Prepare to Sell

Prepare to Sell

Like any home transaction, selling a property is often as important a financial transaction as any other in the life of a property owner. Whether you are a property owner looking to sell to help you take the next step into your next dream home or selling to finance a retirement lifestyle, Yellowtail Residential can help you put together the right transactions to achieve your dreams. Your home is an influential part of your life emotionally, financially, and more. We know that, we treat your home like ours. Making the decision to sell your house is difficult, challenging, and not one to be taken insignificantly. Just as important as the decision to pursue a sale itself is the decision of who will handle the sale transaction. A marketing strategy is key to achieving your goals in terms of timing, pricing, and the “right transaction”. Yellowtail’s residential team is the best in the business and the right choice to reach your goals. Your goals are our goals. Your dreams are our dreams.

Sellers Agent Process

Our team has successfully executed hundreds of transactions and we know how to navigate the ever changing waters of the real estate market. The housing market is always changing and with that you see valuations naturally fluctuating based on a variety of outside factors. The right sales process requires the right a team of professionals who are constantly tracking market trends on a macro and micro level. Our network among the Tampa region is immense, allowing us to stay on top of the everyday developments of the local industry.

Marketing and Pricing to Sell

While our marketing process involves a variety of angles, homeowners naturally tend to focus on pricing and that is where we start, especially considering homeowners rarely know where to start. Given that many purchasers search by price as their primary criteria metric, pricing is key to set the stage for a successful marketing process. If a seller prices their home too high, the property will sit on market for time before a pricing adjustment occurs. This time is a waste and a detriment. Pricing adjustments cast a negative light on a property, while also showing the seller is eager to sell, taking away negotiation leverage. In addition, there is a natural question from buyers as to “what is wrong with the property” and “why did someone else not by this”, among other questions that occur as pricing is adjusted and days on market go by. Due to this improper pricing, a property owner can cost themselves thousands of dollars or more while also delaying the inevitable appropriate pricing. On the other end, pricing a property too low may lead to a quick transaction but will leave money on the table for the sellers. To avoid these pitfalls, we use data driven decisions paired with local expertise to provide real time, accurate, pricing recommendations. Our unique tools combine subscription multiple listing services, demographic data sources, economic reviews, lender tracking, and a variety of other items which contribute to the entirety of the picture we paint for our recommendations. These tracking and pricing recommendations will be an ever evolving analysis as we track nearby homes sales, marketing, availability, and other items.

Importance of Curb Appeal

Once we establish pricing, we work with our clients to establish curb appeal, both street side and digitally. You would be surprised how much the little things can make a difference. Achieving your dream price can be as simple as a coat of paint, a few potted plants, and an overall home clean up. In today’s market, buyers have access to hundreds of homes at their fingertips through online multiple listing services, strong market campaigns among homes, and a digital world connecting homes with people more than ever before. Unfortunately, people do judge a book by its cover. First impressions matter and we all need to abide by the first rule of sales, “don’t put a for sale sign on a dirty car”. Homes are a combination of exterior and interior impressions, a combination of well balanced strengths between both will be a crucial initial step to a successful home project. Despite digital innovations, selling a home starts with convincing a prospect to step foot in the home to even consider a purchase. Selling the initial tour is the first step and we know how to do it. This is a combination of both digital and actual home improvements.

Preparing Your Home for Sale

We start each of our marketing processes with a preparation phase. Our team will come in with our cleaning crew, sweep the property top to bottom, leave the property spotless. After this, our designers and marketing professionals will analyze the property across the board, establishing strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Weaknesses will be avoided in marketing photos and tours while areas of strength will be highlighted. Areas of improvement will be noted and we will make recommendations to the owner for what they can do as well as how to do it. If needed we will provide direction to design professionals, contractors, and other third party resources. Improvement suggestions will range from painting certain areas, to removing specific items, and making small improvements such as decorations, lighting, and even scent items to make a buyer feel at home. The following improvements have been shown the be the most difference in home marketing efforts: indoor improvements including painting, decorating (or re-decorating), decluttering, and brightening (to allow in natural light and visibility). Outdoor improvements shown to make the most difference include landscaping (oftentimes simply trimming back or removing landscaping), weeding, painting, garage cleanup, and highlighting of outdoor leisure areas such as decks, fire pits, or patios. The home will not be marketed until our clients are on the same page with our agents as to the marketing appearance of the property.

Create the Vision

Once we have an agreement on the appearance, we will turn our attention to the vision of the property. The goal being we “make it easy for the buyer to buy.” We use a tailored marketing process and custom marketing materials to focus a prospect’s vision on the property’s potential state.  Our marketing team will assemble attractive offering documents which will maximize the attributes of the subject site. These days there is a lack of artistry in the business. People take cheap photos in dark rooms and upload them to difficult to decipher listing sheets. Pictures say a thousand words but these days sales agents are cramming in more words than pictures. We do the opposite and put together custom marketing documents we see as the best in the business. These documents are composed of a variety of items. Each site will be professionally photographed, and our pictures sell. We will pick a day with great weather and pre-arranged property conditions to conduct a photo shoot. We usually take a few hundred photos for each property and narrow down the photo selections to a dozen or so of the best to highlight and enhance.

Real Estate Imagery is Key

Our photo editing resources will spruce up photos of the building, digitally removing small negative details. In other instances, we will use virtual staging to show prospects how they can lay out in their new home. Whether putting together staging digitally or in person, we will use on trend looks, materials, decorations, and future to appeal to a mass audience.

Other marketing efforts tied into our process include changing the time of day in photos, removal of unattractive items, and 360 degree virtual tours. With people more and more reliant on digital components of a search, virtual tours are becoming increasingly emphasized. People are busy and do not want to interrupt their lives with an overly time consuming property search. Showcasing your property through virtual touring will sell them on investing the time to tour your property. Digitally we can showcase your property from every single angle, exterior interior, dining room to small closet space. In addition, we will incorporate our item placement and virtual upgrades to showcase the best of the existing conditions and the best of the vision.

Additional marketing elements we will focus on will include floor plans. Too often prospects have an inability to not only visualize the look of a space, but also the physical layout. We will give them all the tools to do so. By providing dimensional, clean, and attractive floor plans, a prospect can not only visualize the look of a space, but actually work on their own layouts within a space.

In order to further a prospect’s view of the subject site, we will incorporate the use of project renderings displaying the as-completed home as well as design inspiration showing photos of completed comparable rooms or homes, if appropriate.

Check out this guide on how to prepare your home for listing photographs >

Getting to Know the Sellers Property

Marketing is of prominent importance, but if we are selling a car we need to make sure the car can drive otherwise we have nothing to sell. Our sales process will include interviews with each of our clients. We will be sure they understand their realistic capabilities for a sale execution among other items. The owner needs to be able to sell the property. Prior to marketing, we will be sure the property can be sold, has clean title, no major encumbrances etc. In addition, we know each buyer will inspect the property on their own, so why wouldn’t we take the time to do this ourselves? With an inspection being inevitable, it is to a seller’s advantage to be proactive and work with our team to have a pre-sales inspection and inspection conclusions report put together. We will bring you the inspectors, analyze the report with the inspectors, and advise as to the best course of active. By taking this process head on, as a team we can avoid future negotiation avenues for buyers to request a purchase price reduction. We can also advertise the positive results of our inspections and title review as supporting evidence to the strength of the asset we are marketing. Our all encompassing approach will focus on these details to bring the best buyers to the table while executing in swift and easy fashion.

The YellowTail Difference

Yellowtail agents have hundreds of experiences with residential transactions large and small. If you are ready to sell we are ready for you, but if you are not sure if selling is the right choice, no problem. We will guide you with recommendations based on our background of data and expertise. Our agents know the tricks of the trade and will guide you along the way. Selling the story is key and we know how to do it. We will use our in house and outside resources to target a variety of audiences, but more importantly, the right audience, through our effective marketing and sales tactics. We will give your property a brand identity that will separate the property from all competing properties, elevating the home to achieve your goal.