How to Sell Your Parker CO Home

There are few simple steps to take when you are ready to sell your Parker CO home. Spring is around the corner and that is a big time of year to put your home up for sale.

Here is a list of items to take care of in order to make that big move this year and get your home ready to sell. I’ll try to get these in order of importance.

Parker CO Real Estate For Sale

1. If you are going to be selling and buying a new home getting pre-approved for the new loan is always a great first step. Yes do this before putting your home on the market. That crazy medical bill you forgot to pay 18 months ago is now on your credit report so it will need to be dealt with. Hey, it happens so be prepared.
2. Start addressing deferred maintenance. Deferred maintenance is a leading killer of real estate transactions. You know what I’m talking about. That broken window or leaky faucet. You know you would never buy a house with deferred maintenance so why try to sell one with deferred maintenance? Common sense items need to be in good solid working order. Change the filter in your furnace and vacuum around the furnace and water heater. Make it look clean.
3. Start the de-cluttering process. Cold winter days are a great time to start packing up items laying around your house that are not used or needed during the home selling process.
4. Find out what your home is worth. This is the closest thing to a $400 appraisal as you can get and it’s FREE.
5. Research a great mover and start getting bids. Find out what you can do to help save yourself money on this part of the transaction. Spending a few days packing yourself can save thousands of dollars.
6. Locate and start a dialogue with your Realtor or start the interview process to find a good one. Generally a Realtor that knows your area really well is a great place to start and one that has a long track record of success. You want sound advice and you don’t want to leave money on the table when you sell you home. Read: Parker Colorado Real Estate Values. Look for a Realtor that can get you great exposure on the web and has an actual plan to get you where you are heading.
7. Have your Realtor come visit your house to take you room by room to suggest what needs to be done to get the most out of your property and allow the Realtor to present the property in the best possible condition. This does not necessarily mean spending a lot of your hard earned money to sell a house. Most things can be done for little or no money out of pocket. I am not a huge advocate of coming into your house and asking you to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to prepare your house to sell.
8. Determine the date to have your house hit the market and work to meet that goal. Many sellers need 2-3 weeks just to get the house and their heads ready to sell.
9. Develop a pricing strategy to sell your property. Work with your Realtor to find out what you need and what you want for a price and compare that to the value the Realtor thinks the house will sell for. If you have plenty of time to sell and only if your house is in pristine condition can you ask for top dollar. An older outdated house almost never gets top dollar.
10. Be realistic about the time it will take to sell your house. Let’s face it not every house will sell in the first 2-3 weeks. Some areas and especially some price ranges take more time. Once you get over the $500,000 price point it can take months. Not always but sometimes.
11. By now you really need to start preparing yourself and the house for showings. Normally you live in a house one way but when you are showing it to buyers you need to live in it a totally different way. It needs to be kept clean and spotless at all times. Showings can happen with only an hour notice and sometimes much quicker than that.
12. Remember that the goal is to get as many people through the front door to see the house as possible. Passing up a showing or declining a showing opportunity can be devastating. You could be declining the future buyer for your house so try to allow as many showings as possible. Declining a showing instantly sends a message to the buyer that you may not really want to sell your home. It’s a mental thing and it’s a reality.
13. The weekend before the house hits the market I suggest a through cleaning of the house, garage and yard. I highly suggest hiring a cleaning crew to come in and asking them to do a deep clean of the entire inside of the house. Appliances, windows, baseboards etc. You get the picture. Ideally in the Spring hire a window cleaner to come clean the windows inside and out. This really helps a lot.
14. Side note about showings. Hide all medications, valuables and anything else that someone might steal. Sounds horrible but it’s real. “Crimes of opportunity” is what my cop friend calls it. People just happen to see your prescription meds and necklace sitting their so they brush them into their pocket. Honestly there is no way to prove it so just hide the items. Don’t be a victim of crime of opportunity. It’s real check it out on Wiki.
15. Pets. How do you deal with pets and showings. I’m about to write an article about this so I will link from here to that article tomorrow when I get it completed. In the meantime 1. Try to remove the pet if possible. 2. Have the pet in a crate so it isn’t running loose. 3. Take the pet for a walk during showings. 4. Cats for the most part hide during showings but if your cat is one that tries to get out of the house it too will need to be in a safety crate. There is nothing worse than having a dog follow you around the house barking at you. Buyers will walk out and not view the property so this is a really big deal.
16. Be realistic about your expectations. Selling a home no matter what you do is an emotional process. Even people that sit in front of me and tell me they are negotiators by trade and will never allow emotions to enter into the home selling process get emotional about it. I totally get it. That is why I’ve been in this business for so long and have helped hundreds and hundreds of people sell their Parker, CO home. I know this business and I know real estate in Parker.

Here are a few people (Steve’s past client testimonials)which have been nice enough to put pen to paper and give me a testimonal or two about my work and how I sell real estate in Parker, CO and Douglas County.