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Waxhaw Homes - How to Sell Your Home

Whether you’re planning to sell your Waxhaw homes in the next few months or just studying up for that eventuality, there’s no time like now to prepare. If buying a house seems complicated, selling involves even more responsibilities and expenses.

As Your Agent, We Will:

• Complete a comparative market analysis that will compare your Waxhaw homes value to that of your neighbors and recently sold Waxhaw homes

• Compile a comprehensive Marketing Plan detailing all the efforts we will employ to sell your Waxhaw homes, including Internet and other channels

• Present your Waxhaw homes to as many qualified buyers as possible getting your home maximum exposure
• Feature your Waxhaw homes for sale on a website that is on Number 1 or Number 2 in Google searches
  

• Help you stage your Waxhaw homes and generate curb appeal to ensure you get the highest price

• Assist with obtaining offers and help you in negotiating the best deal as smoothly as possible

• Help you find your next home and answer all of your questions about the local market area, including Waxhaw schools, Waxhaw neighborhoods, the local Waxhaw economy, and more

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Waxhaw Homes Sellers Guide

We prepared this 2010 Waxhaw Homes Sellers Guide to help you navigate through the home selling process. Here are some common steps to selling your Waxhaw home:

1. Prepare your Waxhaw home for sale
2. Find a Waxhaw real estate professional
3. Get your paperwork together
4. Price your Waxhaw home
5. Marketing your Waxhaw home
6. Prepare your Waxhaw home for showing
7. Respond to an offer
8. Closing

 


1. Prepare Your Waxhaw Home for Sale

Well before you’re ready to plant that “For Sale” sign in your front yard, there is work to be done to prepare your home for sale.

Remember how keen your eye was to every small detail and defect in the houses you saw as a buyer? Now that door to your bedroom that never quite closed properly or that leaky faucet that you never got around to fixing will be seen by a potential buyer with that same keen eye.

Start making the obvious repairs today – even if you don’t plan to sell until a year from now. These repairs can cost money and take time. Plus fixing it now will allow you to enjoy the results before it’s time to move out.

If you plan on doing some improvements before the sale, the best place to start is where the buyers start: at your curb. Potential buyers base a large part of their decision on a property’s “curb appeal,” so make yours say something positive. That means a tidy front yard, a house with well-painted trim, a tidy driveway and a clear, welcoming entryway.

Inside, the biggest return on your investment continues to be improvements to the kitchen, followed closely by bathroom improvements. If you’re making these improvements shortly before selling the house, consider painting and decorating the rooms in neutral colors, the most appealing choice to the greatest number of potential buyers.

Inside and outside, start reducing the clutter. When it comes time to show your home, less will mean more. Potential buyers don’t want to see how your closets overflow with clothes, how a room feels cramped with furniture or how the yard is difficult to maneuver. So downsize now; it not only will make the preparation for showing your home easier, it also will make packing for your move faster.


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2. Find a Waxhaw Realtor

If you’ve been through the home-buying process, you already know how complicated the real estate business can be. While you can opt to sell your home yourself, it can be time-consuming and often For-Sale-By-Owner homes sell for less because it's a numbers game (the more buyers that see it and like it, the higher the price). Driving qualified buyers to your Waxhaw home is where a great real estate professional stands out from the rest: using leading edge marketing and listing syndication techniques to market your Waxhaw home in the most effective manner and helping you stand out from the rest of the homes for sale in your categories is what we specialize in!

However, if you do hire a real estate professional as your selling agent, do your homework. Ask friends and family for recommendations, interview several candidates and ask for a marketing commitment in writing.

When interviewing a candidate, ask him or her to prepare a “comparative marketing analysis ” for your Waxhaw home. This might include a demographic of the neighborhood, the quality of schools in the area and a suggested list price for the property. Review it closely to make sure it is well-thought out.

Ask to see marketing collateral from previously sold homes and compare them to the collateral of other agents. You will be surprised what a big difference in quality you will see!

Here are some other questions to ask a Realtor:

• Does your company have nationwide name recognition for out of state buyers?
• How will you advertise my Waxhaw home?
• What kind of marketing collateral do you produce for my Waxhaw home?
• What makes you different from the other approx. 8000 agents in the Charlotte region?
• Does your company have an appointment center to handle showings?
• How will you feature my Waxhaw home on your website?
• What position does your website show up if someone searches for "waxhaw homes" on Google?(we show up on the first page which creates tremendous exposure for your listing!!)

Once you’ve chosen a real estate professional to help sell your home, you’ll have to sign a contract stating that you’ll work solely with this professional for a designated number of months, often between one and six months. This means no other real estate professional will be allowed to represent you during this time.

So put some thought into the professional you choose. The right agent will help you sell your Waxhaw home in a timely manner and at a price that benefits you.

At Carolina Residence we will provide you with a comprehensive presentation of our proven marketing techniques and examples from previous home sales to showcase our exceptional focus on quality and professionalism.

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3. Get Your Paperwork Together

When you meet with your new agent, she will need a lot of information from you to prepare your home for sale. You’ll want to make it clear now which items in the home you want to take with you – the heirloom chandelier in the dining room, the washer and dryer set you just bought last month – and which can stay behind as part of the home sale. Your real estate professional can help show you which items you should put away or replace before your house goes on the market.

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4. Price Your Waxhaw Home

There are a number of factors that will affect the success of your Waxhaw home sale. They include: location of the home, interest rates, economic conditions, time of year, condition of the home, marketing of the home, terms of the sale and accessibility to the home.

Some of these are not within your or your selling agent’s control – location of the home, interest rates, economic conditions. The other factors are items you should discuss with your real estate professional to determine what would benefit the sale of this property most.

For example, marketing your Waxhaw home in more innovative ways using the Internet and other channels will broaden the pool of potential buyers. If you can, waiting for a good time to sell your Waxhaw home – spring or summer, the most popular home buying times – also may help it sell faster. And pricing the home properly can make a huge difference in whether a house is snapped up within the first several weeks of listing or sits on the market for longer.

To price a Waxhaw home properly, you and your real estate professional will have to study the local market, research comparable properties and consider current market conditions. This is where the “comparative marketing analysis ” you requested when interviewing for a listing agent will come in handy as a place to start.

Your agent can give you answers to the following questions and more:

• Your competition: Are there many properties just like yours for sale in your area right now?

• Listing prices: What are other properties like yours listing for?

• Selling prices: What are other properties like yours selling for?

• Withdrawn or expired: How many of the listed properties don't sell?

Based on these findings, your real estate professional should have the experience to help price your property at the right price for a sale that benefits you.

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5. Marketing Your Waxhaw Home

Products that sell well usually have a good marketing strategy. The same can be said for your Waxhaw home. At Carolina Residence we have a robust Marketing Plan that gives your Waxhaw home the exposure it deserves. In addition to in-home promotion (the house looks GREAT and you've got a great home brochure), you'll want to have a dynamic and comprehensive approach: Internet advertising, syndication, neighborhood and agent awareness, high quality direct mail, high quality collateral and open houses.

The graphic below shows just SOME of the many channels we employ to get your home sold as soon as possible:



When a potential buyer arrives for an “open house” or drives by and sees the For Sale sign, you’ll want to provide a home brochure that they can take with them. Decide what information should be included in the description of your home that will make it a must-see – and hopefully, a must-buy. Include high-quality photos of the home to showcase the most appealing features of your property and help remind potential buyers of what they saw as they visit home after home.

You may even want to include a few lines about benefits of moving to this property, such as good schools, convenience to mass transit and other desirable community features.

At Carolina Residence we will make your Waxhaw home stand out from the rest and create exceptional marketing collateral that will showcase your home in the most effective way and put a SOLD sign in your front yard!

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6. Prepare Your Waxhaw Home for Showing

You’ll be thrilled that you did the hard work of Step 1 (Prepare Your Waxhaw Home for Sale) now that there’s little time left to get your house ready for visitors.

Now is the time to put on the finishing touches, just like that quick housecleaning you do before company comes over for dinner.

Outside: Keep your lawn trimmed, the rose bushes pruned, the weeds tamed. Put away the garden hose and the tools. Make sure the bulbs in your home’s exterior lighting fixtures are all in working order. Be vigilant about removing toys and newspapers left on your front doorstep or driveway.

Inside: Brighten the rooms by opening the drapes, turning on the lights, cleaning the windows. Clear the clutter on the kitchen counter, bathroom sink, coffee table and couches. Make all the beds. Clean all your bathroom and kitchen fixtures. Do a quick vacuuming of the entire house. Finally, take out the garbage.

If you have pets, find a safe place to keep them during a house showing: in the garage, in the basement or at a friend’s house.

Now leave the work to your real estate professional. Try to be away from home during a showing, but if you happen to be home when the potential buyers arrive, greet them at the door then politely excuse yourself. Make yourself scarce or go take a walk. It’s easier for a buyer to picture himself or herself living in the house when you’re not there. This is your Waxhaw homes ' time to shine.


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7. Respond to an Offer

Depending on market conditions, you may soon receive one or more offers for your Waxhaw home from interested buyers. Each offer will include the proposed sale price, proposed closing date, proposed move-in date, financing, and contingencies that may include an appraisal or sale of the buyers’ current home. Let your real estate professional help you sort through the variables to determine whether you should accept, counter-offer, or reject the offer.

If there are multiple offers, each offer will be presented to you in the order submitted. Your strategy on how to respond in a multi-offer situation really depends on the quality of the offers. A great agent is worth their weight in gold at this stage! Don't stress out - this is the fun part! This is what you've all worked so hard to achieve.

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8. From Offer Acceptance to Closing

Once you have accepted an offer to sell your Waxhaw home, expect to make your house available to a home inspector and an appraiser. After seeing the results of the inspections, the buyer may request additional work is completed before purchase, such as repairing a damaged roof or fixing a leaky faucet. You should consult with your real estate professional to determine whether to comply with the buyer’s request or risk losing this offer.

During this flurry of activity, try to keep your home in showing condition. The deal has not closed and still may fall through, which may mean showing your home to more potential buyers.

In the meantime, the buyer is working with a lender to secure a loan for the purchase. When the buyer has written loan approval, a final closing date can be set.

There will be a final walk-through before all signatures are collected and the deal considered done. The buyer will go room by room to check that everything is in the condition it was when they made the offer and, if you had agreed to do so, any additional work requested after inspection is completed.

Now you can prepare for your own move, notify your utility companies of the date to transfer your account to a new address and start packing. Congratulations, you’ve sold your Waxhaw home!



Have any questions? Feel free to contact us!

 

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 Also check us out at www.carolinaresidence.com