Nervous About Selling???

Are you Nervous About Putting Your Home On The Market???

Sheila Anderson of Ocala Residential, Inc., licensed real estate broker, offers 10 tips to simplify selling a house in a nervous market. Perhaps you are facing a transfer, considering downsizing, or moving to a different area. Or you want the family and kids settled in time for the 2007-2008 school year.

Buyers and sellers may have the jitters from declining real estate sales and fluctuating prices.

Whatever the case, housing prices remain near historical highs.

"There's a lot more to selling your house than setting up a sign and waiting for buyers to come," Anderson says. "This is a business decision. Your goal is to make your experience as simple as possible-for you and the buyer."
The following 10 steps can get a seller started.
It starts with attitude.
1. Detach emotionally from the property.
2. Lose the clutter.
3. Present the front.
4. Always be honest - with your buyer, and with the real estate broker. If there is a problem, tell them about it.
5. Make the house sparkle, especially the kitchen, bathrooms and your windows
6. Disappear when real estate agents show the property
7. Get ready to show the house any time. Once it is on the market, it is always a good time to show the house - if you really want to sell it. That accidental visitor could well be your buyer.
8. Prepare a list of items the buyer might want to use - the lawnmower, the grill, the patio and porch furniture, the draperies. Mark them "for the buyer." It's a little touch, but a separate bill of sale can provide tax advantages for the buyer at closing time.
9. Keep your cool. Buyers and sellers both tend to go a little crazy during a sale. Don't get emotional; keep your sense of humor. Some people will give you a low-ball offer. Don't get offended; give them a counter-offer you consider fair.
10. Consider getting out of the way at closing time
The more professional and calm the deal stays, the better a shot you will have with the fewest surprises.