6 Tips for Selling Your Scottsdale Home

Below you'll see a quick video showing 6 tips for selling your Scottsdale home (or a home in any area), and I'd like to add, selling it for top dollar.  That was the mantra when we sold our prior home.  I would say to my adult children, keep your bedrooms (and the house) clean so we can get top dollar!  We made a joke about it.  But it's true.

Today's Scottsdale home buyers are extremely picky.  With flip homes as competition in most price ranges, you might be competing with almost "like-new" places.  Many buyers want a home in move-in condition.  They don't want to have to paint or change the old carpet or remove dated wallpaper.  Wallpaper tried making a comeback, but it really isn't working.  Many buyers will accept a smaller floorplan in a clean, updated home vs. a larger home that needs any kind of work.

Let's go step-by-step so I can add some commentary:

1.  Meet with an agent - we hope it's with us!  We have over 39 years of experience - Judy has been licensed for 39 years & Jimmy has been licensed for 7.  We like to make your Scottsdale home selling experience as easy as it can possibly be.

2.  Pre-qualify to buy - unless you're paying cash for your next place, this is the time to get pre-qualified.  You need to know what your purchasing power is for your next home.  You don't want to guess at what you can afford.  We have a couple fantastic lenders we can refer you to.

3.  Price correctly - being in the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is one of the most important things to get your Scottsdale home sold as quickly as possible and at the best price the market will bear.  However, pricing your home correctly to begin with is just as important. 

Sellers don't understand why a buyer won't make an offer on their home if it's overpriced.  It's because of that fact!  Buyers are seeing better homes in the price range.  They don't want to make a lowball offer because they don't think you'll accept it. 

By overpricing your home, you're making the homes priced right in that price range look that much better.  You're actually helping to sell those homes.  If your home is sitting on the market while others are selling, your home is priced too high.  No amount of advertising or promotion can sell an overpriced property.  Bottom line is, unless you have a cash buyer, your home will have to appraise for the buyer's mortgage.

4.  Pre-inspect - I don't normally recommend an actual home inspection paid for by you as the seller.  That's because a home buyer will still hire their own licensed home inspector.  One inspector might notice something another inspector doesn't.  However, some of my Scottsdale home sellers have done this and one of my sellers found mold in the attic.  They were able to have it remediated so it didn't come up with the buyer's inspection.  Mold can sometimes scare buyers to walk away from a home.

Having an actual home inspection is a good thing, but it's up to you.  However, if you're aware of issues in your home, it's best to fix them before you put your place on the market.  Even small items that you might think are cosmetic can scare away buyers, especially if there are a bunch of repairs needed.  Buyers don't want to have to make repairs.  If you think something would cost $1,000 to repair (as an easy example), a buyer sees $5,000. 

The home inspection is round 2 of negotiations after the offer was accepted.  And many inspections break the transaction.  If you'd like to have a smooth sale, make repairs you're aware of.

5. De-clutter - There's much more than de-cluttering to get your home showing ready.  This might be the one time you hire a professional cleaner (but you'll have to de-clutter first). 

We can walk through your home to give you ideas on "staging" it.  We're not professional stagers, but we can give you some good ideas.  We've had sellers that follow our advice and are amazed at the difference.  One seller asked, "My house looks beautiful now! Why am I selling it?"  A family that took my de-cluttering advice actually reclaimed an entire family room (that was not usable) by getting the floor-to-ceiling boxes and stuff out of it and decided not to sell!  Other sellers had a house on a dead-end street with apartment buildings across the street and a school a couple doors down.  They followed all of my suggestions & they loved how it looked and the house sold in one day - on a less than ideal location!

We won't ask you to do anything we wouldn't do when selling our own properties.  We completely remodeled two bathrooms the year we sold our prior home.  My son said how nice they looked and asked why did we wait so long to make the changes?  I told him that it wouldn't look new and modern if we had done it years before. 

We also don't want you to spend much, if any, money, as you usually won't get it back.  However, we will suggest what we feel is needed and it's up to you what you want to handle.  It's not always getting your investment back with these fixes/updates, but you might be able to sell your place quicker and for more money than if you hadn't done the work. 

6.  Photography - we hire professional local Scottsdale real estate photographers.  We also utilize drone photos and video. 

We will use the photos in the MLS, which then transfers to 3rd party real estate websites.  We will also create an entire website just for your home!  We use this entire website as the "virtual tour" in the MLS and we promote it on social media and in our newsletters.

Before you list your home please give us a call at 480-877-1549.  We'd love to share our marketing plan with you.