How to sell your house fast, and I’m not saying sell it super fast for the sake of saying that. I’m talking about how to sell fast and for top dollar. I’m going to give you five tips to think about.

When I talk to you about selling your house fast and still get top dollar, and you might be thinking, Annie, everything sells fast in Silicon Valley, and part of you is right. A lot of houses sell quickly. But just because they go quickly does not mean that they got top dollar, so if that’s something that is important to you… Let’s go over the five things. I going to start with number five.

Here in Silicon Valley, it’s very common for sellers to set an offer date, and on that offer date, that’s when every Agent submits their offer, so there kind of creates a competition. Some agents are really big about, let’s take a pre-emptive offer… Well, a pre-emptive offer is this: let’s just say for this example, you list your house on a Thursday and you set the offer deadline for the following Wednesday, agents will be calling the listing agent and saying when they offer deadline, what’s important to your seller? Asking all those questions. Well, if they’re a good agent, they’re doing that, not all agents do that, but anyway, they will be asking also if your seller will consider taking a pre-emptive offer, meaning an offer before the deadline, if someone’s willing to write a premptive to have an offer, it’s going to be clean, it’s going to be strong, they really want it, and they’ll advise their seller, let’s take it, less hassle for you, you don’t have to keep showing the property. The problem with that is you have no idea what the other buyers were going to write, you have no way to now pit buyers against each other to drive the sale price up. So if selling the house in an easy way and quickly is more important to you, great, take the preemptive offer, but if you want to sell it quickly and for the highest price, don’t take a preemptive offer.

Number four, let’s make sure your curb appeal is great; that’s your first impression. It is so key to make sure the front of your house looks good! Power wash, let’s put some mulch around the flower beds, put a few flowers, new fresh flowers, make sure the lawn is mowed obviously. Another thing, make sure your front door and the entryway is really clean, no spider webs now, dirt and dust, power wash around that, and if we need to let’s paint the front door. Another thing that’s simple, that people don’t think about are your house numbers. So if you live at 123 Main Street, let’s get an updated one, two and a three to put up. It just helps the house pop a little bit, you’d be shocked, maybe you didn’t change a light by the front door, but you can keep it simple, but just make sure your house has a nice curb appeal so as buyers are walking up to the front door they’re feeling good.

Number three, when they walk in the house, what’s the first thing they’re going to see? Take a step back and say, What’s the first thing? Someone who’s never been in this house what will they see as opposed to your familiarity with the entry…look closely.

Let’s make sure that room, that wall, that space is clean, neat, not cluttered, and that it smells fresh when they walk in, I have a video about how to get rid of smells in your house. Seriously odor is key. So again, that’s your first impression when they’re walking up to the house, their first impression when that door opens up; those are critical.

Number two, marketing and pre-marketing even before it hits the market, what is your real estate agent going to do? How are they going to get some exposure for your house? As much as realtors like to pat their self on the back and how great they are and how their sale in way over the list price after the fact, what will they do to get exposure for your house. I did another video about that, and that’s kind of a joke sometimes, but it’s supposed to go over the list price here, but what are they doing to make sure they drive as many buyers into that house as possible? Are they emailing other agents? And this is after the obvious that of course, you put it online and it goes to the MLS system, Zillow, all of those trillions, their online sites, but what are they doing in addition to that, are they reaching out to realtors to make sure realtors are aware of it… Are they doing social media ads, let’s find out, because I spend 1700 a month on ads, and the point is to help get as many buyers into that house to drive the price up. If everything looks good and it show well online, and the pictures will drive them to visit the house in person. The more buyers that see the house, can provide more buyers that want to write an offer. Typically there’s only a week of showings and you set that off or deadline. We want to create competition to get multiple offers. you have your house in contract in a week, you know you’re going to get the highest price, because we’ll get multiple bidders and I love to do the negotiation to push that price up, so that’s important. What are you or you’re a realtor doing for the marketing?

Then the number one thing I always tell people when I meet them; when you interview realtors ask, do they work with buyers and sellers? Do they work with more buyers or more sellers? What is the breakdown? I specialize in listing houses, 80% of my business is listing. I only work with a handful of buyers, so it keeps me hearing what buyers are looking for, but really my specialty is prepping houses to get them ready to list, I always think about it like an attorney. If attorneys work for defenders and prosecutors… What are they really good at? I feel like it’s a little bit like that with real estate agents. Some are awesome with buyers; That’s their specialty, and they’re good at it! But, they’re not very good at listing houses. They aren’t sure how to get the house ready, they don’t know color schemes that are trending, they don’t have the team of contractors to help get work done among other things and they don’t know what kind of marketing to do, so again, find someone that really specializes in listing houses, and there are my five tips, I hope those help. If you have any questions, come and below, reach out to me by email, whatever, subscribe to my channel, that really helps.

until next time, have a great one.