Find out what is currently available for sale in your area or
neighborhood

1. Determine your home's value in today's marketplace
2. Find out what is currently available for sale in your area or neighborhood
3. Estimate the proceeds from selling your home
4. Determine what needs to be repaired or upgraded before you sell
5. Make necessary repairs – find qualified contractors
6. What's the best way to sell your home?
7. Decide whether and how to use an agent or sell your home yourself
8. Determine your sales price
9. Sign a listing agreement with a real estate agent
10. Create a proactive home marketing plan
11. How to handle showing your house to potential buyers
12. Get showing feedback
13. Provide property disclosures
14. Continue home marketing efforts & price adjustments
15. How to negotiate home selling price upon receiving an offer
16. Sign all real estate contract documents
17. Order title insurance commitment
18. The mortgage application process: track the buyer's progress
19. The home inspection process
20. The title process & closing the sale of your home

Drive your neighborhood to identify properties for sale, pick up a brochure if available, write down the addresses of properties for sale, and then pull computer AVM reports on these properties from the sites identified in the "Determine Your Home's Value" section. undefined

Use free online home search tools on websites like www.realtor.com, www.ziprealty.com, or www.coldwellbanker.com to check for both "comparable sold properties" and "active listings."

 

Comparable sold properties are similar properties that have recently sold. These are what appraisers and agents use to estimate the current market value of a given property. A good comparable sold property is one that has sold within the last year (with greater emphasis on the most recent sales), has similar physical characteristics to your property (the subject property), and sold without any unusual terms such as owner financing (seller made a second mortgage loan to buyer to facilitate the sale).

 

Active listings are properties that are currently for sale in your neighborhood but have not yet sold. They often compete with your property for buyers in a given neighborhood.

 

Adjust the prices of the comparable property sales based on your home's features

Be sure to catalogue both the sold comparables and the active home listings (separately between sold and active categories) by property attributes such as year of construction, lot size, number of bedrooms, baths, garage spaces, etc. This is done so that you can "adjust" those comparable and active property attributes to your property making pricing "adjustments" to account for differences between your property (subject property) and the sold comparables and active listings.

 

As you can see from the table below, you want to adjust the value of the comparable properties "to" the subject property (your home) -- it's the appraiser's way of comparing apples to oranges.

 

COMPARABLE HOME SALES ADJUSTMENT CHART

Next Step: Estimate the proceeds from selling your home