Selling a Home and "Short Sales" If  considering selling your home, chances are you're caught up in a mass of emotions. You may be looking forward to moving up to a new home or facing the uncertainty of a major move across country. And you may be experiencing a personal economic downturn? Upside down on equity? Notice of Default?  Lenders are more willing now days to accommodate a short sale rather than face foreclosing on residential property. Consistent effort from you broker is necessary if a short sale is to be successful. Remember, we're here to help you with any of your needs. Call or email us today! Setting the Listing Price In setting the list price for your home, you should be aware of a buyer’s frame of mind. Based on a list of houses for sale in your neighborhood (which can be in the form of a printed list from us, or on line search results that you’ve found yourself), buyers will determine which houses they want to view. Consider the following pricing factors: If you set the price too high, your house won’t be picked for viewing, even though it may be much nicer than others in the area. If you set the price too low you may be short changing yourself.  To determine the proper list price, contact me today and I'll provide you with the following professional services: Furnishing comparable sales. Analyzing market conditions. Helping to determine offering incentives. Estimating your net proceeds. Using Comparable Sales No matter how attractive and polished your house, buyers will be comparing its price with everything else on the market. Your best guide is a record of what the buying public has been willing to pay in the past few months for property in your neighborhood like yours. Also we can furnish data on sale figures for those "comps", and analyze them for a suggested listing price. The decision about how much to ask, though, is always yours. The list of comparable sales we bring to you, along with data about other houses in your neighborhood presently on the market, is used for a "Comparative Market Analysis (CMA)." To help in estimating a possible sale price for your house, the analysis will also include data on nearby houses that failed to sell in the past few months, along with their list prices. This CMA differs from a formal appraisal in several ways. One major difference is that an appraisal will be based only on past sales. In addition, an appraisal is done for a fee while the CMA is provided by us and may include properties currently listed for sale and those currently pending sale. In the normal home sale, a CMA is probably enough to let you set a proper price. A formal written appraisal (which may cost a few hundred dollars) can be useful if you have unique property, if there hasn't been much activity in your area recently, if co-owners disagree about price, and any other circumstance that makes it difficult to put a value on your home. Getting Ready for the Market More success comes to those who prepare for the sale. Like a debut of a play the time taken to clean, de-clutter, and use some Staging Techniques usually pays off quite well. The pay off is a shorter market time. Put yourself in the buyers place. Would you want to tour a cluttered property with other people's "stuff" laying around?  At Maki Properties we assist with a Staging report included in all of our listings we take. Also we employ Showcase listing status on all listings which go into Realtor.com. Up to 25 pictures and lots of description amplify the number of unique visitors to our listings many times over vs. normal listing presentations.