Steps to Selling a Home
Steps to Selling a Home
1. Research and hire your REALTOR®."
Many homeowners initially determine the value of their home online using websites like Zillow or Trulia. What they don’t know is that the home assessments from these sites are often inaccurate. It’s best to pick a trustworthy and professional REALTOR®.
Ask for referrals. Your friends and family can be a great resource to finding a reliable, savvy REALTOR®. Lean on your trusted advocates.
Interview your REALTOR®. Of the referrals you get, interview them and make sure you hire the right REALTOR® so you will feel comfortable with him or her and what they have to offer as an agent.
Meet in person. A good REALTOR® will walk through your home in person before suggesting a competitive list price.
A Jacobsen Group agent will request a personal tour of your home. At this meeting, you will go over the marketing plan and then schedule a time for the second meeting. At the second meeting, your Jacobsen Group agent will share the results of their Comparable Market Analysis (CMA). Their visits, combined with the results of the CMA, will serve as the basis of their recommended list price.
Social Networking Sites. Change your privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to the highest security settings possible, while still allowing people to “friend” you. Buyers are known to research you online for personal info that could give them an edge during negotiations.
Upon choosing The Jacobsen Group, we will work together to determine when to put your home on the market.
2. Stage, declutter, and depersonalize.
Staging a home will help you sell your home quicker and for more money. We will schedule a complimentary one-hour consultation with home stagers who tour your home with you, talk about options, and then leave you with a list of staging suggestions.
You need to declutter! Your goal is to make all the rooms look and feel as open as possible. Pack up any unused items or knick knacks throughout the home, and be sure to clean out and reorganize closets and cabinets in order to showcase space. Remove and store furniture that blocks walkways.
NOTE: Don’t throw everything in the garage; it needs to look as decluttered as possible as well.
Depersonalizing will help potential buyers visualize their personal belongings in your home. Remove and pack up family photos or heirlooms and remove most, if not all, wall art.
The home staging and decluttering process can be overwhelming, but remember the way we present the home to a potential buyer is very important in getting the home sold.
3. Repair the small things.
If it’s broken, fix it! A list of common repairs to consider include:
Patch holes or cracks in walls or ceilings.
Fix leaky faucets.
Fix doors that don’t close properly.
Fix ripped window screens and replacing cracked or broken window panes.
Replace defective thermal window seals where windows “fog” between the panes of glass.
Make sure all windows open and close.
Replace all burned out light bulbs.
Replace any rotten boards on a deck or siding.
Tighten all hand railings.
Mud jacking the driveway or sidewalks where a trip hazard is larger than 1 inch.
Replace cracked tile.
Add backfill along the foundation of your home.
Clean out gutters and adding extensions to your downspouts.
Repair damaged roof shingles.
Touch up exterior/interior paint.
Paint walls neutral colors and removing wallpaper.
Complete all work associated with past insurance claims.
Service your furnace(s) or A/C unit(s) by a licensed HVAC contractor (if you haven’t done so in the last 12 months).
4. Deep clean.
Buyers like clean, maintained homes. In addition to thoroughly cleaning every corner of your home, to give it a nice finish, consider doing the following:
Store small kitchen appliances in the pantry or closet.
Clear off the countertops.
Replace worn or old shower curtains and hanging fresh towels.
If you smoke, have drapes, carpets, and furniture professionally cleaned or replaced.
If you have pets:
Have your carpets professionally cleaned.
Scrub and sanitize pet bowls and pet areas.
Wash all pet pillows and blankets.
Remove any evidence of the pets such as pet toys, pillows, cages, towers, etc.
Take it to the next level and make your home really shine by completing the following:
Clean all windows inside and out.
Clean carpets and wax or polish the floors.
Clean and polish any woodwork.
Rent a pressure washer to spray down sidewalks, home exterior, patios, and decks.
Re-caulk tubs, showers, and sinks.
Vacuum daily.
Open all blinds or drapes, and turn on all the lights (for showings).
Dust furniture, ceiling fan blades, light fixtures, and knock down any cobwebs.
Replace worn rugs.
Put out fresh flowers or plants.
5. Have your home professionally photographed.
The Jacobsen Group will hire a local production company to take professional photographs of your home as a complimentary service. Upon completion, pictures of your home will go on the market within 48 hours.
6. Go live.
When you work with The Jacobsen Group, your home will be marketed on multiple platforms, generating the most exposure possible. We will market your home on:
Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which is a city-wide database where all local real estate companies share information about their listings.
NPDodge.com and KWJacobsen.com
Social Media, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
3rd Party Websites. NPDodge.com is a syndicated website, so your home will also appear on Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, and many more.
Once everything is live, your agent will send you an email with links to the web pages marketing your home. Please review everything very carefully and let your agent know of any errors.
7. Showings.
Your home will receive the most showings within the first three weeks on the market so be sure to keep your home “show ready.” All the showing requests will come from the Centralized Showing Service (CSS) and they will give you at least a 2-hour notice that a buyer has requested to see your home. Showings typically take one hour; you will need to leave the home about 15 minutes prior to the appointment.
The Jacobsen Group monitors all client lockboxes electronically, so they will receive an email notification when a buyer’s agent accesses your lockbox indicating the showing has taken place.
As you’re getting ready for the showings please do a quick run-through of your home and check the following:
Turn on all the lights and lamps.
Make sure all the beds are made.
Open all the blinds and drapes.
Close all the toilet lids.
Put away all toys and other personal items.
Take out the trash.
Fold and put away all the laundry.
Clean and put away any dishes or pots and pans.
Do a quick vacuum and dust the floors.
Put out fresh towels in the bathrooms.
Testimonials
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"Kristen is great! She is extremely knowledgeable with the entire [home buying and selling] process... I highly recommend her!"
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- Amy Hillyard
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We had heard stories about the housing market when we started looking for a new home last year - all about how crazy it was and how quickly houses were going up and selling. Overall, we ended up looking at over 25 different houses, putting offers on just under half of those houses, before we finally found 'the one'. All of this, while we were expecting our first child.
Kristen's expertise and eye for houses were more or less a godsend for us - I can't tell you the number of times we went and look at a house, thought the house was great and we were ready to put an offer in on it, and Kristen would start pointing out some serious warning signs. We're talking crumbling foundation, warping exterior, water damage, shotty upgrades, and at one point, a makeshift bathroom that was TOTALLY not within code (we passed on that one, to say the least). Not only that, but her ability to meet with us at a house in an hours notice, was impeccable and overall key for us buying the house we did get (it was up and down within 24 hours). She also helped give us some amazing hints and tricks on how to improve our offer, other than just the overall dollar amount we were willing to offer. It was one of those tricks that ultimately made our offer the winning offer.
Going into looking for a house (my first, my wife's second), I thought it was just going to be a "go look at a house, find one we like, put an offer in, and boom, the house is ours". I can truthfully say, that without Kristen and her team's help, our housing search would have been a much longer, more painful, and more anxious experience. For that, when it's time to move on to our next house....we know who we will be calling.
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- Ryan and Becca Deprez
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Kristen is one of the best in the business. She is very knowledgeable, organized, professional and extremely detail oriented. We used her to buy and sell a home and she made the process simple and smooth each time. We felt like she genuinely cared about us and helped us navigate difficult decisions.
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- Russ Harrison
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Kristen was a joy to work with. She is very friendly and positive. She is extremely knowledgeable and we felt we could trust her 100%. We really valued her opinion and expertise. She made herself available to us at all times, we could call or text her anytime with any questions or concerns. She made the whole process very easy for us. We will definitely work with her again should the need arise.
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- Trish Lang
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"We relocated to Omaha recently and had an amazing experience with Kristen. She is extremely knowledgeable about the area, accommodating, enthusiastic, and willing to go the extra mile. We will recommend her to everyone that we know!"
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- Brittany Delgadillo
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Kristen Wehner Jacobsen (KWJ) is the best! She talks and works at a million miles a minute and has hustle on tap. I would recommend her every day of the week and twice on Sundays!
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- Adam Hansen
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"Kristen is extremely knowledgeable... My fiancé and I have been more than pleased with our experience. With Kristen's help, we felt very confident in our first home purchase and couldn't be happier!"
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- Kaitlyn Pauly
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Kristen has the experience, background and special interest in her clients that provide the best experience in selling/buying your home. She has the contacts immediately available if you should need repairs to your home that would take weeks if you contacted them yourselves. Her outstanding technology skills will provide you with all you need throughout the buying/ selling experience. She has the personality and tremendous real estate knowledge to give you the best experience possible in selling/buying your home. I have talked to other agents in the area and they know her and respect her as a person and agent.
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- Dave Brown
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"Kristen did a great job selling our home. She tailored her approach to our situation and didn't apply a cookie cutter approach to selling our home. Anyone selling or buying...in the Omaha area should give Kristen a call."
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- Eric Drouncheck
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If you have a chance to work with Kristen, jump on it! I was really happy with my experience with her from the beginning through the end of the home buying process. She knows her stuff and was a great match for me because she knows a lot about *houses* and could help me find the right level home for project fun vs. move-in ready. She shared her local knowledge of neighborhoods in the Omaha area, which was helpful as someone newer to town. I appreciated Kristen's professionalism with my deal, navigating things with the seller's agent and taking care of the business of the deal on my behalf. On the day of closing, she and her team did generously take care of one annoying outstanding issue (from seller/agent) at my new place so that I wouldn't have to take a trip to the dump right away. That was really a nice touch.
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- Emily Glenn
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"As a military family, we have worked with many wonderful realtors over the past 20 years; however, our recent experience working with Kristen on our current home purchase supersedes all other experiences..."
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- Michelle Wooten
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Kristen was very thorough and went beyond our expectations! She was personable, professional, and driven. She provided information on the home we were selling that other realtors don't. She responded quickly to emails and texts. She was flexible in her schedule when shopping for a new home. Her expertise was especially appreciated as we deciphered inspections and negotiated terms for both the selling and buying of our homes. Working with Kristen was like working with a friend. She made the process of buying and selling significantly easier! I work in an industry that is always busy and without a lot of flexibility. It was a comfort having her keep us on track and minimize the stress.
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- Debbie Innis
This data is from various Participants of the Great Plains REALTORS® Multiple Listing Service Inc Internet Data Exchange; is for consumers personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing; the listing broker is listed on each listing; the information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed, and is copyrighted ©2023 Great Plains REALTORS® Multiple Listing Service, Inc. Information is
