Seller's Guide

Step 1

Pricing Analysis

Correctly pricing your home leads to fewer days on the market, less disruption to your life, and the maximum price.

Each new listing creates a buzz in the local real estate community and the right price will attract more buyers to your home.  When a home is priced in line with recent sales data, interested buyers recognize its value and submit offers near the list price.

To recommend the right list price, we pore over the recent sales and present you with a customized Comparative Market Analysis (not a standardized report generated from the MLS) that considers the nuances of neighborhoods, streets, and homes. We review the information with you and, together, we decide the most effective list price.

Step 3

Architectural Photography

One of the best ways to differentiate your home from the rest of the market is superior photography. Knowing the vast majority of buyers search for homes online, we heavily invest in the photographs of our listings in order to showcase your home in the best possible light. We hire a professional, architectural photographer to deliver high-end photos and drone photography at our expense – and we’ve found it’s worth every penny!

See for yourself: These photos are of the same room – but the right photographer makes all the difference. In the photos on the left (from another agent), the rooms are dark and look old or dingy. Our photographer highlights the architecture, takes advantage of natural lighting, and brings life into each shot.

Step 5

Floor Plans

We measure and draw the footprint of your home and pass it off to our design team to create professional floor plans. The floor plans are included in all marketing materials, including the property website, brochures, and MLS. It gives buyers an opportunity to reference a home’s layout and also more easily identify renovation potential of a home (e.g., “we could remove this wall and it would be perfect.”) This is a very rare offering in Northern Michigan’s real estate market.

• Over 1/3 of buyers said they were LESS likely to inquire about a property without a floor plan.
• 1 in 5 buyers would ignore a listing that does not include real estate floor plans.
• Adding a real estate floor plan to a property listing can increase click-throughs from buyers by 52%.

Step 7

Custom Property Website

We construct a customized website for your home that provides another opportunity to create a premium brand around your home and a buyer experience that they associate with your property. We include the URL on all our advertising.

In addition to giving buyers easy access to the high-end photos, floor plans, and relevant information, the website also provides us and others we send it to the ability to easily share the listing across social media, email, etc., thus enhancing exposure of the property.

Step 9

Social Media

Social media is how a lot of people receive their most vital information, including news and real estate – but don’t just take our word for it. 74% of consumers rely on social media to making buying decisions, and nearly all buyers (99% of millennials to 90% of boomers) begin their home search online.

We believe an aggressive social media strategy for our listings is hugely important. We promote our listings on our social media outlets, including Facebook and Instagram.

Step 11

Custom Marketing Materials

Although we focus a lot of our efforts on online presentation and advertising, the showing brochures and other marketing materials that buyers hold in their hands or see as they walk through the property greatly impacts the buyer’s impression of the home.

We hire an outside marketing firm to design and execute our marketing materials to ensure our print materials are unlike any other agents in the business. Whatever is exceptional about your property, we will make sure it’s communicated to the buyer in an intriguing way.

Step 13

Open Houses

We host open houses throughout the life of the listing as it promotes foot traffic and generates buzz about your property. Typically held on Sunday afternoons, open houses can reduce the disruption to a seller’s life caused by multiple showings at often inconvenient times because an open house encourages buyers to visit the property in one set time window.

To advertise our open houses, we use social media, the MLS, and all the major consumer websites – and we place numerous physical signs in strategic locations around your house (as indicated by the red flags in the photo to the right) to drive foot traffic to open houses.