How to get the best price for your home in 2021

How to get the best price for your home in 2021

Over the last few weeks, I have been taking calls from several homeowners who are looking to take advantage of this sellers’ market. But maximizing your sale price during a hot market means more than sticking a “for sale” sign on your lawn and hoping for the best. 

In order to maximize your sale price, you need to create a high level of demand when listing and position your home for multiple offers. Below are my top tips for sellers hoping to score multiple offers.

1. Pricing

​In a sellers’ market, there is always the temptation to push the envelope on pricing; to price slightly above the market and set a record price for your home and the neighbourhood. 

However, pricing your home above market value will decrease the number of showings your home gets when it hits the market—and the key to getting multiple offers on your home is having multiple showings.

When you price your home slightly lower, it can often create a frenzy among buyers and drive up the price. 

Have you ever watched an auction? It's like that, where everyone wants to acquire the home for a bargain, but the demand and attention it gets from other buyers increases the resulting sale price and maybe sets a record price for your neighbourhood. 

This doesn't mean you have to give away the farm. When looking at recent solds for your neighbourhood, it’s best to list your home as a slight discount—not at a slight premium—to attract the most buyers' attention.

2. Give potential buyers and agents lots of time to view. 

As I mentioned above, in order to maximize the sale price—we need to maximize the number of showings. 

You don’t want to miss a qualified, motivated buyer because you had too many other showings booked or too many restrictions around showing your home.

Only a year ago it was common for homes to list and accept offers on the same day. Which sounds great in theory, but this limited the number of agents and buyers who were able to view the home before offers were reviewed and accepted. 

Accepting the first offer to come in limits the opportunity for multiple offers and can prevent you from maximizing your sale price.  

Is each day your home sits on the market inconvenient? Yes. Frustrating? Sometimes. A challenge to keep the place clean and ready to view? Absolutely. 

I recommend listing your home and setting a specific day and time to review offers. And then make yourself scarce for those days in between. 

That means you can get your home show-ready once, and don’t need to re-clean and re-stage in between each showing. 

This also gives potential buyers lots of time to view your property. Thursdays are great days to list as buyers often have more flexibility to view homes on the weekend.

3. Preparation! Preparation! Preparation!

In Real Estate, they say Location! Location! Location! But as a seller looking to maximize your sale price, the phrase should be Preparation! Preparation! Preparation!

You're not trying to create a situation in which your home barely edges out the listing down the street in the hearts and minds of your target buyer. If you want multiple offers, you need multiple buyers to fall deeply in love with your home—enough to bid above the list price and enough to compete with others for it.  

And this work starts weeks before you hit the market.

To generate multiple offers, prepare your home by ensuring it is: 

• Cleaned (inside and out): closets, basements, garages and crawl spaces.
• Landscaped: buyers can rule out properties in less than 8 seconds, highlighting why curb appeal is so important.
• Decluttered: reduce closets and cupboards by 50%
• Staged: this includes fresh paint, carpet, countertops and other things that need replacing. 
• In perfect working order: pre-list is the time to take care of all those general maintenance items you have been putting off for years

​And get ready to sing your homes’ praises. If you've done any major home improvements or replaced any appliances or systems lately, market that! Show off how immaculate, adorable and move-in ready your home is now—and tout its great working condition for the long run.

4. Expose it to the market. 

Have a plan to maximize your property’s exposure on the market. The first step is sharing your property BEFORE you list.

‘Coming Soon’ messaging can double your marketing exposure and have buyers lining up the day it lists.

Coming soon or pre-list marketing could include a “for sale sign” with a coming soon rider, a social media teaser campaign or direct mail to your neighbours since they already know how great it is to live on your street.  

With effective pre-list marketing, you can start racking up the showing requests even before you hit the MLS.

Pro tip: Host an agent pre-view the day before you hit the market. Agents love the opportunity to share off-market properties with their clients so an agent pre-view can help generate that buzz you’re looking for. 

If you’re thinking of listing your property and you aren’t sure if right now is the best time, I’d love to chat about some things you can do to prepare your home for listing.