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Seller's Guide

Everything you need to know about putting your home on the market, accepting an offer, and closing on your home.

A Step-by-Step First Time Seller's Guide

Putting your home on the market can be a stressful process, especially when you don’t know what to expect. Fortunately, with the help of an experienced agent  and this easy to follow  guide, you can smoothly complete the process. Following these steps  will help you prepare so you can get organized and sell your home for  the best price possible.​​​​​​​

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Step 1: Understand Why You're Selling

What do you want to accomplish with the sale of your home? Do you want to make a certain amount of money that you can put toward a larger or nicer home? Do you need to sell it as soon as possible to facilitate a move to a new city or area? Once you understand your needs, you can better craft your offer. For example, if you need to sell quickly, you might want to price your home lower than if your goal is to make a certain profit margin. Make sure you convey these needs to your realtor once you choose one so he or she can adjust your selling price accordingly.

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Step 2: Determine Selling Price

Knowing how to price your home is one of the most important parts of the selling process. When you set a fair price in the beginning, you’ll get the most interest from other real estate agents and prospective buyers. Overpricing your home could lead to reduced interest, and underpricing leads to receiving less than what your home is worth. Working with a real estate agent is the best way to determine the right selling price for your home. An agent with experience can determine what other comparable homes are selling for, evaluate the current market, and may even suggest a home appraisal.

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Step 3: Start Preparations

If you’ve kept your home in showroom condition since you’ve lived in it, you’re in the minority of homeowners. Once you price your home, it’s time to start getting it ready to be shown to potential buyers. This includes getting rid of clutter, depersonalizing the space so that buyers can envision themselves in the space, making any small repairs, and doing a deep clean to make sure your home is in pristine condition.

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Step 4: Develop a Marketing Strategy

I will develop a marketing strategy that is perfect for advertising your home. This involves listing the home and then driving the right people to that listing through social media campaigns, agent-to-agent referrals, traditional media, or SEO advertising. My team creates a marketing campaign that aims to get the most possible traffic to your listing in the first three weeks after becoming a client.

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Step 5: Evaluate Offers

Receiving an offer is an exciting part of the process, but it doesn’t mean the journey is over. We will evaluate each offer and make sure the party making the offer is prequalified or pre-approved by a mortgage lender and that their offer is acceptable to you. If the offer is too low, you can make a counter-offer or offer other ways to bridge the gap, such as covering some or all of the closing costs, making repairs, adjusting the move-in date, or leaving some appliances or fixtures for the new buyer.

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Step 6: Accept an Offer

Once we deem the offer is acceptable, we will review the proposed contract to make sure it’s all in order and includes the necessary components such as deposit amount, down payment, financing, inspection rights and repair allowances, contingencies, settlement date, and a list of fees and who will pay them. When both parties have agreed to the term, a final contract will be prepared by your agent.

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Step 7: Get Ready to Close

What do you want to accomplish with the sale of your home? Do you want to make a certain amount of money that you can put toward a larger or nicer home? Do you need to sell it as soon as possible to facilitate a move to a new city or area? Once you understand your needs, you can better craft your offer. For example, if you need to sell quickly, you might want to price your home lower than if your goal is to make a certain profit margin. Make sure you convey these needs to your realtor once you choose one so he or she can adjust your selling price accordingly.

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Step 8: Close

You’ve reached the last step in the seller’s process. When you close on a home you are selling, you are legally transferring ownership of the property to the new buyer. We will meet with the company closing the transaction to sign the final paperwork and go over any issues that have not yet been taken care of. During this time, you can also make plans with your realtor to handle final details such as canceling utilities, cable, and lawn or trash services, changing the name on accounts that the new owner is retaining and ensuring the new owner has instructions for all appliances that will remain in the home.

Congratulations!

Once you have sold your home, you’re free to take the next step on your journey. Whether this is relocating to a new city, moving into a larger home, or downsizing and enjoying your life as empty-nesters, knowing all your selling responsibilities have been taken care of will help you achieve peace of mind for your new path.

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Testimonials

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Maxwell Carter

Omar Ruano went above and beyond to help us buy our house. We had a very tight window to submit an offer and needed to move quickly. Omar negotiated on our behalf and somehow made the stars align! We were first-time homebuyers in San Jose CA, new to the process, and Omar really helped us understand each step. He was super responsive, knowledgeable, and was able to work with our schedule. I can honestly s...

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Antonio Marin

Omar knows the area, the market, and is very savvy. He is very responsive, communicative, and pleasant. His honesty ans transparency sets him apart from other realtors. We purchased our San Jose home with him and worked with him to sell it a few years later. Both experiences were smooth thanks to his knowledge and great advice. He is always a step ahead and has great strategy in the buying as well as the...

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Jonathan Chan

If you're looking for an honest, reliable and responsive realtor that will walk you through the buying or selling process from A to Z, I highly recommend Omar Ruano. By far one of the best realtors in the Bay Area. Omar is incredibly professional, he is patient, knowledgeable and has a keen eye for staging homes. He helped us find our first condo, a diamond in the rough, that we called home for 4 years. ...

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Brian Naughton

Omar recently helped us get our first house. He's extremely knowledgeable of the Bay Area market and was able to answer our many questions about the process and what to expect. And being first-time homebuyers we had LOTS of questions. But he was very patient with us and in the end we were able to get the right house for us. Omar made us feel comfortable at every step of the way, and I fully trusted him t...

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Brian Davis and Roger Ruina

We were extremely lucky to meet Omar and have him guide and represent us in the sell of our home. From beginning to end he was professional, honest, dependable, and kind. He not only made recommendations for vendors to use for a few home improvements that were necessary, but also instrumental in keeping the vendors on our established timeline. Omar's assessment of our home was right on track and he produ...

EM

Mustali & Rashida

Both of us really enjoyed working with Omar and with his help we were able to purchase our first home. He made this complicated process smooth and problem free for us and we would strongly recommend him to anyone who is looking for a home! The first time we met Omar he spent time with us going through the entire home buying process and the various steps involved. Being first time home buyers this was imp...

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