Our topic today is, “When should I engage with a realtor?”
I would pose the question more like this, “When should you engage with your CPA when it’s tax time? On April 14th or maybe October 30th of the year before?” The answer is October 30th, so you have time to plan, so you can make some adjustments, so you can position yourself to have the best possible outcome in terms of your tax return. It’s the same way with real estate.
A lot of times what we see in terms of sequence of events is this: Seller decides to move. The seller puts some new carpeting, gets some paint, then they call a realtor. They want to get their home on the market right away. They accept an offer, buyer discovers some issues during escrow, during their inspections, deal falls apart, chaos ensues and back to square one. That’s not a great program. Here’s a better approach and I strongly recommend you consider this if you are going to be selling your home in the future.
You’re thinking about moving in the near future; engage with a realtor then. Why? Because the realtor can discuss upgrades and things you might want to do to enhance your property. Of course, we can always use our Compass Concierge Program to front you the money to do those repairs to get a better price, but the sooner you engage with a realtor, the sooner he can help you map out a strategy to get the highest possible price. You get your inspections done ahead of time. You complete any repairs and upgrades, resolve any issues, make sure the property is ready to go to market. And then when you’re ready, you put the home on the market. Even if it’s one to six months later, that’s fine. You have everything handled, all the issues are resolved and you’re ready to go to market. The home gets sold faster. There are no issues likely to come up during the inspection period and everybody’s happier. And then you get to celebrate your move because you did the smart thing and engaged with a realtor upfront, you strategically positioned your property for success and then you get to bear the fruit of it.
So that is the preferred method and it’s what we highly recommend. For example, I had a client recently who wanted to sell. They called me just before they wanted to put their home on the market. They were under some time pressure. They wanted to move back to the East Coast. So we did our inspections. Unfortunately, they had a balcony that had a leak in it and if anybody knows anything about balconies, those are typically not easy fixes. And sure enough, we did some investigation on the leak and determined that the whole balcony needed to be replaced. That’s a two month process and costs 10s of thousands of dollars. Had they known that six months ago, they could have prevented this whole situation. Now they’re under stress. They’re under time pressure. The repairs are being done. It’s chaos. Not a good strategy.
So again, if you are thinking about moving sometime in the near future, even if it’s a year or two out, engage with a realtor now, do some forward planning, take care of any issues, do some selective upgrades, it’ll enhance your value and you’ll be a much better seller with a much better outcome when it’s time to sell.
If you know anyone who could benefit from this, please do share it with them and as always, we welcome your comments and feedback. And if we can help you with your real estate needs, give us a call at 925-785-7777 or see us at
680homes.com.
