When you list a property for sale, the obvious goal is to, well, sell it.
But if you’re like most sellers, your secondary goals are to sell relatively quickly and to make as much money as possible at closing. But what can you do to increase your odds of making more money on your home sale? Read on for some smart and simple ways to save money when selling a house.
1. Hire a Professional Photographer Take Your Listing Photos
Sure, your phone takes awesome pictures. But a professional photographer knows how to use light, staging and wide angles to your home’s advantage. They are also highly trained to assess how to visually represent your home in a way that will make it as attractive as possible to potential buyers – and that can really pay off.
Better yet, hiring a professional photographer to take your listing photos means you’ll get three times more traffic to your listing. By doing so, you’ll also increase your odds of getting more showing requests, offers and ultimately – more money for your home.
2. Put a For Sale Sign in Your Yard
In the day and age of internet-based everything, it may seem like traditional methods of announcing that your home is for sale aren’t effective. But nothing could be further from the truth — at least not in the case of a good, old-fashioned yard sign. But why?
Buyers typically fixate on a handful of neighborhoods they really like, and a yard sign makes it easy for buyers scoping neighborhoods to identify homes that are on the market. In fact, the National Association of Realtors reports that one in every ten buyers will find the home they ultimately purchase via a yard sign. It’s an affordable, effective marketing tool that can lead to a quicker sale at a better price!
» MORE: Why You Need a ‘For Sale’ Sign
3. Market Your Property Everywhere
It’s important to take advantage of any and all marketing opportunities available to you and to promote your listing like crazy. At a bare minimum, you should post your home on the MLS and make sure it’s being promoted across popular real estate sites like Zillow and Redfin.com.
To further increase buyer awareness, we also recommend you share your listing on social media and ask your friends and family to share it with their networks. It can also be beneficial to post it on community sites like NextDoor, Craigslist and FSBO sites to reach new audiences. The bottom line is, there’s no such thing as too much exposure, so if you’re serious about selling – take the initiative and promote, promote, promote!
» MORE: The 13 Best For Sale By Owner Sites
4. Price Your Home Competitively
It’s a misconception that leaving room for price negotiations is the best strategy to use when it comes to determining a list price for your home. In fact, doing so can and very likely will actually cost you a significant amount of money at closing.
Sell With a Low Commission Agent
Traditional realtors charge 2.5-3% to sell a home, as do buyer’s agents. While you won’t be able to avoid the buyer’s agent fee (unless your buyer doesn’t have an agent, and that’s unlikely), you can cut down significantly on the seller’s agent fee.
With our friends at Clever Real Estate, you can sell your home for $3,000 or 1.5% for home sales above $350,000. On a $400,000 home sale, you’d save $6,000 in commission fees, just for using a Clever agent!
Clever is a low commission brokerage that operates nationwide and offers a FREE agent-matching service. Clever hand-picks and pre-negotiates low fees from top-performing, local agents from companies like RE/MAX and Coldwell Banker. You’ll get the same services as a full-service agent at a fraction of the cost! There’s no catch, just savings.
👋 Match with top agents, save thousands