Are you considering selling a house or condominium in Seattle or an Eastside location such as Kirkland, Redmond, or Woodinville? If so, you may be faced with a number of questions common to Seattle area home sellers:
“How much is my home worth?”
“How should I prepare my home for sale?”
“Do I need a home stager?”
“When is the best time to list my home?”
“What listing price will attract the greatest number of home buyers without leaving any money on the table?”
“How will short sales in the neighborhood affect my home’s market position?”
“If I sell my home as a short sale, what does that involve?”
The sections below will give you some good insights. There’s a lot more involved than can be addressed on a website, however, so if you are considering listing a home in next six months, please contact me for a no-obligation home selling consultation. My goal will be to create a powerful strategy tailored to your specific home and circumstances.
Key Points When Selling Your Seattle Area Home
There are four crucial factors that will affect the sale of your home: price, condition, availability, and real estate market conditions. Market conditions are not something we have control over, although we can use historical seasonal fluctuations to fine-tune our approach. Availability means making your home as easy for buyers to access as possible, which is relatively simple. Price and condition are two key elements that have a huge effect on the successful sale of your home, and over which we have a lot of control. Let’s look at those first.
Pricing Your Seattle Area Home Correctly
The goal when pricing your home for sale in Seattle or the Eastside is to determine how much it is worth to a typical home buyer in the current market, keeping in mind where the Seattle real estate market may be headed. To do this, we look at competing homes, past sales of comparable homes, historical seasonal housing market trends, and present-day economic events. Read more about pricing your Seattle area home.
Creating “Wow Factor” for Your Seattle Area Home
Every home needs to look as stunning and appealing to its target market as possible, both online and in person. This holds true for homes in all price ranges. To achieve this, I assess exactly what features your target market is looking for, guide you in preparing your home in a way that showcases all of its desirable characteristics, and hire one of the best professional real estate photographers in the Seattle area to take pictures that get home buyers excited about your home before they even see it in person. Read more about preparing your Seattle or Eastside home for sale.
The Best Time to List a Home in the Seattle Area
Pricing, preparing, and marketing your home correctly are far more important than the timing of your listing. However, we definitely see seasonal fluctuations in the number of homes on market (your competition) and the amount of buyer activity (the demand for your home) that affect how we approach the listing strategy for your home. The linked-to article is from 2011 and will be updated for 2012 shortly, but the historical trends for real estate inventory and sales in the Seattle area that it shows still apply. Read more about the best time to list a Seattle area home.
Selling a Seattle Area Home As a Short Sale
Selling a home as a short sale brings up a host of additional considerations. As a real estate agent I need to be careful to not offer legal or financial advice; however, I can answer many of your general questions about what is involved in selling short. I collaborate with local short sale expert Shauna Barton, who has an excellent track record of successfully listing and closing short sale transactions. If you are considering listing your home as a short sale, please send me a message or call me directly at 206-335-3335 so that I can assess the details of your specific situation.