House for Sale? 4 Ways to Sell Your Home Faster

Last Updated Mar 14, 2011 1:05 PM EDT

This article was last updated on March 14, 2011.

Home sellers, buckle up: Spring selling season is almost here, and it's going to be a bumpy ride.

While home prices are headed higher in a few markets, mortgage rates are edging up, deals arefragile, and lenders are on edge. "Last-minute glitches are holding up things far longer than we haveever seen before," says Michael Onorato, president of the Illinois Association of Realtors.

Just because you have a real estate agent, that doesn't mean you can sit back and let the pro sellyour house. To get top dollar, you'll need to take control of the relationship and micro-manage likenobody's business. Follow these four steps to sell https://www.realestatebook.com/ your house fast.

1. Keep Your Agent on a Tight Leash

Make sure your agent pre-qualifies potential buyers before wasting your time with pointless houseshowings, says Jack LeRose, president of Southeast Wisconsin Mortgage Corp. "Make your agentfind out what the buyers will list their own house for," he says.

Insist your agent confirm that the buyer's loan prequalification is from a real, live, bricks-and-mortarlender. Quick preapprovals from online lenders typically are based only on the buyer's credit scoreand may not stick, says LeRose.

2. Prove Your Home's Value

To help your pro convince would-be buyers that your asking price is fair, arm your agent withdocumentation of anything and everything supporting it: receipts for home improvements, newappliances and maintenance, as well as low crime statistics for your neighborhood and top rankingsfor area schools. (Your mayor's office, Chamber of Commerce or real estate agent's firm may offerthat data for free. If not, neighborhoodscout.com offers crime and school data for $29 with a one-month subscription.)

Ask your agent to show you three recent sales prices of comparable homes to yours, too.

3. Get a Fair Appraisal

Ridiculously low faulty appraisals are poisoning countless deals these days. You and your agentshould do what you can to ensure that the appraisal from the buyer's lender is reasonable.

The less an appraiser knows about your neighborhood, the shakier the analysis and the greater thechance the appraiser will undervalue your house. Then, if the appraisal doesn't square with thebuyer's offer, the lender won't provide the mortgage. Result? No sale.

Some lenders and agents hide behind the 2009 Home Valuation Code of Conduct (Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac rules regulating appraisers) to avoid the extra work of dealing directly with appraisers.Don't let them, says Leslie Sellers, president of the Appraisal Institute and a Knoxville, Tenn.,

appraiser. "You can't specify a particular person, but you can specify competency," says Sellers."And put it in writing."

Ask the buyer's lender for a "senior residential appraiser" who can provide proof that he iscompetent to evaluate sales locally. Otherwise, the lender will be free to hire the cheapest appraiserit can find, even if the appraiser wouldn't know your neighborhood from one 50 miles away.

Have your agent meet the appraiser at your house armed with evidence supporting the sale price.And watch out: Appraisers sometimes wind up low-balling their estimates because they includeforeclosures in their mix of comparable sales. The best way to avoid this is with a pre-emptive strike:Ask your agent to give the appraiser a list of recent local foreclosures and distress sales to be surethey're not included in the comparables. (That said, if distressed properties make up a significantshare of the sales in your neighborhood, they may have to be factored into the comps.)

And finally, ask the lender to send you the appraisal, so you can review it for accuracy.

4. Get Your Home Staged

Staging -- making your house more appealing by removing knick-knacks and moving furniturearound -- can help you sell your home. Just keep in mind that in today's sluggish housing market, youmay end up living in your staged house for months. So you could find yourself wondering when thePottery Barn poltergeist took possession as you furiously hunt for your toaster.

Some agents include staging in the cost of marketing. If yours doesn't, you may want to hire aprofessional stager and work with your agent as a three-person team. (See if your agent will providea rebate on the staging fee at the closing, especially if the agent recommended hiring the stager.)

Expect to pay $200 to $350 for a consultation with a stager, diagnosing the problems andrecommending solutions. You and your agent could take it from there. Or, you might want to hire thestager to do the actual work, for another $500 to $1,200, says Barb Schwarz, founder and presidentof the International Association of Home Staging Professionals.

If you're a ruthless declutterer, you could try to stage your house on your own by following thesetips:

Look at before-and-after photos on stagers' Web sites. See how the stagers arrange furniture todraw the eye to a room's focal points and then do the same in your house.

Move accent lamps away from bedside tables and desks. Instead, put them where they brightenshadowy corners and draw attention to special features.

Position something intriguing to entice buyers into each room. It might be something like a mirror ora drawn-back curtain that frames a pretty view.

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