When to Contact a Realtor to Sell Your House - The Legend of Hanuman

When to Contact a Realtor to Sell Your House


Choose the real estate agent with experience you trust

After the interviews, compare your top Realtor candidates based on their experience, relevant network, and personal connections. Go with your gut, even if it means letting down a referral or friend in your network.

“It is very common to have a friend or a friend of a friend or someone in the family who has a license, but they’re not necessarily going to be the best person for the job,” shares Gonzalez, emphasizing that sellers need to choose an agent with proven experience selling their property type (condo, single-family home, luxury home, etc.) in their area.

This advice is especially relevant in times such as these when the housing market has cooled in much of the country. You will want a performance-proven professional by your side.

Take the next steps in your home sale with your partner agent

With a top real estate agent hired, it’s time to tackle pre-listing tasks. Your agent will kick off the process with the following:

Conduct an initial walkthrough

Your real estate agent will walk through your property with you, noting your home’s best features and opportunities for improvement.

For an even deeper dive into your home’s condition, consider hiring a home inspector to conduct a full pre-listing home inspection. A pre-listing home inspection provides you with a list of needed repairs upfront so you can tend to them before pricing and listing your home.

Suggest home improvements

Depending on your home’s competition and your budget, your real estate agent will suggest renovations to improve your home’s marketability. With their expertise and objective eye, agents will evaluate what needs replacing or just refreshing, which improvements can bring a high return on investment, and which blemishes are better left untouched.

Connect you with reputable local contractors

Agent rolodexes are full of reliable contractors and designers. They’ll put you in touch with whatever specialist you need to get your home into top shape and assist with scheduling to ensure jobs are completed before your target listing date.

Set you up with staging services

If your home’s interior could benefit from cleverly curated interior design, your agent may recommend staging. According to HomeLight’s survey, 38% of agents recommend staging to help sell a home in any market. Some agents even cover the cost of staging in their commission fee.

Perform a comparative market analysis

Your real estate agent will conduct a comparative market analysis (CMA) to set the most important piece of the puzzle: listing price. CMAs analyze the sale prices of comparable homes, taking into account everything from square footage and neighborhood location to listing photos and unique features.

The objective behind CMAs is to help determine the market value of your home in order to price it competitively against other homes in your market. And pricing your home right is even more important now that the market has shifted.

“That transition is difficult for the newer sellers who only know what home prices have done since 2020,” says David Moyer, a top agent in Centerville, Ohio. “It’s up to us as professional agents to set the expectations with your clients and keep them informed of what the market is doing.”

Contact a top agent to get started, even if you’re planning ahead

HomeLight can connect you with top-performing, trusted agents in your market whenever you’re ready to sell, or if you’d just like expert advice for future plans. Our data shows that the top 5% of real estate agents across the U.S. sell homes faster and for as much as 10% more than the average real estate agent.

Too late to contact an agent?

If you have a deadline to sell your house fast, it may be too late to contact an agent to manage a traditional home sale. In such a situation, consider selling directly to a cash buyer in as little as 10 days. HomeLight’s Simple Sale connects you with the largest network of cash buyers in the U.S. and lets you see your options, including what you might receive if you sell your home with a top agent.

Writers Gina Rodrigues and Presley Attardo contributed to this story.

Header Image Source: (Tyler Franta / Unsplash)


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