Category: Orlando Realtors

Summertime is the busiest season of the year when it comes to buying and selling Orlando real estate with Spring coming in at a close 2nd place. Most families prefer to move when their kids are on Summer break so they don’t interrupt the school year. Real estate savvy homeowners that want to sell, will usually wait until the end of Spring before putting their home on the market. They know those homebuyers will be out in large numbers scrambling to try and get their families moved into a new home before the school year starts.

Buyers’ competition can get pretty fierce once the Summer has begun but there are a few steps you can take to avoid the home buyers rush.

• Get your financing in order. It’s important that you are pre-approved for a loan before you go house hunting. This way you’ll know exactly how much you can afford to pay for a house. It also shows sellers that you’re serious about buying.
• Hire an experienced Orlando real estate agent before summer arrives. Interview two or three buyer agents and once you choose one inform him or her exactly what you’re looking for.
• Be ready to pull the trigger. Your Realtor should be showing you listings as soon as they hit the market. Don’t wait! if it looks appealing to you, go see it and bring a contract with you just in case.
• Don’t sweat the small stuff. If you hate the layout or the location, you should probably keep looking but if you’re turned off by the ugly carpets and tacky paint job, don’t be! Painting and replacing carpet is relatively cheap to do so just try to imagine the house as it would look using your colors.
• Let your Orlando Realtor do their job and listen to their advice when it comes to how much you should offer on a house, especially in a seller’s market. Don’t risk losing the house of your dreams because you tried to get an allowance to change the carpets. You’ll regret it!

Getting started early and avoiding the rush is key to giving yourself the best chance at finding the right house for you and your family. If you’re looking to buy a house in Orlando, be sure to use our FREE Home search tool and with just a few clicks, you’ll be searching the MLS just like a pro from your own home.

Do you want to sell your Orlando home for top dollar… fast? Why not consult with an Orlando listing specialist? By speaking to a listing specialist in your area you can find out what makes a property sell for the highest amount and what you can do to your home to get it ready for the market. Just a year ago, homes in Orlando were selling faster than they were being listed. Now, in some cases, homeowners are having to go the extra mile and make some improvements before they can get their home sold for top dollar.

No homeowner will want to spend a small fortune in getting their home ready for sale. They can, however, do some low-cost improvements that can potentially make a huge difference in getting top dollar from an interested buyer.

Start with a good cleaning and de-cluttering. By getting rid of bulky furniture and making every surface in your house spotless, you’ll automatically increase your home’s overall appearance. Too much furniture and personal items around the house can make it look small and crowded. Move some furniture into the garage or storage and clean as you’ve never cleaned before. Don’t be surprised if you change your mind about selling once you’ve cleaned and de-cluttered. Remember, less is more when you want the house to appear larger.

New paint and carpet. Giving your house a fresh coat of paint and replacing that wore out carpeting can give your home that “brand new” feel and smell. Be sure to stay neutral with the colors, I would recommend white or off-white for the paint and a light brown on the carpet. Just because you like lime green walls, it doesn’t mean that everyone else will.

Enhance your curb appeal. As the old saying goes “You only get one chance to make a first impression”. This is especially true when it comes to Orlando real estate. The outside of your home is the first thing a potential buyer sees when they pull into the driveway. The whole idea here is to make it look good enough for the buyers to want to go inside and keep looking. Make sure your yard is kept trimmed and looking good. Planting some colorful flowers close to the front door will give the front of the house a splash of extra color as well.

I would never suggest doing any major upgrading like building a pool or adding an extra bathroom because there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a return on your investment and chances are that you won’t.

Being close to good schools, shopping, and attractions as well as being in a low crime area will all help attract more buyers. Don’t worry if this isn’t the case with your home because these are things you can’t change anyway.

So you’re ready to sell and you started interviewing Orlando real estate agents.  An experienced listing agent will show up to the interview with a document known as a CMA or [comparative market analysis] to show you that they’ve already started working for you. The CMA will show you in black and white what competition you’re up against. The CMA is priceless in helping you and your agent come up with the highest possible listing price for your property by showing you what other homes sold recently in your area. Potential buyers, however, will use a CMA to justify ways to reduce their offer.

The CMA is designed to provide an overview of information like the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, features like a pool or fireplace, property taxes, etc. The CMA will also include information on how to contact your Orlando listing agent. A CMA will also include information about active listings in the area as well as homes that have sold as long as a week, a month and even a year ago. I personally don’t like going back more than a few months  as the Orlando real estate market is constantly changing looks. The CMA report may include homes on just a few streets around your home or can be as wide as an entire neighborhood. Sometimes an agent will have to cast a bit wider of a net when there haven’t been enough [or any] recent sales in a particular neighborhood.

As useful as CMa’s are in determining a price for your home, there are some factors that come down to the perception of a potential home buyer. Buying a home is an emotional decision and the way that certain details and features impact buyers will help determine how much they’re willing to pay for a house. Things like curb appeal, layout, natural lighting and views are things that can make or break a deal for a buyer trying to picture him or herself living there for the next decade.

A CMA report will also include a statement provided the listing agent that gives an overview of fact and opinion about the property designed to highlight the property’s best features as well as cover any selling restrictions on the home. You could see something like “roof recently replaced” or “a must-see, this property won’t last long!”

At the end of the day, the CMA is just a selling tool and without a skilled Orlando realtor that knows how to use it, it won’t be very effective on its own.

Get Your Free CMA from An Top-Rated Orlando Realtor

If you’re interested in seeing how your Orlando home stacks up against other homes in your neighborhood, be sure to visit us at https://orlandorealtyconsultants.com/ for your free comparative market analysis prepared by one of our top listing agents.

It’s important that you’re prepared for what comes next after you list your house for sale. Homeowners sell their homes for different reasons and each situation comes with a different set of emotions. Knowing what to expect will help ease you into house selling mode and make the emotional part of it easier to get through. Let’s face it, no one enjoys having strangers walk through their home and judging the way that it looks and feels to them but unfortunately if people don’t see your house, you’ll never get it sold.

If your house is in Orlando, be sure to hire an experienced Orlando realtor that has sold homes in your neighborhood. After you sign the listing agreement, your realtor will then hopefully hire a photographer to take some photos that will showcase your property in the best light possible.

These are some things to expect once you list your property

Listing it on the MLS and other websites

The next step is to alert every other agent out there by listing it on the local MLS [Multiple Listing Service]. In addition to listing it on the MLS, there are numerous other websites like realtor.com, Trulia, etc. that your property should be listed on for maximum exposure. The listing agent will then put a lockbox on the door and a for-sale sign in the yard. The lockbox allows other agents to access your home when no one is home.

Keep it tidy

It can be a pain keeping your home in showing condition especially when you have children and pets. However, I can’t stress to you enough how important it is to keep your house looking its best. For most people, the perception is the reality and it’s hard for them to pretend that the floor isn’t covered with toys and clutter or that the sink is filled with dirty dishes.

Showings

Some homeowners insist on being home when their property is being shown. I highly recommend that you don’t do this because the harder you make it to see your house, the less exposure it will get and the longer it will take to sell. Also, potential buyers may feel uncomfortable with the homeowner hovering over them during the showing. Remember that your home is competing with other homes in the area, so the easier you make it to see, the better chance you’ll have at getting an offer, especially in a slower market.

Open houses

Your Orlando listing agent will probably want to do a couple of open houses in the first week of it being listed. That’s why it’s so important to make sure the home looks its best before you even get it listed. The first open house will probably be a broker’s open house during the week where local agents can swing by and see the property and hopefully have a client that the house would be perfect for. The second open house will likely be held on a Saturday or Sunday and will be open to the public. For this open house, your listing agent will put out some signs and balloons around your neighborhood pointing everyone to your house. It’s best that homeowners aren’t present during the open house so that potential buyers can move through the house freely opening closets, etc. It’s best to put away or hide any valuables and medication just in case.

Traffic

Hopefully, the open house helped you to get an offer or two on the table but if not, don’t worry. If your listing agent priced the home correctly you’ll continue to get a good amount of traffic for the next two to three weeks of it being on the market. In a normal cycle, the average DOM aka [days on market] can be between 60 to 90 days to get the property under contract. In a slower market, it can take even longer than that. If you have a buyer that has been back to your house more than once, this is a good sign that they’re about to put in an offer on your home. Even if the offer is lower than you expected, it’s a starting point to begin negotiating and could potentially lead to a sale.

Changing strategy

It’s about six weeks in and hopefully by now your house has a contract on it and the title company is processing the paperwork for the closing. However, if this hasn’t happened yet you may want to talk to your listing agent about switching gears. The Orlando real estate market is always changing and it’s important that you consider your asking price and possibly look at any low-cost improvements that could enhance the home. The other option of course is to lower your price and just leave the home the way it is.
In a nutshell, selling a home comes down to a three-step process. Getting the home ready for buyers to see it, showing it to potential buyers, and finally responding to offers. If you hire an experienced Orlando realtor to assist you in the sale, you can avoid a lot of stress and sleepless nights by knowing that you’re in good hands.

Why isn’t my Orlando home selling? I would say that 90% of the time the answer to this question would be that the price is too high. If your home is taking much longer to sell than the average home in the area, it means that potential buyers don’t agree with the valuation that you’ve priced your home at. The fact that your home is the nicest one in the neighborhood doesn’t mean that you can name your own price when it’s time to sell. Just like any other material object that you buy or sell, your home’s value is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Pricing a home correctly is more difficult than you might think. Large corporations have research teams that specialize in pricing so that when a product hits the market it’s priced just right. When you sell your Orlando home, it’s no different.

Selling a home will probably be one of the most important decisions in your life so it’s worth taking the time to educate yourself about what’s happening in the Orlando real estate market. By hiring a top Orlando realtor to help you come up with the price, you’ll have a much better chance of arriving at the magic number.

However, if you choose to come up with the price without doing your homework, you could be heading for disaster…ICE BURG! Equally dangerous is to hire an agent that just agrees with everything you say so that they can get the listing. They’re not doing you any favors by listing your property too high, actually, they’re hurting you. Remember, if you’re house doesn’t sell, it’s you that suffer the consequences and no one else.

Selling your Orlando home? Be sure to avoid these common mistakes made by sellers when setting the price.

Pricing your home based on how much you need. The amount of money that you “need” shouldn’t play a role in pricing your home. Buyers don’t care how much you need to make on the sale of your property, nor should they. Using this strategy to come up with the listing price will surely fail.

Leave your ego out of it! Since the guy down the street sold his house for $250,000 last year, you can easily get $275,000 because you believe that your house is better. Who cares that the local market dropped 6% since the last home sold in your neighborhood. Working as an Orlando real estate agent that specializes in listing properties, I can tell you that 90% of the time sellers believe that their home is the nicest house in the neighborhood, even when it’s not.  Over the years I’ve become an expert at talking homeowners off that ledge. I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to setting a price; If the homeowner doesn’t agree with the price that I recommend then I don’t accept the listing.

Don’t be greedy! If you know that your home is worth $200,000, don’t insist on listing it for $220,000 because you think someone will just fall in love with your house and has to have it regardless of what the price is…That’s just not going to happen. Sometimes homeowners adopt a “we can always lower the price if we need to” attitude which almost always ends up backfiring on them. Homes that are listed too high and then gradually lowered stay on the market much longer than they should and that will make some buyers believe that there may be something wrong with the home and scare them away.

The best way to arrive at the right listing price is to get a Comparative Market Analysis known as a CMA. The Orlando real estate agent that you hire should be happy to provide you with one before you even sign the listing contract. Comparative market analysis gives you a complete breakdown of home sales in the area for homes that are similar to yours in size, condition, and features. It will include data on homes that have sold recently as well as homes that are currently active for sale. Your Orlando listing agent should be up-to-date on the ever-changing real estate market to be sure that the home is priced just right.

It’s also important to make sure everything is functional and looks as good as possible in your home. This will avoid potential buyers wanting unreasonable discounts on items that you can fix yourself before listing the property. Although there’s not much you can do to change things like a funky layout or being next door to a train station, you should do all you can to make your home as appealing as possible to potential buyers.  Your Orlando real estate agent should factor in the positives as well as the negatives when coming up with the price for your home.