trade company and get a general understanding of the repair costs on items that concern you. Then, when you and your agent discuss the response to the inspection you're showing up full of knowledge and not full of blank stares.
5. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
When getting ready to sell its super tempting to head on down to the big box " hardware" store to start really broadcasting the quality of your home. Imagine spending three solid weekends moving furniture, laying down tarps, stressing out literally everyone you live with, taping edges to get that perfect canary yellow tint to each room so the sun will hit just right for showings. Then the new buyers comes in, says how ugly it is and and offers you less as they have to paint to get rid of this obnoxious color....happens more than you think. To prep your home to sell you should have a tidy lawn, weeded flower beds, even paint in every room and no obvious damage. Dog chewed the door frame because you left for 18 seconds to take out the trash? yeah, fix that but leave that nasty old shag carpet as your choice in floors is most likely different from the next owner and why pay for it twice? Once to replace and then again as a credit as the new people hate it. This part is about function not style, fix it if its broken and credit for the rest will be a motto that will save you time, frustration and more importantly CASH!
