May 12, 2021

Don’t Know Where to Start When Selling Your Home?

Looking to sell your home? Are you unsure where to even start?

San Diego realtor Kyle Whissel from the Whissel Realty Group, gives three tips on what you should do when prepping to sell your home.

Are you thinking about selling your San Diego home and you don't know where to begin? Well, I'm going to help you out and rule out what most people do first, and that's prepping the house for sale.

Where to Start?

Kyle with the Whissel Realty Group and I want to help you answer the question of, where should you go first when you're thinking about selling your house here in San Diego? First thing you should do is really determine, am I going to stay local here in San Diego, or am I going to go out of state? We've seen a lot of people, probably 1/3 of our clients are leaving the state, whether it be the cost of living has gotten too high here locally, they don't like the political climate, or whatever the case may be. I know they love the weather. Nobody's leaving because of our weather, unless they like want snow or something.

Where Are Going to Relocate?

That'd be weird, right? So first thing you got to do is just figure out where you want to go. Do you want to stay here in San Diego? Do you want to get out of town? That's what you're going to need to figure out first. Once you've done that, you're going to want to take the time to meet with a real estate agent. One, if you're going to stay local, they're going to be able to help you figure out where locally is going to be the right place for you. Because the thing a lot of times we don't take into consideration when we're moving is the fact that we're not just buying four walls and what's inside it, we're buying the lifestyle that comes along with it.

If I'm buying in downtown San Diego and I'm in a high rise condo building, that's going to carry a very different lifestyle with it than if I move out to the suburbs of Santee, which they're getting much larger homes on some land, really highly rated schools, high safety ratings. A good realtor is going to be able to help you figure out which is going to be that right location for you locally. Also, if you're going to be going out of state, a good realtor is going to have connections.

I actually had a client of mine who's looking at making the move out to Austin, Texas. So I reached out to my friend, Heather, out there, who's an amazing agent. They just flew out to Austin over the weekend. Heather showed them all around town, helped them find the perfect building for them to buy that new home in Austin. So you want to meet with an agent, who one, is going to be able to help you figure out locally or out of area where it is you want to go.

Prep the Home for Sale

Second, they're going to be able to help you figure out what you need to do to get the home ready for sale, and ultimately, where to price the home. And lastly, how they're going to market that home to ultimately put as much money as possible into your pocket. Third thing that you're going to need to do is prep the house for sale. This is so, so important. We see so many people that just say, hey, I want to sell my house. They meet with a realtor. Like I want to get this thing on the market right away.

The realtor takes a couple cell phone photos, throws it up on the MLS, and now all the buyers are coming through. I mean, I just looked at a home over the weekend and my daughter had to use the restroom while we were there. And I'm looking there's water damage all over the walls 'cause from behind the toilet. There's a hole in one of the doors. Obviously somebody got off and punched a hole. Half of the cabinet doors are missing. I'm in the kitchen. I mean, we're talking a $1.3 million house and there's all these little things. Well, guess what happens. Now somebody is walking through the home.

They think, well, if they didn't take care of this water damage, they didn't fix this hole, they didn't fix these cabinets, what else didn't they fix? People make mountains out of molehills. So you don't want that to happen when somebody is coming through your home. You want to finish up those unfinished projects. You want to make sure that everything is showing in the best light possible because that water damage, I mean, there could be mold in there. That could cost tens of thousands of dollars to remediate that. So we want to ease buyers' concerns when it comes to those things.

We also want to make some of the improvements that are going to make the home more appealing to everybody. Maybe you made some choices. I know my old house, I had these hideous crimson red walls. We thought that was cool at one point. Well, maybe that was cool for me, but that's not cool for everybody else. So we want to neutralize your home, depersonalize, declutter, maybe take some furniture out that might be unnecessary. Maybe you're a guy like me, then you don't understand color palettes and all that stuff. Maybe we need to put some pops of color in there, make your house look a little bit more neutral for everybody. We can help with that. So you want to have a good agent who can help guide you through all of these things as well, help you figure out which projects you need to get done. Figure out what unfinished things need to get handled and how to ultimately make your house show in the best light possible so you can sell for the most money possible.

So if you're considering selling your home here in San Diego, our team would be honored for the opportunity to help make that happen. We have this amazing seven day listing launch program. We'd love to sit down with you and share exactly how we launch homes onto the market. How we've earned the title of the number one team in San Diego for the last six years running per the Wall Street journal. Give us a call or shoot us a text, 618-7997. I'm Kyle Whissel with Whissel Realty Group.

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