Ever pulled into a garage for an oil change and, while you’re waiting, notice their list of value-added services? Filter inspection, fluid top-offs, tire pressure check. They’re inspecting things that many car owners didn’t even know their vehicle had. (Differential fluid, we’re talking to you.)
Well, if you’re impressed with those places’ 17-point inspections, you’ll truly be floored at what a good Realtor® is doing under your hood. It’s a lot longer than the Jiffy Lube list. In fact, when we drafted our list of things we do for our clients, we determined 185 value-added services we perform to sell your home.
What are they? They all fall into 11 broad categories, from pre-listing research to closing (and even post-closing). But we’re not going to run through all of the items here – upon request, we’ll send you the entire list.
Instead, we’d like to highlight a few of the more unusual things we do for you.
- Calculate your average monthly utility bills
- Obtain a copy of your homeowners’ association bylaws
- Review a weekly market study
- Talk to you weekly about marketing and pricing
- Negotiate all offers on seller’s behalf
- Assist buyer with financing
Yes, everyone should be doing this anyway, as it’s a great way to not only budget expenses but also identify trouble spots if you see a spike in your bill. But how many people actually do this? Well, we do, based on your last 12 months of bills. The average bill is something that potential homebuyers invariably ask, and that figure can help close the deal on an efficient home.
If you have a homeowners group, that is. We know that nobody wants to read those bylaws, with one exception — the people who are buying a house in the neighborhood, who maybe have designs on replacing that chain-link fence with a white picket and want to know how tough a battle that will be. Those bylaws aren’t bad, at least not always. They’re just not exactly riveting reading material.
Things can change fast in real estate, and that’s why once we’ve done all the preliminary research on your house and neighborhood, we don’t stand pat. We review changes every week to make sure we’re aware of trends that might affect the marketing or selling of your house.
This is the follow-through to that weekly study. Is now a good time to press harder for a sale? Is the asking price where it ought to be? Do you want to hold the price high even if it means a slower sale? Constant communication is the key to making sure we’re doing exactly what you want to put up that “sold” sign.
Most of us hate haggling, but negotiation of price is a longstanding tradition with real estate, and for good reason. A house is the largest purchase most of us will make. We are pros at negotiation, though. We’ll know if they try to knock off $8,000 for a new heat pump that the list price already reflected the need for that replacement, for instance. You can count on us to get you the best price — which can often be the list price or even more — without any of the stress of dealing with the potential buyer on offers and counteroffers.
Yep, that’s right. We’ll even assist that potential buyer if it means locking down a sale for you.
These are all important things — and things you may not have even thought of as the real estate agent’s role.
But we’ve got literally 179 more things like this that we start doing for you from Day One. Some of them may be above and beyond the call of duty for many real estate offices, but for us, we’re just doing our job. And this is what you can expect from Carter and Associates – Harry Norman Realtors®.
For more details, visit Selling on our website.
Interested in the full list of 185 things we do for you? DOWNLOAD the brochure HERE.
Contact us for a no-obligation discussion.