Seller's Guarantee

 

When you list your home with me, I make this guarantee: You may cancel your listing without penalty any time after 45 days from the first open house (public or brokers). Furthermore, I bet $1,000 that you will be happy with the service you receive from me and Santa Monica Homes.net. If you are not satisfied with the service you have received in handling the sale of your property, I will credit you $1,000 at the close of escrow.

 

For Sellers: The Basics

 

There’s no magic secret about selling a home for the best price:

Selling for the Best Price = Exposure + Listing Price

First, put your home in the best condition you can prior to sale given your time, resources, and market conditions. For example, you may want to think about replacing worn carpeting (or you may not.) You probably shouldn’t think about re-doing your kitchen and bathrooms at this point, unless they're in poor condition approaching "fixer upper" status.

Exposure

Exposure is extremely important: the best-priced home in the world won’t sell if the Buyers don’t know about. I market your property to two distinct groups: Agents and Buyers. Making other agents aware of your property is extremely important: 85 percent of all sales come as a result of a real estate agent bringing a Buyer to the property, with all the other ways a Buyer comes to a property—Open House, newspaper ad, driving by and seeing a sign—accounting for the remaining 15 percent.

Reaching Agents

To reach other agents, I:

• List your home on the Multiple Listing Service, used by more than 2,000 agents on the Westside. A complete description of your property, highlighting its most attractive features, is included in the listing, which is transmitted to popular Internet sites like themls.com.
• Use your home as the Featured Property on this website for an exclusive period of being used as a resource by Buyers and Agents alike.
• Create a custom flyer distributed to hundreds of real estate agents serving those offices serving the area where your property is located.
• Send personalized announcements of the property’s availability and features to selected agents with an established track record of representing Buyers in the area and price range of your property (for agents of Coldwell Banker, Prudential John Aaroe, Sotheby’s, and others in addition to RE/MAX).
• Hold a Broker’s Open House, using refreshments as incentive for brokers to not only come and view your property but to stay a few minutes and absorb its features.
• Place an ad in the Caravan Express magazine used by Brokers to select the properties they will view on Broker’s Open House day.
• Make presentations about the property to agents in the Santa Monica and Brentwood offices of RE/MAX and use telephone voicemail to reach selected agents I miss speaking to in person.

Reaching Buyers

To reach Buyers directly, I:

• Feature your home on SantaMonicaHomes.net, the best on-line resource for real estate in Santa Monica
• Create a virtual tour using photos that show your home to its best advantage
• Place a distinctive RE/MAX sign in front of your property
• List your home on multiple internet real estate sites
• Have a Grand Opening Open House for the public early in the listing period
• Advertise your home with a photo ad in the Los Angeles Times
• Advertise in the MLS Open House Guide.
• As an option, hold follow-up Open Houses for the public.

Communicating to You

No marketing plan is complete without providing communications to the Seller about results. I will:

• Follow up on all showings to determine levels of interest by prospective Buyers
• Communicate the results of showings, Open Houses, and inquiries to the Seller not less than once a week. (I call clients so often that some have said that calling a little less often is okay.)
• Assemble periodic updates on market conditions—including Sales, New Listings, and Price Reductions—of comparable properties in the area and communicate this to the Seller.

Listing Price

If the best-priced home in the world won’t sell without proper exposure, then the best-exposed home in the world won’t sell without an appropriate listing price.

Some of the factors in arriving at a good listing price include:

• Recent sales of comparable home in the neighborhood
• Prices of competing homes in the same area
• Square footage, age, condition of your home<
• The direction of the market—rising, declining, or flat
• How quickly the Seller needs to sell

As your real estate agent, I will evaluate these conditions and make a presentation to you, with usually at least two options for pricing and strategy to sell—the final decision is yours. Some of the best results occur when a property is priced attractively enough to attract multiple offers, which result not only in a fast sale but with a higher price than probably would have been achieved if the property had been listed high to “test the market.”