Preparing Your Home For A Successful Sale
Leslie Ebersole and Paul Chadwick Baird & Warner Real Estate
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Welcome to the BRIX Group If you’re thinking of selling your home, there are many things to think about. We have gathered our best advice and strategies to help you prepare your home for a successful sale. • How to enhance the value of your home through careful preparation and presentation. • How to accurately price your home with our predictive value model. • How to aggressively market on the internet to attract the widest pool of buyers. • How to attract out of area agents and their buyers. • How to negotiate for the highest price and the most favorable terms and conditions. You have many important choices ahead, and we hope that selecting us to list and sell your home is one of them. We would be honored if you choose the BRIX Group.
Leslie Ebersole Hi there, I am the team leader of the BRIX Group at Baird&Warner Real Estate. Everyday I work with our agents to deliver top-notch service and representation for our clients. I also work with my personal clients and focus on listing their homes. From castles to cottages and every type of home in between, I create a story for each house that we express through online and offline marketing.
Passionate, intense, smart and fun are some of the words I hear about me from our clients.
I am regularly recognized at the highest levels of sales achievement both at Baird&Warner and in my local market area. I was recognized in 2013 By Inman News as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Real Estate. In 2013 and 2014 I was recognized the Swanepoel 200 as one of the top 20 most influential in real estate social media. I am an active member of the Zillow Group Agent Advisory Board. I also have worked on committees for Realtor.com, the Realtor Association of the Fox Valley, and the National Association of Realtors.
We Deliver Results • Paul Chadwick and Leslie Ebersole created the BRIX Group in 2013 with a deep commitment to providing world class service. • Our consistently high repeat-and-referral business is reflected in our top 5% ranking at Baird&Warner. • 88% of our listings sell during the initial listing period. The MLS average is 69% • Our listings sell in an average of 66 days. The MLS average is 102 days. • Our accuracy on estimated sales price is 99%. The MLS average is 90%. In today’s complex real estate environment, having an experienced professional on your side is more important than ever.
• We have 17 times the career sales of the average agent in the six-county Chicago-area MLS.
Testimonials One and Only Choice Christopher Dunn, Wayne Home Seller
Highly Likely to Recommend Dave McCue, Aurora Home Seller and Buyer
Leslie is the hardest working Realtor with whom I've ever worked. She puts 100% of herself into her work, and if I ever again have a house to list in the Wayne/Fox Valley area she will be one and only choice for a listing agent
Terrific experience working with Leslie and team. As inexperienced sellers/buyers it was important that we work with an agent willing to slow down the process, explain the what/why and answer our many questions. Leslie was easy to work with, very knowledgeable, and in general made us feel at ease with everything.
Highly Likely to Recommend Ginny Castaldi, St. Charles Home Seller She (Leslie) is very professional keeps you updated on your house and most of all is honest and tells it like it should be and most of all she delivered what she said she would in a little over two months she had my house sold. She had open house two weeks in a row. I would highly recommend her.
Working with Leslie and team to update and stage our home helped us get an acceptable offer within one week of listing, which allowed us to move quickly on purchasing a home that had already been on the market.. Without that quick sale, our new home might not have been around when we were ready to make a move. I'd recommend Leslie to anyone, it was a pleasure.
Testimonials Most Responsive, Knowledgeable Geneva Home Buyer Leslie is the most responsive, knowledgeable, and easy to work with real estate agent I have had the pleasure of working with. From my first call with her I could tell she was going to be great to work with as she responded very timely and offered to show my wife and me around the area and through communities that she saw as a fit for our family. When we were in Chicago area she traveled with us (for hours) to show us communities in person and explained what areas were ideal, based on our requirements of price, size, schools for our daughter. Every area she showed us was spot on to our needs. I would recommend her to anyone in the area of St. Charles, Geneva, and Elgin as there cannot be an agent better suited to help you find a home or sell one.
Within One Week Home Sold Pam Mahalik, St. Charles Home Seller  Leslie is an absolute "find". She knows her business and is very professional. After 2 previous Realtors and months of trying to sell my home, Leslie came in, correctly found the right market and within one week my home was sold. She took care of every detail. I can't say enough good things about her. I would highly recommend her - she knows the Kane and DuPage County market like no one else!
Extremely Professional Dave McCue. Geneva Home Buyer Leslie was extremely professional and a joy to work with. She knew the area and quickly zeroed in on the type of home we were looking for. Leslie has also continued to be a resource long after we closed on the home. I would highly recommend Leslie to anyone moving to the area.
Testimonials Very Knowledgeable and Responsive Geneva Home Seller
Excellent Insight Elburn Home Buyer
It was a pleasure to work with Paul. He offered his expertise in a number of areas during the entire process. From pricing the home to sell, to taking very professional and appealing photographs, suggesting repair individuals to work with and recommending a Real Estate Attorney to handle the closing. Paul is very knowledgeable and responsive and presents a very calm, reassuring demeanor in what can be a very challenging process. I have previously sold 4 other houses and Paul is by far, the best Realtor I have ever worked with.
Paul provided excellent insight to the location we purchased our home in. Also, he was mindful of our home being resold in the future. We are first time home buyers and Paul walked right through every step of the way. He kept on top of all parties involved which allowed us to close in 30 days.
Very Good Job Ken Remmack Paul did a very good job marketing our house. Information on showings and internet activity was supplied on a weekly basis giving me a good understanding of the overall activity.
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Thank You Chuck Reese Thank you for returning my calls promptly. Thank you for always giving me your thoughtful and sound advice. I sincerely hope we will have the chance to work together in the future. Highly Recommend Aaron & Kerry Carmack I would highly recommend Paul to anyone looking to sell their home.
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Understanding Buyers Price: ”How much” is the bottom line, particularly for firsttime buyers. Getting it right the first time will ensure a solid offer. Condition: Whether it’s replacing the roof or painting the walls, a little home improvement can go a long way. Presentation: Use staging, photography, and a strategic marketing approach to find and attract the right buyers. Location: Neighborhood, schools, transportation, and other location-related factors are hugely important to buyers…but your house is where it is. While you can’t do anything about location, you can perfect the rest of these attributes with the right know-how and a few small investments.
Price: For Success Pricing your home accurately is the most effective way to ensure a successful sale. Allow me to repeat that - pricing your home accurately is the most effective way to ensure a successful sale. No amount of marketing can sell an overpriced home. Many sellers are tempted to list their home with the agent who quotes the highest price. Please keep in mind, the agent doesn’t set the price, the seller doesn’t set the price - the market will set the price, or value, for your home.
What Doesn’t Ma@er: What you paid for the house. What proceeds you expect. What you spent on improvements.
Price: Be Realistic When properly priced, a home should draw an offer within the first twelve showings. Aim too high, however, and you’ll likely be waiting much longer. If you’ve lived in your current home for several years, you’ve likely invested lots of time and money into maintaining it, and hopefully made many fond memories. Nevertheless, it’s important to be realistic and approach pricing with an eye for current conditions. In a slow market, a seller should also be willing to offer incentives to beat out the competition, including home warranties, appliances, and repairs.
Your home is not worth what you want or need, but what a buyer is willing to pay for it.
Price: Get It Right It's important to determine your home’s fair market value and set a compelling listing price. Here's why:
Above Market Value
A compelling price offers you the best chance to get the best return in the least amount of time. Overpricing a home reduces initial interest and often lengthens market time. Aggressive pricing reduces profit potential and limits your options if your home doesn’t sell quickly. The first 30 days your home is on the market are critical and usually yield your best offer. New properties create a sense of excitement.
Compelling Price
Below Market Value
Activity generally decreases over time as buyers become familiar with your listing. Buyers become wary of properties that "sit" on the market and start looking for price adjustments.
Price: You Make the Decision Market Analysis We’re data geeks and proud of it. We do a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA), which uses MLS data on active, sold, and expired listings in your area. We carefully choose relevant comparables with similar amenities and characteristics, to help you decide what your home is worth. Professional Appraisal While it’ll cost you a few hundred dollars up front, hiring an appraiser will also give you the most accurate market value estimate for your home. Appraisers are licensed and regulated by state boards and programs. Online Valuation Tools Most major real estate sites offer online valuation services using public data such as property records and tax assessments. (Zillow’s “Zestimate” is a prime example.) Take such valuations with a grain of salt, as these tools often use old or inaccurate data in their estimates. " "
Preparing Your Home We want buyers to imagine how they will live in and enjoy your home - not what they would have to repair. Discovering and repairing problems before you list your home puts you in control, eliminating the stress of making repairs on the buyer’s schedule. Having your house in move-in condition also helps you avoid delays to closing and demonstrates to buyers, agents and the buyer’s home inspector that your house has been very well maintained. To fetch the highest price for your home, you need to reveal its inner beauty without investing in embellishments that could turn people off. While getting your home into selling shape, remember the three r’s: refresh, repair, replace.
Refresh A fresh coat of paint can work wonders on even the shabbiest rooms. Strip off any old wallpaper and fill holes from nails and picture hangers, then give your interior a fresh coat. Replace bright colors with safer shades of white or beige. Pay special attention to scuffed and dented baseboards, spackling and repainting as necessary. In addition to interior touch-ups, you should also take steps to maximize curb appeal. For instance, it’s often a good idea to repaint your front door (as well) after all, it’s the first detail buyers will notice. As for the rest of the exterior, a thorough power-washing and window cleaning should suffice. When it comes to landscaping, pull weeds and seed any dead patches of grass.
Repair Curb appeal isn’t limited to ground level: A worn-out roof is a bad omen that will scare buyers away. Hire a roofer replace any worn or missing shingles or roofing tiles. Have any moss or other plant growth removed. You should also ensure proper drainage by checking that your gutters are clear, clean, and freshly caulked. Inside, take care of any plumbing issues. Check and replace the seals on all of your toilets. Tighten leaky faucets and refurbish with new o-rings, gaskets, and other parts. Check the lines leading to your dishwasher and washing machine. Be sure to address any faulty wiring as well, fixing any problem sockets or switches to avoid potential embarrassment during a showing.
Replace Some home features are better replaced completely than fixed or refurbished. For starters, updating old light fixtures and window treatments can go far in making an old home shine like new. You may also want to replace carpets, particularly if you have pets. Even stain-free carpets can hold onto undesirable odors. (Depending on cost, consider substituting hardwood or laminate: they’re easier to keep clean and fetch a higher price.) Whatever you replace, be sure to opt for neutral colors and styles that will appeal to a wide range of tastes and decor. Don’t install anything too expensive, either--after all, there’s a good chance your buyer will replace these themselves.
New hardware and faucets are quick, easy and inexpensive updates for a kitchen or bath.
Presenting Your Home Once your home is in salable condition, it’s time to spread the word to buyers and actively highlight its best qualities. With 95% of buyers using the Internet to search for homes, professional staging and professional photography will are essential to any comprehensive marketing plan. More people will view your home online than will ever visit it personally. People only spend a few second on each photo as they scroll through listings online. Beautiful photos of well-presented rooms will help them focus on your home. If your home meets other criteria, such as location and price, the first step of a showing starts online. .
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Presenting Your Home Lighting: Try to let in as much natural light as possible. Remove thick, heavy curtains and blinds, and avoid blocking windows with furniture. Use lamps with highwattage bulbs to illuminate spaces that don’t receive much outdoor light. Space: Accentuate the possibilities of your home by removing unnecessary furniture and clutter. This will make your spaces feel bigger and allow buyers to fill in the blanks on their own. Noise: Ambient noise from outside your home can be a blessing or a liability. If you’re in a city, for instance, you might consider closing your windows to minimize street noise. You can also use sound actively in your staging, playing soft, slow, classical music to provide buyers with a comfortable atmosphere to contemplate your space. .
Presenting Your Home Cleanliness: Make sure all of the surfaces in your home are spotless: there’s nothing worse than putting your hand on a table, only to come away with grime or dust. The same goes for floors: even through shoes, buyers can feel the difference between a clean kitchen floor and a dirty one. Temperature: If your home tends to get stuffy, open the windows to let fresh air in at least ten minutes before buyers arrive. Adjust the thermostat to ensure the temperature is perfect for your visitors. Smells: Few things put off buyers more than a bad odor. If you have lots of carpets or rugs, make sure they’ve been steam cleaned thoroughly before you start showing your home. While a scented candle can have a positive impact, it’s important to keep your efforts subtle and simple.
Professional Staging Some people think of staging as fussing with throw pillows and making knick knack arrangements on tables. Some agents call themselves stagers because they like arranging furniture and making a room pretty. But not the BRIX Group. We stage homes based on our experience with representing buyers and sellers in our market. We start with understanding the space and how the buyers will react. Our professional stager Craig has worked with 100s of home sellers to achieve his mantra of big, bright and clean.
An AOL Money & Finance poll revealed that 87% of respondents said home presentaOon makes the difference in most sales.
Home staging is not decorating. Decorating appeals to the person living in the house; staging is positioning the home to appeal to buyers in a way that builds an emotional connection and to imagine living in the home.
Professional Staging It is just as important to stage the outside of your home as the inside for curb appeal and overall value. Repair: steps, handrails, paver walkways, patios, cracked driveways, skylights, shingles, flashing. Landscaping: fresh mulch and neatly trimmed bushes make a house look well-cared for. Lawns should be regularly mowed and edges trimmed. Deep Clean: power wash front porch, walkway, driveway, exterior walls, garage doors. Freshen: Hose off patio furniture, playset, statuary, birdbaths, outdoor light fixtures, large pots, outdoor sheds. Replace: Light fixtures, sill cocks, door handles, locksets, door knockers. Decorate: Consider buying new throw cushions, pots of seasonal flowers, swing seats.
Professional Photography You need to create excitement about your home with exceptional imagery. Most potential buyers will first become acquainted with your home through photographs on the web. Great photos bring out your home’s inner beauty, while low-quality or uninspired photos send searchers running. The BRIX Group provides best-in-class professional photography from VHT, Chicago’s leading real estate photography service. We use the Clear View service to show the outdoors in photos regardless of the indoor lighting. This expensive post-production treatment shows beautiful yards and gardens.
Bring the outdoors in with Clear View photography.
These photos will appear on the MLS, on Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, on BairdWarner.com, on all the other . sites and and in all marketing materials. brokers’
Finding Your Buyer 92% of home buyers use the Internet to shop for homes.
43% of buyers found the home they purchased online.
34% of home buyers found the home they purchased from their real estate agent.
Almost all real estate agents will “put your home on the internet�. But what does that mean? Putting it into the MLS and hoping someone notices? The BRIX Group are specialists in online and offline marketing. From aggressive and enhanced syndication programs to social media marketing, we put your home where the right buyers will see it at the right time. We never forget that over a third of all homes purchased were introduced to the buyer by their agent. So we have extensive Realtor marketing programs so that the the right agents in our 40,000 member MLS are aware of your home.
Realtor Marketing Target Agents: In addition to marketing your property directly to potential buyers, we will target agents who have previous brought buyers or listed similar homes in your community. Broker Open: Our marketing launch starts with a catered Realtor luncheon, also called a broker open house or a broker tour. New Listing E-blast: we keep special lists of Realtors who we think might have a buyer who is perfect for your home. We send them an E-blast, the perfect way to get the attention of a busy agent. Reverse Prospecting: Every day we check in the MLS for agents who’s clients have marked that they are interested in your home. If the agent is out of area – say Winnetka or Orland Park – we call and offer to show their client your property.
Internet Marketing Your House Has a Story: we create a custom content plan for every home we market. We learn from you what you love about your house and we craft a narrative that will speak to your buyer. Beautiful Presentations: we strive to create an emotional connection between buyers and your home. We do this with professional photos, custom video, carefully written descriptions, and enhanced property descriptions on all the major sites. Unique Websites: we create custom single property websites for each home to showcase the home, the neighborhood and the community. Technology to Bring Us Closer: while some agents and brokers use technology as a shield to avoid interacting with people, we use technology to create a more custom experience for each client.
Listing Syndication Listing Syndication is just a fancy term for the way listings are published to hundreds of sites around the Internet. Listing syndication makes your home visible to as many home buyers as possible.
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HOMES
From the earliest moments of a property search, a home buyer is deciding what they like and don’t like, and forming opinions about home values and communities and schools. Once a listing is entered into the MLS, we use carefully controlled process to make sure that the listing information about your house is speedily onto the most trafficked real estate sites. Because the BRIX Group pays for premium subscriptions like Zillow Premier Agent, Trulia Pro, and Realtor.com Showcase, we can edit and enhance your listing with more detailed information.
Social Media Facebook: is the world’s leading social media site with over 1 billion users. The BRIX Group has a Facebook business page where we share community information, real estate News, open houses and new listings. We will use highly targeted ads, photos and more to reach thousands of area residents with every post. Twitter: When we have a listing that we think will appeal to first-time home buyers, we Tweet information with hash tags like #cuteranch, #firsttimebuyer and #stcharles, or whatever the town name may be.
Negotiating With Buyers Negotiate by Planning Ahead: Before you begin negotiations with any buyer, make sure you have the upper hand by removing any sticking points in advance. Price and Condition: Buyers respond well to fair pricing and a “model home” appearance. Your buyer has less to negotiate, and will more likely make an offer closer to asking price. Low Offers: Buyers sometimes test sellers with low offers, but don’t get upset or discouraged. We ask the other agent for comparables to back up their offer. If there aren’t any, then you know the buyer is “fishing”. Negotiate in good faith until you are sure that a deal can’t come together. Understand What They Want: If the offer is low, but close to what you want, study the terms carefully, adding up possible expenses such as paying the buyer’s closing costs.
Negotiating With Buyers Check the Pre-Approval: Serious buyers have access to the same comparables as you do, so a buyer working with a real estate professional is more likely to be preapproved by a lender and informed of current market conditions. We always check with the buyer’s lender before completing the negotiation. Cash Offer: We suggest that ask for proof of funds in the form of a bank statement or other financial document proving that the buyer has the funds they say they do. Full Price Offer: A full price offer doesn’t mean negotiations are over. It could signal that the buyer intends to negotiate a lot of repairs or refurbishing costs during the inspection period. Stay calm and reasonable.
BRIX Group Services Attentive One-on-One service: We work as a team so that you get the best overall service possible, but the responsibility of managing the sale of your home is never passed off to assistants. Regular Communications: showing feedback, new listings, price changes of competing homes, sales and if we should adjust the price if the home hasn’t sold in a reasonable time. Getting it Closed: When we go under contract we stay in close contact with the buyer agent, the attorneys and the lender until we are sure that all contingencies are released and that the closing is on schedule. We meet the appraiser and, sometimes, inspectors and servicemen. And then we’ll celebrate with you at the closing!
Corporate Relocation Leading Real Estate Companies of the World As a member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, we receive inbound clients from our fellow 150,000 network associates in 35 countries. As soon as I post your home on the Baird & Warner web site, it is immediately accessible from the web sites of the top real estate firms worldwide through RELOHomeSearch.com. Luxury Portfolio International Luxury Portfolio International is the elite property component of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World. Comprised of the very best independent brokerages in the world with locations in North & South America, Europe, Australia and Islands of the Caribbean, Pacific and Asia, it is designed to deliver unmatched national and international exposure for homes priced at $1 million and above.
What’s Next? When you meet with us we will review the information in this presentation and answer all your questions. We will discuss how we will customize our marketing for your home to get the most money in the quickest time possible. We will present relevant comparables and an analysis to help you decide the best possible price. We’ll sign our Exclusive Marketing Agreement that gives you full control over the relationship. While it rarely happens, we allow an unhappy client to cancel the agreement at any time with no fees.