What’s the Danger in Trusting Your Zestimate?

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Today I am going to talk about the difference between online home valuation websites view homes as opposed to how a real estate agent prices the home. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with sites like Zillow or Trulia and their home valuation services. It can be a useful tool for a general idea of what the market is like, but there is a big difference in how they price your home and how an agent will price your home. 

An online tool, like Zillow’s Zestimate, has no idea what your home looks on the inside. It doesn’t know about any remodels you have done, or what views you have, or other things that could significantly affect your home’s market value. All these sites know are your number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, your square footage, and its physical location. It doesn’t take into account anything that makes your home unique.

With an agent like myself, our job is to not only look at your home as a physical property, but to determine exactly what the market value of your home is. By being able to look at all the relevant information from your home, including seeing what it looks like from the inside, we can figure out how to maximize the price of your home.

What kinds of things do we do to help increase your home’s value? For starters, we work with a great staging company and have found that staging a home can increase the sale price 6% to 8% over what an unstaged home would sell for. In addition to that, we use a professional photographer to make sure your home looks the best it possibly can when people are browsing online.

These are just a few of the ways we can help you maximize the value of your home. If you would like to get an idea of what we could sell your home for in our current market, just give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

How To Avoid The Top 3 Mistakes Home Sellers Make When Selling

Considering Buying? Click here to search all homes in your area 

  Considering Selling? Get a Free Home Evaluation

 If you are looking to hire an accountant or a doctor, you are going to want the most qualified professional in charge of your well-being. The same goes with real estate. There are a lot of agents out there, so today we are going to tell you some of the biggest mistakes that home sellers make, in the hopes that you don't make them as well. Here are the top 3:

1. Hiring an agent who is a family member or friend
You may not want to hear this, but friendship alone isn't enough to establish professional credentials. You have to use tough standards to find the best agent who will provide you the best service, and sell your home for the most money. 

2. Hiring an agent that promises to list the home for the highest price
A higher price point always sounds good on the surface, but you've got to dig a little deeper to find the true value in this type of offer. Anybody can tell you that your home will sell for X amount, but not everyone can prove it with numbers and data. The one who can prove they can sell your home for more money is the one who will actually do it. 

3. Hiring an agent with the lowest brokerage fee
Although it might sound good to hire someone because they have the lowest price, that doesn't always mean much in terms of what you get. What I'm trying to say is you get what you pay for. While a low rate broker may put a For Sale sign in your yard, host an open house, and even put your home on the MLS, that's about all they are going to do for you. If you're saving 1% on the commission, but your home ends up selling for 5% less than it would have by hiring the best agent in the first place, you are losing 4% at the end of the day.

When looking for an agent to hire, interview them. Find out how they are different from the next and what they are going to do to get you a higher sales price. If you have any questions for us, feel free to give us a call or send us an email anytime. We look forward to hearing from you!