The Seller Experience
Discover what sets our team apart and the process we’ll take to sell your home, today.
Discover what sets our team apart and the process we’ll take to sell your home, today.
Our objective is to net you the high possible proceeds in the least amount of time with the least amount of problems and we have a proven track record of consistently outpacing the market. The goal of this page is to show you exactly how we are accomplishing that track record.
Many home owners struggle with viewing their home from a buyer's perspective. As you begin down the road towards selling your home for top dollar it is very helpful to view your house as your potential buyers will view it.
The key to successfully marketing your product is differentiation. How does your house compare to other houses on the market? This differentiation can come in price positioning, rare features, upgrades, staging, highlighting unique charm, better photos than the competition, etc. Bottom line, it needs to stand out.
Just to keep things organized I went ahead and arranged our process into 5 stages. The first 4 stages have to do with finding that perfect buyer. The fifth stage is about making sure the buyer that you contract with actually closes.
1) Preparing your house for market
2) Price at the right price
3) Show in the best light
4) Reach as many eyes as possible
5) Successfully close the contract
We quantify exact return on investment for possible projects. Make sure that your Realtor coaches you on what projects will have the highest return on investment and which small touches will differentiate your home from the competition. Many people choose to list their home “as-is.” Listing as-is should be an option that you choose, not just “the way” because your Realtor told you to get the house listed quickly. Differentiating your home is how you will get more buyers that saw your house online to want to schedule a showing. Small repairs and upgrages to improve curb appeal and make your home show at a 10+ can be done cheaply. Others cost more, but give huge returns on your investment. You don’t have to differentiate on price. If your house presents better than the competitors, you are more likely to see multiple offers.
This comes down to the sales comparison approach to market value, price bracketing, price positioning, and anticipated buyer demand. The most reliable means of estimating fair market value of a given piece of property is through the comparison of recent sales and the competing offerings of similar properties.
Today's buyers are educated. Value is based on what other buyers have paid for similar products recently, and everyone has the same access to the information that you will use in your pricing strategy. Pricing significantly above market (in fantasy land) will result in your house sitting on the market for an extended period of time. Don't just assume that offers come in at a certain percentage under list price and price accordingly.
A) Staging
Studies show that staged homes sell for more money than unstaged homes. Your house needs to show like a model home. After you have completed the small home make overs, make sure to stage the property. I give all of my seller clients an 82 point staging and repairs checklist and personally advise you on staging. If you want to hire a stager, great, I know many great stagers that I can recommend. Please put effort into showing off your home’s unique space. Sometimes this requires moving furniture around or putting some furniture into storage. Present each room in a way that will make it easy for buyers to picture themselves in this house that they will ultimately fall in love with.
B) Professional magazine ready photos
We hire professional photographers for our photography assets. We also shoot video walk through tours so potential buyers can tour the home virtually and we have collateral for a 24/7 open house.
Today's home buyers do their searching online. The days of MLS being the only tool to reach buyers via their agent are long behind us. Your house needs to have staying power in the mind of a home buyer that is browsing online with a limited attention span.
Recent demand creation (beyond MLS and search portals) marketing examples Full report of m...
4) Reach as many eyes as possible
More page views on all media=more interested buyers=more showings=more offers=higher probability of a multiple offer scenario=more money.
Satisfaction of demand
Satisfaction of demand is strategically posting on the Multiple Listing Service and syndicating to all search portals. If a consumer is online looking for homes, you had better be in the places where they are looking. MLS and price are by far the most important tools, but they are not the only tools that bring buyers.
Creation of demand
With advertising, first thing is first, you have to reach as many eyes as possible. MLS posting and posting on all online portals satisfies demand. A buyer expressed intent by actively searching for a home. Demand creation is a whole different animal. Create demand by reaching audiences that are not yet showing intent by searching on online search portals. There are scientific concepts in presenting advertising copy using story branding to highlight a home's differentiators, but at the very least you should be reaching thousands or tens of thousands of people through earned/organic and also boosted (paid) social media advertising. Every agent will tell you that they have a Facebook ad strategy. Make them clearly explain what they do with this. How many people will their social media ads reach?... What is the intention (lead generation, solicitation of DM, identifying shows of intent, or is it just the vanity metrics of reach). How many leads do they plan on getting?.... We partner with a marketing agency called Curaytor, and have since 2014, to constantly be on the cutting edge of marketing
Digital marketing that sells homes faster and for more money. If you have ever listed your home with an agent and felt like all they did was stick it on the MLS, you know why this is so important. The job of the real estate agent has changed. Agents need to be master marketers using collateral and advertising copy that sells the lifestyle and creates affinity for your home which is a hugely expensive asset. You are hiring a broker that creatively sells, has the audience to do so, handles agents and offers with skill, mitigates your legal risk, and solves problems before they ever become problems.
Earned/organic social media audiences:
Here are our Demand Creation marketing channels beyond the important basics of the Multiple Listing Service and syndication to all search portals and agent/broker IDX search sites:
Instagram: organic audience 13,000+ and boosted ads.
Intention is solicitation of DMs.
Facebook: organic audience 1500+ and boosted ads.
Intention is lead generation via these very cool landing pages that we build.
Email, by far the best marketing medium: Email audience 14,000+.
Intention is to call contacts that heavily interact with that content. I have cool back end systems that make my life easy on knowing who to call.
The purpose of this marketing is to make sure your listing reaches more eyes than our competitors and to create opportunities from the leads we create. We aren't just showing pretty pictures on social media to build a following. I am not an influencer, I market and sell homes. These earned audiences are in place to sell your house. An agent posting a recent listing to your friends and family, or worse yet, making the marketing about themselves, is not a social media campaign.
Recent demand creation (beyond MLS and search portals) marketing examples Full report of m...
Selling a home is a sales business and you are
hiring a SALES PERSON.
Sales. Arguably the most important differentiator. The volume of leads generated from our demand creation is a lot. This is outbound, not just waiting for people to call us. Also crucial is what happens with the handling of hot prospects by yours truly and aggressively following up to get traffic through your home. Most showings will be buyers represented by a buyer agent. Post showing follow up to ensure that buyers looking at many homes are writing offers here and not somewhere else.
We have a 14K+ person database that is constantly growing. We track consumer behavior to know who to contact in our database via text and phone (in addition to the email blast mentioned above) that might be a fit for your house. The benefit of this is that we are proactively creating demand from sales efforts and not just marketing in the hopes that buyers call us. Shaking the tree for buyers.
Listing launch day is a big day for our team. Selling your home involves talking to people and we believe that some of the best people to talk to are your neighbors. We circle dial the relevant radius around your house (our tech data mines phone numbers) to give your neighbors your just listed info and give them the opportunity to choose their neighbors (spread the word for us).
A bit less sexy, but far more actionable is having conversations with buyers driving the neighborhood (by far the best type of lead). Accomplished with a call/text for info sign rider that has the primary purpose of capturing phone numbers for me to follow up. Can they just call my cell phone number on the sign? Yes. I find that consumers take the path of least resistance and lean towards texting for the auto response to our landing page. I capture their phone number and give them the pleasant surprise of a follow up from yours truly
OK, we found the perfect buyer willing to pay top dollar and negotiated great terms. Guess what.... If your buyer is financing the transaction (they will be) there is still a 30 to 45 day escrow before closing. In that time frame the buyer is going to arrange financing, order a home inspection, probably demand excessive repairs that need to be negotiated to be reasonable, the lender will order an appraisal, and during this whole stressful time you are just hoping that the buyer performs.
Steps 1 to 4 are my favorite part of my job. The final phase of the escrow is more than half of why you hire a top level Realtor. Finding a buyer and negotiating the contract is very important, but post contract negotiation using tactical empathy and KEEPING THE DEAL TOGETHER is really why you want someone experienced in your corner.
A) Vetting the buyer
One question: Will this buyer actually close? Here is how we answer that question. First, talk to the buyer's agent. What is their story. Do they have a home to sell before they can buy? Find out as much about the buyer's story as possible. Can they actually buy the house? I talk to the buyer's lender to make sure that income and assets have been verified. It is OK if a potential buyer doesn't check all of these boxes but that is part of the risk analysis to review.
B) Negotiating inspection objections
Home inspections always come back with red flags. In all honesty, I tell my buyer clients that home inspections are negotiating tools first, and educational about whether you actually want to buy the house second. It is a second round of negotiation or a second bite of the apple depending on how you like to say it. A house is a big machine with lots of moving parts. Most buyers value perceived defects at a higher value than their actual repair price. Negotiating these objections to a minimum in an empathetic way is how deals stay together.
C) Hand holding the appraiser
Many of my listings sell for between 102% and 105% of market value. Lenders will only loan certain loan to values of the lesser of the appraised price or purchase price. They order an independent appraisal and getting these appraisers to agree with high values take some effort. We share advantageous property details and send appraisers comps to consider using in their reports that point to a high valuation.
D) Coordinating move out
You will already have your move out time negotiated from the day you go under contract. Typically possession transfers at recording. If you need to negotiate extra time for move out there are multiple ways to structure getting extra time.
Bottom line: There are a lot of moving parts involved in selling a home for top dollar. We are here to guide you through every step.
Read reviews from real clients about what they think of Salt Lake Realty Group....
Sales Price / List Price ratios
2024: 101.4%
2023: 99.61%
2022: 100.36%
2021: 104.61%
Someone will reach out soon. In the meantime, explore our site for more information.