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8 Free Real Estate Checklists to Maximize Your Profits
Maximizing Your Property Sales and Boosting Referrals When 89% of homeowners sell through the use of an estate agent , said agent needs to be at the top of their game in order to land the sale and client amongst hot competition. Combine this with the fact that only just over half of sellers stated that they were satisfied with the selling process, and you have a lot of customers dissatisfied with their property sale. Whilst this shows the real estate market in a surprisingly negative light on the seller’s behalf, it can also be seized as an opportunity to stand out from other agents. If you could provide high-quality service and an exceptional method to guide the seller through the property sale process, referrals will replace customer dissatisfaction as the end result.
‘Make sure everyone who works with you or for you, feels the need to tell others about the incredible experience’ – Chris Murray
In this sense, by perfecting the process enacted during a property sale and providing information that is useful to a resident in general, a savvy estate agent can turn a wary customer into a champion of their cause. To achieve this, we here at Process Street have compiled 8 real estate checklists for estate agents to either use themselves or recommend to their clients. These include a comprehensive guide to taking a seller through the property sale process, cleaning instructions from the general weekly chores to the deep cleans required when moving, and examples of some of the documents you will require when closing a deal.
House Cleaning
A thorough weekly clean pays dividends when the time comes to sell a property; with enough maintenance, the minimal amount of effort is required to arrange the house to sell. I know, I know, everyone hates washing up (some more than others), but rather than resorting to buying stocks in disposable plates a homeowner can just run this House Cleaning Checklist! From regularly practicing techniques to cut cleaning time to a minimum, to separating rooms into handy chunks for the family to split between them, this checklist in the hands of a homeowner will serve to both keep a property in prime condition and clean the entire household in record time. What does this have to do with real estate agents? Simple; referrals. By giving your client base this checklist, you make your sellers feel like more than a bunch of ones and zeroes attached to a bank account. After all, you want to be more memorable than their local cashier, don’t you?
Pre-Listing House Cleaning Checklist
One of the easiest, quickest and most inexpensive ways to boost your property’s value is covered in our Pre-Listing House Cleaning Checklist. This can either be a massive boost in the sale’s appeal, or the biggest drain of buyer enthusiasm you can possibly imagine. True, the regular day-to-day tasks are comfortably covered in the previous checklist. “Why do I need another cleaning template?” I hear you cry. To put it bluntly, there are jobs that go beyond the human limits of enthusiasm which need to be tackled head-on. The internet isn’t littered with “Most Hated Household Chore” posts for nothing (it’s cleaning the oven in case you were wondering). This Pre-Listing Cleaning session covers every nook and cranny a buyer could use to find fault with a property. By giving this to a seller (and maybe some sneaky time management tips), you provide an incentive to get shit done. Not only do they stand to gain by increasing the sale price of their home, but the property is far more likely to sell quickly. The best part though? You can still pass the work around the house; everyone’s moving out so there’s no excuses this time!
Home Staging Guide
Home staging can be a delicate process; good staging is so elusive that it can prompt questions akin to that of modern art. With our Home Staging Guide, however, you can easily break into the market with a bang. There are professional home stagers who can be employed, who see to it that the properties can spend up to 80% less time on the market than those which are unstaged. Fantastic! Now you just need to convince your seller to part with a further $6000 for the privilege. Yes, we don’t think that bit of news would go down too well either. Thankfully, with this checklist your seller can bypass the need to hire the expensive professional, whilst both they and their realtor still reap the rewards. The seller who receives this will be walked through the best practices for the house in general (interior and exterior) along with instructions for specific rooms to maximize profit. This includes how to arrange furniture, color choices that appeal to the widest audience, and advice on how to improve rooms by re-arranging (or removing) furniture.
Real Estate Listing
The listing process can be a finicky mistress, in that anything overlooked or miscalculated can result in an inaccurate property price; too high and the home will struggle to sell, too low and the seller you represent is getting a raw deal. Aspects such as tax records and the neighborhood can make or break an asking price, and so caution needs to be exerted. Surely a small mistake in price wouldn’t go too amiss though? Wrong. Even a slightly over-priced property will take longer to sell, and the longer a property remains on the market, the more likely it will sell for less than the asking price or even actual value. This Real Estate Listing Checklist ensures that no piece of information in calculating the price of a property is overlooked; from structural damage to facilities and location to nearby utilities. Contained are also several methods which suit various situations in coming to the final price and advice on where to list the property for sale.
House Viewing
Statistically speaking, the average buyer views the house they will eventually purchase at least twice; whether open house or private, viewings are the estate agent’s chance to truly shine and sell the product they represent. True, a quality, clean and staged property may not need much encouragement to sell, but a successful viewing can increase the sale price even further than the previous steps whilst obliterating any thoughts of price negotiation. This is especially true for open house viewings, which both serve as fantastic advertising and can form impromptu bidding wars between interested buyers. This practice should not be encouraged, however, a popular property can almost inevitably cause such a boost in price. In short, this is one of the most important real estate templates you could ever see. After all, successful advertising can stick in minds for years with the right implementation. This House Viewing Checklist details the process to achieving success with both open house and private viewings, including vital information about the home to prepare beforehand, methods for marketing open houses and tactics to present the property in the best way possible.
Real Estate Sales Process
The bread and butter of any sale, the Real Estate Sales Process from gaining a seller to finalizing the property’s closing period can be long, arduous and full of pitfalls. From incorrectly marketing the home to forgetting to declare all negotiations on price, this is perhaps the most formidable (and unavoidable) beast of any collection of real estate templates. If, however, the entire process is documented and run as standard for each client, you have very little to fear in terms of incorrectly processing a certain stage of the sale, or simply (as every human does) forgetting a vital piece of the puzzle. This checklist serves as an encompassing executable task for the seller’s estate agent in the property sale from start to finish. The Sales Process checklist can also serve as an easy way to gather together links to our Pre-Listing Cleaning, Home Staging, Listing and House Viewing checklists, with further help in securing the deal and finalizing the paperwork.
Home Inspection Checklist
What’s the worst-case scenario you can imagine if you bought a property? That you pay too much? Or perhaps your roof caves in because a termite infestation went unnoticed. That’s just a taster of what’s possible if a home inspection is not carried out correctly. Even more annoyingly, the “professionals” a buyer can hire in order to inspect the property they wish to purchase is up to snuff may not even be required to have any qualifications in the field! In short, the seller you represent is faced with the stuff of nightmares when their turn comes to buy. Why not take advantage of this dire situation? By supplying our Home Inspection Checklist you can cut out the risk of an under-qualified professional taking your client for a ride! Not only is this useful for creating referrals, but your seller can choose to either perform this task themselves or give it to a home inspector of their choice. With tasks and tips to examine that state of a home’s foundations, garden, electrics and more, all of the basics of home inspection are in one easy-to-use guide.
End of Tenancy Cleaning Service Guide
All rental properties require cleaning before a tenant vacates; this is nothing new. If not performed satisfactorily, however, the owner of the property can rightfully confiscate part (or even the entirety) of the tenant’s significant deposit. This is due to the fact that the owner will then pay for a professional cleaning service with the funds; wasting away up to the equivalent of two month’s rent! Why should you, as an estate agent, care about this? The answer is simple; for the same reason that the House Cleaning checklist is important to relay. Extra information that is highly useful to candidates outside of your current client base provides the basis for creating innumerable referrals. This End of Tenancy Cleaning Service Guide details how a tenant can clean their property and regain their full deposit with minimal costs. Whilst professional carpet cleaning is mandatory, by following this checklist a tenant can keep expenses down to solely the cost for the carpets; hence, they will end up paying closer to $70 than $700. Highly detailed instructions on cleaning bathroom fixtures, ovens, laundry rooms and the rest of the home create a fool-proof guide to getting back that deposit.