Seller's Guide

Everything you need to know about putting your home on the market, accepting an offer, and closing on your home.

A Step-by-Step First Time Seller's Guide

Putting your home on the market can be a stressful process, especially when you don’t know what to expect. Fortunately, with the help of an experienced real estate team and this easy-to-follow guide, you can smoothly complete the process. Following these steps will help you prepare so you can get organized and sell your home for the best price possible.​​​​​​​

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Step 1: Understand Why You're Selling

What do you want to accomplish with the sale of your home? Do you want to make a certain amount of money that you can put toward a larger or nicer home? Do you need to sell it as soon as possible to facilitate a move to a new city or area? Once you understand your needs, you can better craft your offer. For example, if you need to sell quickly, you might want to price your home lower than if your goal is to make a certain profit margin. Make sure you convey these needs so that we can adjust your selling price accordingly.

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Step 2: Determine Selling Price

Knowing how to price your home is one of the most important parts of the selling process. When you set a fair price in the beginning, you’ll get the most interest from other real estate agents and prospective buyers. Overpricing your home could lead to reduced interest, and underpricing leads to receiving less than what your home is worth. Working with us, a top-producing Bay Area real estate team is the best way to determine the right selling price for your home. A real estate team with experience can determine what other comparable homes are selling for, evaluate the current market, and suggest a home appraisal.

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Step 3: Start Preparations

If you’ve kept your home in showroom condition since you’ve lived in it, you’re in the minority of homeowners. Once you price your home, it’s time to start getting it ready to be shown to potential buyers. This includes getting rid of clutter, depersonalizing the space so that buyers can envision themselves in the space, making any small repairs, and doing a deep clean to make sure your home is in pristine condition.

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Step 4: Develop a Marketing Strategy

We will develop a marketing strategy that is perfect for advertising your home. This involves listing the home and then driving the right people to that listing through social media campaigns, agent-to-agent referrals, traditional media, and SEO advertising. Our team creates a marketing campaign that aims to get the most possible traffic to your listing in the first three weeks after becoming available for sale.

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Step 5: Evaluate Offers

Receiving an offer is an exciting part of the process, but it doesn’t mean the journey is over. We will evaluate each offer and make sure the party making the offer is prequalified or pre-approved by a mortgage lender and that their offer is acceptable to you. If the offer is too low, you can make a counter-offer or offer other ways to bridge the gap, such as covering some or all of the closing costs, making repairs, adjusting the move-in date, or leaving some appliances or fixtures for the new buyer.

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Step 6: Accept an Offer

Once we deem the offer is acceptable, we will review the proposed contract to make sure it’s all in order and includes the necessary components such as deposit amount, down payment, financing, inspection rights and repair allowances, contingencies, settlement date, and a list of fees and who will pay them. When both parties have agreed to the term, a final contract will be prepared.

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Step 7: Get Ready to Close

You have accepted an offer and are now very close to the end of your selling journey. But first, you and the buyer must make a list of what needs to be done before closing. In some cases, your home may need to be formally inspected, surveyed, and appraised. In other cases, major or minor repairs will need to be made before the house can close. We will head up efforts to develop and execute this list, get each action item paid for by the correct party, and make sure everything is in order by the closing date. A few days before the closing date, we will call the company closing the transaction to make sure everything is ready to go. If you haven’t done so already, you will also need to make arrangements to move out of the home so the new buyer can take possession.

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Step 8: Close

You’ve reached the last step in the seller’s process. When you close on a home you are selling, you are legally transferring ownership of the property to the new buyer. We will meet with the company closing the transaction to sign the final paperwork and go over any issues that have not yet been taken care of. During this time, you can also make plans with us to handle final details such as canceling utilities, cable, and lawn or trash services, changing the name on accounts that the new owner is retaining and ensuring the new owner has instructions for all appliances that will remain in the home.

Congratulations!

Once you have sold your home, you’re free to take the next step on your journey. Whether this is relocating to a new city, moving into a larger home, or downsizing and enjoying your life as empty-nesters, knowing all your selling responsibilities have been taken care of will help you achieve peace of mind for your new path.

Testimonials

Browse what our clients say to see our breadth of experience.

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Buyer & Seller

We found The Veeravalli Team to help us with our realty needs through a friend's referral. I typically don't approach people without any direct referrals and thought I should give it a shot since it was recommended by a close f...
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Travis W.

Ashwin and the team are the best real estate agents I've met. Their knowledge of the bay area market and the economy is unparalleled and so straightforward in explaining, listening, and helping, it motivates you to be your best...
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Amanda G.

Ashwin and the team helped us to buy a family home. We were looking for something long-term so wanted something that was a really good fit. The team listened carefully to all requirements and brought us to lots of properties so...
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Naveen N.

We were referred to Ashwin and the team by a family who had previously worked with them and they helped us find the right home for our family. The team was very patient with all our questions and guided us well through the whol...
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Jaya R.

My husband and I were undecided on the location for a house although we knew we wanted to own one. Ashwin and the team gave us details on factors to consider before buying a house such as the location, schools, distance from wo...
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Buyer

Ashwin and the team was the listing agent when we were planning to buy our first house in September 2019. We met them for 2 minutes and shared our real agent’s name. The next day morning my agent had the disclosure package. Tha...
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Buyer

Ashwin and the team are great! they patiently showed me properties as I discovered different areas, neighborhoods, property types, and I ended up with a place that fits me perfectly. Once I found the place, the team got it for ...
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Sunny P.

We were new to the Bay Area and we're lucky to have The Veeravalli Team as our Realtor®. Quick to respond he provided deep insights into the property we were considering. Was able to dig up some of the issues in one of the prop...
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Buyer

Ashwin and the team helped us with our new home. They were patient, kind, and most of all listened to what we needed. The team was fair, honest, always available and guided us in the right direction. We are so happy with our ho...
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Buyer

Responsive, knowledgeable and reliable Real Estate Agent who helped us buy our home in 2015. Would recommend him to anyone looking to buy or sell house.
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