In our current world of self-taught, do-it-yourself, and online everything, it's easy to think we can take on practically any task ourselves. It’s a noble thought, and in many cases, it's probably true. After all, before the pandemic, how many of us thought we'd become champion bread makers? Yet, here we are.
However, there are some endeavors that, due to time involved, resources needed, costs required, and the potential to lose out on a lucrative ROI, are best left to the professionals. The perfect example of this kind of endeavor would be selling your Staten Island home.
Although, in recent years, “For Sale By Owner” (FSBO) homes have grown in popularity, the sheer undertaking of selling your home for top dollar requires more than an online listing and a sign in the yard. Certainly, FSBO makes sense for specific properties, but if your goal is to sell luxury and sell it at an extremely high ROI, read on for five benefits of selling your home with a Staten Island Realtor.
Time is a Finite Resource
It might prove a little surprising, but even in a hot seller's market, selling a home involves a number of moving parts. It's not simply a matter of listing it, and they will come with lucrative offers. In fact, even when you list your home with a realtor, the homeowner is responsible for certain aspects of the process. Of course, this leads to thinking, "Why not just handle it all on my own?"
In theory, the home-selling process is understandable. In practice, selling a home involves so much more than you may realize, including the following long list of to-dos:
◾ Gathering presale documents such as: a property survey, receipts and warranties, plans and permits, certificates of occupancy, loan documents, latest utility bills, and property tax bills, homeowners association covenants and agreements, and the floor plan or blueprints.
◾ Preparing the home for its listing, which includes cleaning, decluttering, and depersonalizing
◾ Hiring contractors for a bevy of presale tasks like addressing minor repair issues, freshening the home's interior aesthetics with paint, or updating lighting fixtures
◾ Hiring a professional stager to set up your home to make the most impact for the duration of the listing, a professional photographer to take high-quality photos, videos, and virtual tours of your home, and a web developer or marketing agency to create an online listing for your home
◾ Researching comparables and past sales to determine your home's place within the market and how to price it accordingly
◾ Hosting an open house or multiple open houses, or coordinating and scheduling individual home tours for serious prospective buyers
◾ Entertaining and review offers and determining the viability of each, as well as participating in ongoing negotiations for the home
◾ Coordinating or being present for assessment, inspections, and appraisals
◾Executing the contractual paperwork required by the seller involved on the seller's end of a home negotiation and ultimate sale, which can purchase agreements, disclosures, addendums, settlement statements, tax statements, and the deed
When you employ a professional realtor, apart from decluttering and depersonalizing, the only other concern a seller would have is keeping the home presentable throughout the listing process. As for everything else on the above list, a realtor will either coordinate, have a high valued contractor they reach out to coordinate, or will work side by side with you to address each item. This saves you time and major headaches as opposed to taking on the list by yourself.
Using a Staten Island realtor also grants you access to the agent's extensive list of professional contacts. It gets your listing posted on the lucrative and widely viewed and utilized MLS. Most importantly, an agent will possess an extensive network of buyer's agents, and the buyers that come with them expand your home's exposure. Certainly, selling your home solo may save you a 6% commission, but it might end up costing you far more than you expected in time, emotional turmoil, and in terms of your home’s eventual selling price.
Pricing Requires an Experienced Touch
One of the most critical elements that a Staten Island realtor brings to the home sale proceedings is experience within the market, from past transactions, and with the buyer’s wants and needs. They also have access to a lot of research to help best inform their decisions. This includes what a particular market has done in the past, where it is now, and where it is forecasted to go. All of these intangibles play a role in effectively pricing a home to sell.
If you price your home too high, you'll scare off buyers and be stuck with a home that lingers on the market, losing value each day. Pricing your home too low, you inevitably leave money on the table. A realtor looks at every angle when recommending a home's list price, including current listings, past comparable sales, historical data on the primary market, and your home's submarket. Their pricing strategy comes from a place of knowledge and experience. It also comes without emotion. Even if the suggested list price is at or a little below market value, rest assured your agent knows how to attract multiple offers and ensure you maximize the sale of your home.
Marketing Matters
We mentioned it earlier, but marketing your home stands as one of the more time-consuming and least understood aspects of selling. For starters, every property possesses its own unique appeal. Particularly with luxury real estate, grand, opulent homes have features and charms that will appeal to a specific audience or set of buyers. Marketing the home is about appealing to those particular buyers. A listing may serve to let buyers experience the property at a surface level, and a professional agent will know how to affect a deeper response.
To properly position a property to sell, it requires increased visibility, consistent exposure, and connecting with buyers both online and in person. A Staten Island real estate professional understands how to craft the perfect marketing plan for your home. They'll call upon top professionals to produce stunning images of the property, know how to create a robust online presence through listings and social media.
Finally, they'll ensure your home stands out during open houses and shines during individual tours. Indeed, marketing can prove its own full-time job. Going it alone often proves one of the most frustrating aspects for do-it-yourself sellers. By partnering with a licensed realtor, you can let their marketing knowledge and resources do the heavy lifting of market exposure for you.
A Genuine Advocate Every Step of the Journey
Beyond their marketing prowess and market knowledge, a professional realtor is also an excellent advocate to have at your side during the sales process. They prove an invaluable resource to ensure your home is positioned to maximize your ROI from the start of the journey.
They assist with how best to prep your home to appeal to the right buyers. They call upon their lengthy list of industry connections to provide repair, upgrade, staging, and marketing services. They guide you through reviewing and accepting offers and the subsequent inspection and requests that follow.
Most importantly, however, is an agent's presence at the negotiating table ensures you're not operating at a disadvantage. They help you identify which offers are from qualified buyers, which may pose a risk to the sale. They'll explain why a lower all-cash offer may help you better meet your sales goals versus a higher financed offer. When it comes time to finalize the deal, you'll come to the negotiations with confidence. Drawing on your realtor's experience from hundreds of previous negotiations will ensure you land a lucrative deal and a great return on your home sale.
Don't Leave Money on the Table
Finally, the most significant benefit of selling your home with a Staten Island realtor is that it will simply earn you more money from the final sale. Consider that if you sell your Staten Island home on your own, you will remain responsible for at least 3% of the buying agent's commission. That commission will ultimately come from a considerably smaller payout.
Based on a 2020 report, all other intangibles being equal, FSBO homes carried an average sales price of roughly $218,000. Homes sold by licensed realtors collected an average of $295,000 for their clients. When you consider both time saved and money earned, the benefits of a Staten Island realtor are very clear.
If you’re ready to list your Staten Island home, contact Ken Licata today to start the selling journey. From Annandale real estate to Clove Lake or Dougan Hills homes for sale, allow Ken and his team's years of experience and expertise to be your guide to the Staten Island luxury real estate market.