You want to sell your property and you can no longer see the forest for the trees. Hundreds of brokers, everyone has an opinion about it, sky-high costs and all terms and concepts that will make your ears pop.
Help! What should you pay attention to and what should you do?
Ok, first let’s look at the goal you have in mind. That is successfully selling your property.
If we then explain what “successful” means for most home sellers, we think of:
- Get a maximum yield from sales
- Professional guidance
- Legally correct
- Award to nice people (applies to a small proportion of sellers)
Re 1: Get the maximum revenue from the sale of your home
The mistake that many people make is that they are staring at the costs that they have to the broker. This feels like direct costs for which they have to break a piggy bank. Many people want to cut back on brokerage fees. This is one of the reasons why internet brokers such as Makelaarsland are increasingly gaining ground.
But now let’s look at the main goal: get the maximum return from the sale of your home. What exactly does a good broker do to get that done? Your broker:
- puts a lot of attention and time into a really good valuation of your home.
- translates his valuation of your home into a sales quotation in which he also offers his brokerage fee.
- draws up a smart sales plan for you. A well-thought out sales strategy for the home is outlined here and advice is given to present the home as smartly as possible.
Then follows the “in-sale name” where he:
- take care of a professional photographer who will present your home well and invitingly.
- measure the home for floor plans and determine the area, and
- collects all the information and documents needed to complete the advertisement and the sales file for the sale.
The advertisement is written and after you have given the green light, your house will go ‘live’.
Then the viewings follow. You are not there. All you have to do is leave your house spic and span that morning before you go to work. Your broker is not emotionally involved with the property. You are. Everyone is in their own home. A good broker feels what the viewers think is important, what they want to hear, but also when they just want to hear nothing from explanation. Our office regularly has sales orders from customers who have had a viewing with us and felt that we were listening to them. Not only verbally, but also non-verbally.
Then a 1st bid follows. But there are more interested people. Your broker has used an Amsterdam bidding system in the sales brochure, but is it also smart to maintain it? Could the conversion of the bidding system to an open registration not be a much better result for you? He makes an assessment, consults it with you and changes direction. All bids must be received that Friday before 4 p.m. Your broker will call you at 16.05 and go through the highest 5 bids with you. € 340,000, 346,000, 351,000, 355,555 and finally… .. € 360,000 !!!
There are more than 40 viewers who have viewed your home in 1 week time and the result is a great sale! Your broker has achieved the maximum for you through accurate preparation, smart advice, excellent presentation, smart sales strategy, well-organized tours, quick switching and winning enough participants to get attractive bids.
The moral of this story is that you have to ask yourself carefully whether you want to cut back on your brokerage costs. The aforementioned mediation might have cost you € 4,500 in brokerage fees, but would you have achieved the same result if you had largely done this work yourself through an internet broker? Think carefully about this.
Re 2: Professional guidance
As a seller of a home you have a lot on your mind. You have probably already bought something new or maybe it is a property that you have to sell due to the loss of a loved one. Either way, as a seller you really have to be relieved of the work that is involved in the sales process. This is precisely one of the most important tasks of a broker. He must ensure that you can leave the entire sale to him. Even if the broker urgently advises in his sales plan to perform tasks that make your home more attractive for sale, he has just the right people ready to do this for you.
Re 3: Legal
But it is also very important that problems are prevented before, during and especially after the sale. He will accurately map your property and all legal, cadastral, maintenance-technical and architectural features and details that lie on it and involve it in the sales process. There is an increasing amount of case law on disputes every day. Think of errors in measurement reports, woodworm, structural defects, limited rights etc.
Re 4: Award and emotion
As mentioned before, you as a homeowner are always emotionally involved with the home. In the lion’s share of transactions, a home is sold because they have bought another home themselves. You have had to pay a considerable amount for this and it makes sense that you also want to achieve the best possible sales result for your own home. But for many people it is also of great value that pleasant people come to live there. You often see that nice people are acquaintances or friends of friends of the sellers. There is nothing wrong with awarding and a good broker will also mention that right to award in his sales brochure. However, it is a lot of money in combination with emotion and it is always better to have the viewings and negotiations done by a professional mediator. This ensures that the award does not take place under the influence of emotion for an unrealistically low selling price, but that it remains more up to date under the influence of other interested parties.