Stage 3 – Before Listing the Property/Sending Buyers Properties

Once the client agrees to have you represent them, depending on the clients’ preferred communication methods and how often they wish to be communicated with, the final touches and tasks – taking photos of the home’s interiors and exteriors, for example – need to be finished.

With sellers, this list of final touches is longer – are the photos up to the client’s quality standards? Is the property information accurate? Does the home need to be staged? Does it need to be decluttered? Where can extra “stuff” be stored? Is there a pet you need to be mindful of? With every question, there should be a consultation with the seller and possibly a meeting with an affiliate who can help – a stager or declutterer, for example. And following each meeting, a checklist of items that still need to be dealt with should be given to the client.

Baird & Warner agent Sara Brahm creates a customized spreadsheet for each of her clients, outlines what must be accomplished before listing, keeps all parties organized and establishes an effective framework for constant communication leading up to the home’s market entry.

Something else she keeps track of is time – time necessary for her and sellers to prepare the property to be listed. If she has her sellers sign a contract that said the property would be listed by a certain date, Brahm says, it’s key to have time frames of how much time is needed to get an effective listing put together on the MLS, with all the little details taken care of. She, for example, takes into account the time it may take to reorganize, declutter or upgrade furnishings and do a final checklist to make sure everything is done before putting it on the MLS.

“It’s just basic project management, but I think it shows [clients] that you have your act together and that you’re doing more as an agent than simply putting a sign in the yard and the home in an MLS,” she says. “I think it definitely adds value to you as an agent.”

For buyers, agents should clearly communicate how they search for properties that match what they seem to want, and how the MLS operates. With the rise of Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com, homebuyers can search for prospective homes themselves, and they could send you ideas of what they want or homes they’ve found and want to see.

O’Neill believes that while this occasionally presents an added hurdle for agents (arguments over Zestimates vs appraisals or if a client finds a home that has already been sold and not yet taken down on Zillow or Trulia, for example), online real estate databases mean that his customers tend to be more well-informed.

Today, thanks in part to the recession, O’Neill says that homebuyers understand more about that marketplace than they did 10 years ago, and perhaps have a better idea of how much they are willing to spend, what makes a good investment and what home can suit their needs long-term.

“It helps me out as a broker when my buyers are extremely informed and [have] a good feel for the market,” O’Neill says. “In reality, it makes my job a lot easier. We can spend a lot more time actually hunting for the properties.”