Seller's Guide

Everything you need to know about putting your home on the market, accepting an offer, and closing on your home.

A Step-by-Step First Time Seller's Guide

Putting your home on the market can be a stressful process, especially when you don’t know what to expect. Fortunately, with the help of an experienced team of real estate agents and this easy to follow guide, you can smoothly complete the process. Following these steps will help you prepare so you can get organized and sell your home for the best price possible.​​​​​​​

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Step 1: Understand Why You're Selling

What do you want to accomplish with the sale of your home? Do you want to make a certain amount of money that you can put toward a larger or nicer home? Do you need to sell it as soon as possible to facilitate a move to a new city or area? Once you understand your needs, you can better craft your offer. For example, if you need to sell quickly, you might want to price your home lower than if your goal is to make a certain profit margin. Make sure you convey these needs to your team of real estate agents once you choose one so they can adjust your selling price accordingly.

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Step 2: Determine Selling Price

Knowing how to price your home is one of the most important parts of the selling process. When you set a fair price in the beginning, you’ll get the most interest from other real estate agents and prospective buyers. Overpricing your home could lead to reduced interest, and underpricing leads to receiving less than what your home is worth. Working with a team of real estate agents is the best way to determine the right selling price for your home. A team of real estate agents with experience can determine what other comparable homes are selling for, evaluate the current market, and may even suggest a home appraisal.

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Step 3: Start Preparations

If you’ve kept your home in showroom condition since you’ve lived in it, you’re in the minority of homeowners. Once you price your home, it’s time to start getting it ready to be shown to potential buyers. This includes getting rid of clutter, depersonalizing the space so that buyers can envision themselves in the space, making any small repairs, and doing a deep clean to make sure your home is in pristine condition.

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Step 4: Develop a Marketing Strategy

We will develop a marketing strategy that is perfect for advertising your home. This involves listing the home and then driving the right people to that listing through social media campaigns, agent-to-agent referrals, traditional media, or SEO advertising. Our team creates a marketing campaign that aims to get the most possible traffic to your listing in the first three weeks after becoming a client.

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Step 5: Evaluate Offers

Receiving an offer is an exciting part of the process, but it doesn’t mean the journey is over. We will evaluate each offer and make sure the party making the offer is prequalified or pre-approved by a mortgage lender and that their offer is acceptable to you. If the offer is too low, you can make a counter-offer or offer other ways to bridge the gap, such as covering some or all of the closing costs, making repairs, adjusting the move-in date, or leaving some appliances or fixtures for the new buyer.

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Step 6: Accept an Offer

Once we deem the offer is acceptable, we will review the proposed contract to make sure it’s all in order and includes the necessary components such as deposit amount, down payment, financing, inspection rights and repair allowances, contingencies, settlement date, and a list of fees and who will pay them. When both parties have agreed to the term, a final contract will be prepared by your team of real estate agents.

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Step 7: Get Ready to Close

You have accepted an offer and are now very close to the end of your selling journey. But first, you and the buyer must make a list of what needs to be done before closing. In some cases, your home may need to be formally inspected, surveyed, and appraised. In other cases, major or minor repairs will need to be made before the house can close. We will head up efforts to develop and execute this list, get each action item paid for by the correct party, and make sure everything is in order by the closing date. A few days before the closing date, we will call the company closing the transaction to make sure everything is ready to go. If you haven’t done so already, you also need to make arrangements to move out of the home so the new buyer can take possession.

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Step 8: Close

You’ve reached the last step in the seller’s process. When you close on a home you are selling, you are legally transferring ownership of the property to the new buyer. We will meet with the company closing the transaction to sign the final paperwork and go over any issues that have not yet been taken care of. During this time, you can also make plans with your team of real estate agents to handle final details such as canceling utilities, cable, and lawn or trash services, changing the name on accounts that the new owner is retaining and ensuring the new owner has instructions for all appliances that will remain in the home.

Congratulations!

Once you have sold your home, you’re free to take the next step on your journey. Whether this is relocating to a new city, moving into a larger home, or downsizing and enjoying your life as empty-nesters, knowing all your selling responsibilities have been taken care of will help you achieve peace of mind for your new path.

Our Testimonials

See why our clients love working with us.

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Maura

We've worked with Bradley over the last 10 years for our home sales and new-to-us home purchases. We trust Bradley and her team as they have proven to be responsive, thoughtful, and professional partners. Bradley has made both ...
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Stacey & Chris

Bradley & Company- Thank you for your hard work and support during our home buying/selling experience! It was a wild roller coaster and you went above and beyond to help every step of the way. We appreciated it and look forward...
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Kris & Greg

We bought our house in River Hills. Bradley did a fantastic job of getting the deal done. She worked beyond what is expected of a Realtor® and made sure we were kept up to date on all the information and dealings with the selle...
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Chris

Bradley was great and very hands on. She made sure I understood the market upfront, which I appreciated. She also worked very hard to stage and arrange repairs for the house, which I simply could not have done alone. I have alr...
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Sarah & Roberto

Bradley is amazing! So helpful, so easy to work with. Made the whole home buying process so comfortable and painless, a true pleasure. We would recommend Bradley to anyone.
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Barb & Jim

Thank you so much for guidance and support throughout our home selling process. Your professionalism and outstanding communication gave us such peace of mind. I know your contacts in the market helped the sale move quickly.
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Anonymous

Bradley, Amanda, and their team supported me throughout the process. As a first-time homebuyer, it was nice to have direction and guidance on key considerations. They made the process easy and distilled down the hard parts. For...
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Tasha

Everyone at Bradley and Co exceeded our expectations. They were extremely receptive/responsive to our needs even at the expense of their own (24-hour text/calls and Bradley worked through her vacation to prepare and submit our ...
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Chris

Bradley was an absolute pleasure to work with. She was extremely responsive to any texts, emails, or calls. We had so many questions and were very particular about the house we would call our first home. Bradley was thorough, p...
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Jim & Sue

We greatly appreciated your willingness to thoroughly research and strategize how to best market our home. We were blown away by the overwhelming interest, the volume of people who toured the home, and the number of over-list o...
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Zach & Sarah

Bradley and Amanda helped us navigate an extremely strange time in our lives. Due to work relocation, we needed to sell our house during the early stages of Covid, when no one knew what to expect. Bradley made sure we felt safe...
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Jose

Bradley, Amanda, and the team were awesome. They were willing to answer any questions we had and take the time to guide us through our first purchase. Even when hiccups in the process came up, they provided an honest assessment...
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Joel & Suzanne

Bradley and Amanda were so great to work with. They knew their stuff but we're also great listeners and very patient. We picked them because we had a feeling they were 'the ones' and we were right. They helped us find an amazin...
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Christine & Joe

We worked with Amanda to find our forever home this fall. She was incredibly responsive to showing requests, patient with us as we looked at home after home, and provided knowledgeable guidance on the entire process. She has an...
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