For many people, your home is your largest and most important asset. Selling a home can certainly be viewed as a long journey, and everyone on this type of journey needs an expert to help them along the way. When it comes to selling a home in the Chicagoland area, we are here to help! Here are 6 easy steps to help you along the way!!
1. Listing Consultation
The best way to start any home selling journey is with a proper listing consultation. This is a service we provide to all of our potential clients free of charge. During this quick conversation, we are able to accomplish many different things. Primarily, we will be able to identify the reasons that you are selling, decide what the right timeline to sell is for you, and many other important factors unique to your personal situation.
During your listing consultation, we will also be able to share our unique marketing plan and system for getting your home sold for top dollar in the most stress free manner. Our marketing plan is filled with tons of up to date strategies on how to best showcase your home for potential buyers. When listing with us, we make sure your home is looking its best on all the major online websites, social media channels as well as with all the local buyers agents. We will also be able to professionally photograph your property and make sure it is looking its best.
Aside from our robust marketing plan, we also offer you support every step of the way for your listing. During the listing consultation, we will share all the ways we help you along the way from the very beginning. Our team is committed to providing you the finest customer service possible so that is what we build most of our systems and processes off of.
2. Hire Your Listing Agent
After your initial listing consultation, it is time to hire a listing agent to get the job done. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of agents in the Chicago area. So, make sure you are choosing the right one. The agents you should be focusing on are ones with experience in your area and who have a clear game plan from A to Z. Hiring the wrong agent can lead to thousands of dollars less in your pocket.
After our consultation, you should also have a solid pricing strategy in order to get the most amount of money for your home. Pricing your home correctly is extremely crucial to your success as a home seller. If you price it too high, you will have nobody interested and suffer long days on the market. This can expose you to low ball offers. If you price it too low, you will have every home buyer in your area knocking down your door to get in. Both are situations that should be avoided at all costs. This is why we help you come up with a complete plan to price your home and get it sold for top dollar.
3. Prepare Your Home To Sell
At this point, it is time to prepare your home for its first day on the market. During this step, home sellers are working hard on making sure their home is looking as presentable as possible. Some things we recommend doing are getting rid of any old clothes and items around the home, doing a deep clean of the property, and moving any boxes and items cluttering your garage into a storage unit.
4. List and Market Your Home
We are now ready to officially put your home on the market! This is an exciting time in the process and a whirlwind of activity will follow. Not long after listing your home, you will likely start receiving showing requests. Make sure you are responding to these requests in a timely manner and try to be as flexible as possible to accommodate all the potential buyers to maximize your home’s exposure. We will also be checking in with you regularly to provide any relevant updates from interested buyers, questions that potential buyers may have, or any other relevant market information. Like we mentioned, this stage is filled with a whirlwind of activity, but the good news is it is being mostly handled by us and not yourself. So don’t worry, we are here to guide you.
5. Negotiate Terms, Sign and Get To The Closing Table
After potential home buyers have had a chance to look at your property, we can expect to start getting some offers. As these offers start coming in, we will begin dissecting the terms offered and making sure all the protections afforded to you are in place. We will then present everything to you in a digestible manner so you can make up your mind. At this point, a few different things can happen. We can either accept the offer, reject the offer, or make a counteroffer. After negotiating all the terms for your sale with the buyer, we will then sign and execute a purchase and sales agreement. Once this contract is signed, we can then get it to the title company/attorney so they can begin doing their job.
After this, there are still things that need to be done in order to successfully close on your home. Some of the things we will help walk you through are scheduling the buyer’s home inspection for your property, communicating any messages the buyer’s agent conveys to us, handling any necessary renegotiations of the contract, and of course helping you with your upcoming move. Again, just like before, we are here for you during this stage. Our systems and process helps ensure that your closing and move out of your old home goes as smoothly and stress free as possible. Pretty soon, all the items needed will be completed and we will be ready to go to the closing table.
6. Sign and Get Your Money
This is the fun part! At this point all of the heavy lifting has been done and now it is just time to show up at the title company to sign your closing documents. This is a relatively quick process on the seller’s side of things and should not take you too much time. Alternatively, if you are not able to make the closing in person, we can help arrange a notary service to meet you and then mail back the forms overnight to the attorneys. This gives you the ability to close from anywhere in the country on your home. After all the documents have been signed by both the buyer and seller, the title attorney checks and verifies that both the buyer’s lender and the buyer themselves have wired the required funds to close. As soon as everything is verified, the attorney can officially transfer ownership of your home to its new owner
Congratulations, you made it! The only thing left to do now is to provide your banking information to the attorney so they can wire you your money. After the closing, we are still there to help with any additional items such as helping you arrange your move, turn off your utilities, and much more. We truly pride ourselves in providing concierge level service for you.
If you follow these six steps to selling your Chicago area home, you should end up at the finish line with a successfully sold home and the maximum amount of money for it in your pocket. We truly make this a stress free experience and you are being taken care of every step of the way. We are here to answer any questions you might have about your unique situation. We look forward to speaking with you!