5 Questions That Will Help You Find the Perfect Agent

Asking the right questions is the best way to find the right agent when selling your home. Today, I've put together the five most important questions you should ask to find the right agent.

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When you sell your home, you want to find the best agent possible to help you get a great deal.

There are five questions you should ask to make sure you find the best agent to help you sell your home:

1. How long have you been selling homes? You obviously wouldn't want to go to a doctor who is fresh out of medical school to take care of a serious operation. The same is true in real estate—you don't want to work with someone fresh out of real estate school to handle your $500,000 home.
2. How many homes did you sell last year? A lot of agents like to use the data from their brokerage, which doesn't truly represent the numbers that they personally put up from last year. Be sure to ask them for data specifically about the transactions they were responsible for. A newer agent who sells 30 to 40 homes a year will have more experience than a veteran agent who only sells one or two homes a year because the newer agent is more in tune with the current market, thanks to the fact that they're negotiating more transactions at the moment.



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Make sure they have a plan to keep you informed before, during, and after the transaction.

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3. How are you going to market my home? This is important because it's the specific reason why you're hiring a particular agent—to get the most exposure in the market. Make sure they come with a step-by-step strategic marketing plan to get your house the exposure that you need to sell your home for top dollar in the least amount of time with the least amount of hassle.
4. Will you represent me exclusively? In California, an agent is allowed to represent a seller, a buyer, or both. Make sure you understand the concept of dual agency, and if your agent is doing this, that you understand the nuances and details involved in the transaction.
5. How will you keep me informed? Communication is so important. You want to make sure they have a plan to keep you informed before, during, and after the close of the transaction.

These five questions will really help you find the best agent to sell your home.

If you have any questions we can help you with, or you're looking to buy or sell a home in the Sacramento market, give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help.

The 3 Contingencies You Need to Know About During Escrow

There are three basic contingencies implemented within the escrow period: the home inspection contingency, the appraisal contingency, and the loan contingency removal.

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 Thinking of buying a home? Search all homes for sale on the MLS

During a home sale, there are three basic contingencies implemented within the escrow period that you need to know about.

The first is the home inspection contingency. This contingency period allows the buyer to do all of their investigations (home inspection, roof inspection, pest inspection, etc.) as well as review all of the documents and disclosures that the seller has provided them, which they are required to do in California within seven days of accepting the contract. This also gives the buyer time to do their due diligence and feel comfortable that they’re getting the property they first wrote the offer for.

This contingency period normally lasts about 17 days. It can be shortened, though. We normally ask the buyer to reduce the timeline to 12 days because it doesn’t take that long to go through all the paperwork and do all the inspections.

The second contingency is the appraisal contingency. The lender plays a big role in this contingency. When they know that they’re doing a loan on a property, they hire a third-party appraiser to go out and do a valuation on the house to make sure that the offer the buyer wrote for it is actually worth that much money. This way, the bank can feel comfortable and confident when making their loan.

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These contingencies help move the transaction along.

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Sometimes, an appraiser appraises a home for lower than what the contract price is. At this point, more negotiations ensue. Let’s say, for example, that you got a contract at $400,000, but the appraiser appraises the home at $390,000. The buyer can pay cash to close the $10,000 difference, the seller can reduce the price from $400,000 to $390,000, or both sides can meet somewhere in the middle. If the home is priced correctly the first time, however, it should meet the appraisal price. The appraisal contingency lasts about 17 days as well.

The third contingency is the loan contingency removal. This just means that the lender has gotten all the documents they need from the buyer (bank statements, taxes, W-2s, etc.) and they are confident enough in them to release that loan contingency. Normally, this loan contingency happens 21 days after the acceptance of the contract.

These three contingencies exist to make sure the buyer is doing what they need to do to move the ball forward. As always, if there’s a problem, we solve it by negotiating.

If you have any questions or have a topic in mind you’d like to learn more about, please feel free to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help!

5 Keys to Position Your Home Sale for Success

Positioning your home from a marketing perspective is the best way to sell for top dollar. These five things are the keys to positioning your home to maximize your exposure.

 Thinking of selling? Get a free home valuation

 Thinking of buying a home? Search all homes for sale on the MLS

When you sell your home, it's important to position it well from a marketing perspective if you want to get top dollar and sell as quickly as possible. There are five main points to focus on to do this:

1. Pricing. You want to price it as close to fair market value as possible because this will give you maximum exposure from all qualified buyers in the market. Pricing too high, like many sellers tend to do, will give you less traction and less access to qualified buyers. You want to try to get multiple buyers who want to write an offer on your house.
2. Bring in a staging consultant to see if there's anything that needs to be done to the property. When you went on your first date with your spouse or partner, you spent some time to look sharp and get ready to impress them—we want to do the same thing with your house. How you live in a home is not how you sell a home. Some of my clients have simply removed some furniture and excess clutter while others have spent $5,000 staging the home professionally. Each home has different needs.
3. Use professional photography, videography, and maybe even drone video. These days, 97% of buyers will actually start their search for a home online. If your home isn't positioned well visually on the Internet and buyers aren't drawn to the pictures, they probably won't see it in person. Photos are the number one thing we have to do to be sure your home shows well online to all those buyers.
4. Market syndication. This means your listing is pushed out not just to one website, but to hundreds or even thousands of real estate websites. There are many buyers who could come from many places, so you want to put your home in front of as many qualified buyers as possible on a myriad of real estate websites.
5. Make sure you have the back end operations to capture all that lead data. You want to be sure the agent and team you hire have the operations in place to make sure they're converting on the activity your home is seeing from the marketing; it should be proactive, not passive.

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You want to expose your home to as many qualified buyers as possible.

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With these five keys in place, you'll be in the best position to sell your home quickly for top dollar. If you have any other questions, always feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help!