Show Your Home to Buyers
After planning and preparing to sell, it’s time to turn on the marketing machine and invite people to your home. Your home looks the best it has ever looked, and your agent will now list your home for sale. Your agent is marketing your home, managing offers and providing advice, but you are responsible for managing your agent and for the outcomes of negotiations.
An agent who is a savvy digital marketer can make a significant difference to your success. Some ‘old-school’ agents simply list a home on the realtors’ MLS® system and wait for other agents to share the listing with potential buyers. Agents who have mastered the new digital real estate market can help you get an extra 2% to 3% on your final offer.
Showing your home isn’t just about open houses. There’s more going on at this stage of the selling process than many people expect.
| Property | Risk Protection |
|---|---|
|
|
|
Gather Your Paperwork
There is a lot of paperwork a buyer, your realtor, or your lawyer may need. If things move quickly, you will want to have all the paperwork ready.
Your home’s original purchase contract.
The appraisal from your original home purchase (it has detailed information about the property).
Report from land titles on the property (get a copy from your lawyer).
Title insurance (in case there is a problem with your report from land titles).
Property survey certificate (if applicable).
Your mortgage documents (if applicable).
Tax records.
Copy of your homeowner’s insurance.
Property inspection report (if you ordered one).
Condominium corporation financials, meeting minutes, AGM minutes, depreciation report, details of contingency reserve funds, and details about your unit.
Need a great local Realtor?
Our app matches you with local pre-screened, values-aligned agents.
Select a Moving Company
On average, it takes roughly 60 to 90 days, from listing your home for sale to the closing date.
You will need to be out of the house with time to spare, so make sure that you’ve chosen a moving company in advance and you’ve asked them about their availability roughly 60 to 90 days in the future. Once you accept an offer, you’ll want to immediately schedule the moving company for a date before the closing date.
Moving costs can be high. We recommend that you ask a few moving companies to provide an estimate.
There are many cheap options for moving your belongings, but often the more inexpensive options come with an increased risk of damage to your items.
You put a lot of care into choosing the furniture, artwork, kitchenware, and dining sets. Keep in mind that some items have memories and are irreplaceable, while the cost of replacing others can exceed the savings of a cheap moving company or a DIY move.
Imagine the disappointment of finding 2 champagne flutes out of a 4 glass set or having a state-of-the-art smart TV that works perfectly but has a 1 inch crack in the corner of the frame. Even worse, imagine if a painting or photograph you inherited was damaged.
Moving costs are generally calculated using:
The distance you items are travelling.
The number of truck(s)/container(s) that your furniture and boxes will fill.
The weight of your belongings.
The estimated number of people they believe will be needed to get the job done.
If you have oversized items or your home is difficult to access, this could add additional costs.
IMPORTANT: If you live in an urban setting, you may have to book an elevator for the movers and also request a permit for the moving truck to occupy metered parking spots during business hours. Look into this sooner than later because you will need to be aware of which dates are open.
Market your Home
Online home search is widespread these days. According to a 2019 survey by the National Association of Realtors®, 93 percent of homebuyers thought online websites provided the most useful information. A slightly lower number, 87 percent, thought their Realtor was a particularly valuable source of information.
Online photos are critical! 87 percent of buyers found online photos very helpful for narrowing their search.
85 percent of buyers thought detailed online information about properties for sale very useful. You don’t want to spend all that time preparing your home, staging it, and taking photos to learn that your home was subsequently not properly promoted online.
Writing Great Property Descriptions
We aren’t all great marketers and, although realtors know real estate, they aren’t all fantastic writers. Here’s what you’re looking for when you review the descriptions written by your real estate agent.
Headline with a ‘Hook’
The headline is used most often on apps or social media. It doesn’t always appear on sites like Realtor.ca. It should be short, descriptive, and reference something exciting that people would want in their lives.
It may be a local amenity, a vibrant local restaurant district. Think about what’s popular in your area. Review other local listings for inspiration but make sure yours doesn’t look the same as the rest. You want to stand out.
You can also highlight a feature of your home that’s impressive, like the large private south facing patio.
Here are some good examples of headlines that pair location details with something unique about the home:
Condo in Toronto: “Condo with private roof deck and sweeping city views - walking distance to St. Lawrence Market.”
House in Vancouver suburbs: “Stunning renovated craftsman-style house in the heart of Marpole.”
Townhouse in Calgary: “Spacious family-oriented townhome on Calgary's Westside.”
Opening Statement
Begin with an opening statement addressed to your target buyer persona. It should immediately confirm that this home matches their search criteria. Are they a younger couple with no kids? A young family? Or a retired couple? The opening statement should be very different, depending on your target buyers. Talk about how their lifestyle in the context of your home and the local area.
Here are a few examples:
“This modern condo is spacious enough to host dinner parties and also a short ride to the entertainment district.”
“This spacious house has a backyard patio that’s perfect for barbeques and birthday parties.”
Here are some popular features that you can highlight:
Private backyard or outdoor space.
City, Lake, River, or Mountain view.
Lakefront property.
Renovated kitchen.
Large floorplan.
A gym, pool, or hot tub.
After the opening statement, we dive into the detailed description.
Detailed Description
In the detailed description, you should review all of the home’s main features. It shouldn’t sound like a shopping list. You want a description of the home that is conversational, engaging, and complimentary. Tell a story that makes buyers want to visit your home.
Your home's description in the listing should highlight your home’s most attractive features and local amenities. Keep your target buyer persona in mind from the planning stage of our home selling guide. The features and amenities that appeal to a retiree are likely not as appealing to a young family.
Don’t forget to mention:
Parking (especially in city listings).
Double garage (or larger).
Near transit access.
Guest or rental suite.
Flexible/room to expand.
Lush landscaping.
If the building is still covered under warranty.
Flexible closing dates.
Words to avoid:
Fixer-upper.
TLC (i.e., needs some TLC).
Cosmetic.
Investment / Investor.
Potential.
Bargain.
Opportunity.
Nice.
Handy-man.
Development Opportunity.
A professional flipper or investor knows what to look for, so you don’t need to help them out. You’re trying to appeal to homebuyers because they’re the ones who fall in love, get emotional, underestimate renovation costs, and generally offer you more than an investor, property-flipper, or bargain-seeker would.
Even if your home is a little ‘lived-in,’ it should be move-in ready. If you’ve followed our four-stage guide and prepared your home to show, there’s no reason you should be using apologetic language in your listing.
After your home is listed, ask your Realtor to send you links to their posts on the various online sites and platforms. At a minimum, they should be using MLS, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Please review the photos and captions yourself to make sure they resonate. You will also want to share them on your social profiles to help broaden their exposure.
We won’t go into more detail on descriptions. Your agent should know what they’re doing, and we recommend you compare what they write to competing listings in the area to make sure yours stands out.
Keep Your Home Clean
You would never wear a dirty shirt to a job interview. Likewise, it would be best if you never allowed prospective homebuyers to see a messy or dirty home.
In the preparation stage, you deep cleaned your home. You may want to consider having someone professional come weekly to do a light cleaning until your home has sold. Of course, you can keep the place tidy, but professionals usually do a better job making your home look and smell as good as new.
Lock-up Valuables
It’s rare, but open house thefts do happen. In 2016, a woman in Metro Vancouver posed as a prospective homebuyer and stole from an unsuspecting couple. She was caught on video, but it’s unclear if she was ever found and charged. In 2019, a man impersonated a real estate agent and stole $30,000 worth of jewellery in Metro Toronto.
If you have anything of value or something sentimental and irreplaceable, then lock them up, put them in your safety deposit box, or leave them with someone you trust until your home has sold.
Show Your Home
Accommodate as many showings as possible, whether they’re private showings or open houses. Ensure your agent keeps a record of everyone who visits and collects feedback from other agents and potential buyers.
Ideally, you should not be in your home when people come to look at it because it will make them uncomfortable.
Ask your agent to report the weekly numbers to you. You want to have an idea of:
How many people have looked at the online listing and social media posts?
How many realtors have toured the property?
How many prospective buyers have visited the home?
What is the demographic profile of the people who are coming to see your place? What feedback are they providing? Do they match who you thought your target buyer be? If not, why?
Do we need to change anything about the listing description or photos?
If your home isn’t generating enough interest, ask to discuss the target buyer persona and pricing strategy with your agent. If you dramatically change your target buyer, you may need to revisit your staging, photos, and listing description.
Our platform matches you with local, pre-screened, values-aligned Realtors and Mortgage Brokers
Shared values leads to better working relationships.
Negotiate the Sale
Target Price and Lowest Acceptable Price
When you laid out your pricing strategy in the planning stage, you decided the Target Price and Lowest Acceptable Price. Remember that only you should know the lowest acceptable price.
Every offer is different, and there are more considerations than price. Ideally, you will negotiate toward a higher price than your target price while still meeting any requirements you have from the buyer!
Your Selling Requirements
In our seller guide's planning stage, you wrote down a list of what you wanted from the seller, including the desired closing dates. You also wrote down your deal breakers. Make sure you keep these top-of-mind when you negotiate.
Stage a Bidding War?
Any home can spark a bidding war if you price it low enough. You can even orchestrate a bidding war in a buyer’s market. A bidding war can be right for you, or it may short-change you. It would help if you decided whether it’s part of your strategy. Refer to our sales strategy in the planning stage of home selling.
Setting-up a bidding war might be easier if your house is beautiful, has good bones and is in a desirable location. If that is the case, the list price should be higher to reflect its desirability and make a bidding war less likely. A bidding war can signify that your list price is too low, or it can also be a sign of a very hot seller’s market.
Ideally, your agent is leveraging their network, hosting Realtor open houses, and cranking up their marketing machine to create more interest.
Let’s put it another way. If your home is priced high enough that only 1 out of 100 buyers would make an offer, then you need to get your listing in front of 500 buyers to set-up a bidding war with 5 competing offers.
This is more compelling than pricing your home so low that the first five buyers that see it immediately submit 5 competing offers.
Both scenarios created a bidding war, but one required more effort from your agent and also gets you a higher price.
Set a date and time
When setting up a bidding war, you don’t want people to make offers whenever they decide they want your home because they won't ‘feel the heat’ of competing offers. You will generally set an offer date for 6-8 days after the listing date. You will want a date and time convenient for you and a day when you can contact your lawyer, if necessary.
Your agent should check on other properties in your neighbourhood to avoid having your deadline be on the same date as other properties. If two properties have deadlines on the same day, then the sellers will compete for buyers when the purpose of a bidding war is to make all the buyers compete for one home at a time.
Review and negotiate offers
If you’re in a market that favours sellers, you will likely get offers at or above the asking price, and you may even get multiple bids.
If purchases are slow in your area, and it’s a buyer’s market, you may have to wait for offers, consider each proposal on its merits, and negotiate with the buyer.
Regardless of how many offers you receive; you will have three options:
Make a counteroffer.
Reject the offer.
Accept the offer as presented.
IMPORTANT: A counteroffer is still a rejection of the last offer made. If the buyer doesn’t want to negotiate further, there’s no ‘backsies,’ and they are not required to honour their most recent rejected offer.
Usually, you will have a short timeframe in which to respond to an offer in writing. You should make a counteroffer to the first offer unless it is ridiculously better than your target price and meets all of your requirements.
If someone sends you a very low offer, discuss it with your agent, you are not required to make a counteroffer. You can refuse their offer and ask them to make a more reasonable offer. A ‘low-ball’ offer is a negotiating tactic used to ‘re-anchor’ the negotiation to a lower price range.
Most buyers expect a negotiation, so for their initial offer, they usually offer less a little less than what they would give as a final offer.
The highest price is not necessarily the best offer.
Here are other things to consider:
A no-conditions offer (no inspection, no financing, no appraisal).
An all-cash offer (they don’t need financing).
Normal conditions (access to the property, approved for financing, satisfactory home inspection, satisfactory review of condo board minutes).
Less common conditions (permission for trades or engineers to access the property).
Requests for you to leave appliances, furniture, and fixtures in the home.
Closing dates.
Request that you help finance their purchase (i.e., vendor takeback).
Consult a Lawyer
Review the Purchase and Sale Agreement
Usually, sellers only consult a lawyer after they have accepted an offer and the completion date is approaching. A real estate lawyer does much more than registering the sale on the completion date.
A real estate lawyer can review the purchase contract before you sign it. Usually, there’s nothing in the agreement you need to worry about, but most people would need a lawyer to review a contract before they can know that it’s a safe contract to sign.
Although real estate agents are very familiar with the standard purchase agreement, they are not necessarily experts on the legal implications of adding or omitting clauses and conditions that these agreements may contain.
We recommend that sellers add a condition to the purchase and sale agreement that the purchase is dependent on a satisfactory legal review of the contract by a lawyer. Every province has slightly different purchase and sales agreement forms, so ask your lawyer how best to write this clause for your province.
Conflicts of Interest
In rare situations, you may run into a conflict of interest. Here are some examples of conflicts that may arise in a real estate transaction:
The buyer is related to a co-worker or a friend of your real estate agent.
Your agent wants to buy your home.
Your agent also represents the buyer of your property.
Real estate professionals must avoid and disclose any conflicts of interest.
If there is anything unclear in the explanations above. Please let us know so we can improve our advice for the next reader.