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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 agent is the best way to determine the right selling price for your home. A team of real estate agent 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.

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Michele was great from beginning to end. She gave us tips on what to do to the house to attract buyers. She was patient and helpful when improvements took us a little longer than expected. Michele knows the beach area very well. In the end it was a quick all cash sale.

— Seller

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Michele is great, she found us the house we were looking for at good price and sold our condominium in one day. Highly recommend using her She got us our asking price and followed up until it was closed. If you are looking for a beach house in Oxnard, look no further.

— Seller

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Michele was great to work with. Ours was an older home and she was gifted at staging it for its best look. She is highly organized, communicates updates immediately, kept things moving during negotiations, cares very much for her customers and their offer and escrow experience. She listened to and responded to my concerns with best advice. When I asked around for names of agents, her name came up more th...

— Seller

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Michele Dougherty is the consummate real estate professional in every way. Michele’s attention to detail, and the kind and caring manner with which she treats her clients makes working with her pure joy! Michele follows through on every appointment, and inspection, and answered questions we had with a smile. We recommend Michele to our friends, neighbors, and family.

— Buyer

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

If you are looking for a friendly, honest and competent real estate agent, then Michele is the girl for you. We have bought and sold and bought again with Michele and with every transaction she was always on top of all requirements and also kept us in the loop every step of the way. She is very thorough and will make sure nothing is missed. In addition she is an excellent guide of the area and her recomm...

— Seller

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

We chose Michele as our Realtor for the sale of 349 Highland Drive because of her deep history of performance in Hollywood by the Sea, along with her initial presentation whereby she shared with us the history of comps in the area. Michele guided us all the way through our process from finding us a candidate to buy the house, to helping us navigate through what is often a "bumpy road" following inspectio...

— Berky

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

They provide great service to landlords wishing to find tenants. This is the place to go.

— Jenny H.

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Bought my house and Michelle from Stark was my agent. She is amazing and professional. I will use her again and have recommended her every chance I can. Have owned multiple houses and by far Michelle is the best agent I have ever had.

— Ed E.

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Stark Realty manages our home and they do an incredible job! The staff is always professional, helpful, informative and thorough. I have experienced other property management companies in the area, and this office, by far, gives you Superior one-on-one service. John, and Michelle have been in the beach realestate business for many years and have incredible knowledge on what rents and what sells. This is ...

— Buyer | Seller

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

Great Representation here. Knowledge of the area. I highly recommend this place.

— Billy B.

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