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Selling Your Spanish Fort, Daphne, Fairhope,
Gulf Shores Or Orange Beach Home

Are you thinking of selling your home to move up, or do you need to sell for career or other reasons? If so, it can be a difficult decision especially in today’s real estate market. The good news is there is a way to sell successfully in the timeframe you need. If you owe more than your house is worth, I have special training as a Certified Distressed Property Expert to help you do a successful short sale. But short sale or not, selling your home today may require a change in your real estate mindset. What do I mean by that?

A home’s price is determined by “the market.” But in the beginning without an offer on the table, pricing your home is a subjective guessing game. You know what you paid for it; you know what you spent on improvements; you know the love and hard work you poured into its maintenance; you know the value of all the backyard barbecues and family Thanksgiving dinners, and you know the amount you need to realize from the sale. So it seems logical that you should also know what price to ask.

But the harsh reality of today’s real estate marketplace is that your home’s pool of prospective buyers — the market — cares only about what other buyers have paid during the last six months for similar homes in your neighborhood and what other buyers there are paying for similar homes currently under contract. These are the numbers they use to determine what to offer for your home — not what you, the seller, have determined your home is worth.

This is the mindset change I mentioned and is the biggest challenge today to selling a home.

As your listing agent, I help you meet this challenge by providing all the “comps” for a Comparable Market Analysis on similar homes in your neighborhood showing the stats for the ones recently sold, the ones currently under contract and others currently on the market. The latter are your competition. These numbers and other information I provide eliminate the need for any guesswork on your part and enable you to make your best informed decision when setting your home’s asking price.

If you can resist the temptation to try to beat the odds or test the market with an above-market price ... if you can accept the numbers in the comps as today’s real estate market reality and price you home accordingly, your home will sell in a reasonable amount of time, perhaps even quickly.

Selling real estate is not a perfect process. It’s a complex legal transaction that takes many people working together, meeting contingencies, due dates and deadlines to get your transaction to the closing table on time. You can almost always count on someone dropping the ball. There simply are things outside of our control. But by keeping you informed and never sugarcoating the facts, I make sure you encounter no surprises and always know what to expect.

Other challenges include:

• Working through home inspections.
• Getting repair quotes from reliable vendors.
• Staying informed of any changes in the local market that can affect a home sale such as real estate ordinances and laws, which change frequently.

I have trusted sources whose fees are reasonable and fair, and I help you gather quotes for needed repairs. I stay on top of what’s happening in Mobile and Baldwin County communities and am quick to spot trends and changes in the market. And I keep you fully informed about both the market and your home’s marketing activity every step of the way.

As your listing agent, meeting all the challenges and overcoming any obstacles to selling your home in the timeframe you need are exactly what I do. And my seller clients say I do them well. Recently, Daphne home sellers Lars and Michele Ranger wrote, “Janet instilled a confidence — but not a false [one] — very early on with her ability to keep us informed. Never did she leave us hanging, or to simply figure things out on our own.”

The real estate industry has undergone radical changes in recent years. And one of the most important is the way homes are marketed to the buying public. With nearly all homebuyers (93%) beginning their home search on the Internet, print advertising — with the exception of some home magazines — has fallen by the wayside. Only the Internet has the power to deliver your home’s photos and details to buyers, investors and real estate professionals searching from across town, across the country and across the globe.

When you have me as your listing agent, you get a Realtor® who has a strong Internet presence and who understands the importance of having your home’s digital presentation on the Internet’s most important real estate search sites such as Realtor.com, Trulia.com, Yahoo.com, ReMax.com and others. Also, your home is featured here on MobileSuburbs.com and on my real estate blog at ActiveRain.com, the Internet’s largest networking site for real estate professionals, most of whom have ready buyers as clients.

As a Realtor® who has walked in your shoes, I learned for myself what not to do when selling a home. You see, I have the unusual experience of having lived in four houses and an apartment in five years time — long story. But my point is I learned a lot about what not to do as a home seller. I also learned what I expect from the listing agent I entrust with helping me price and market my home.

This intense home seller experience taught me to treat my seller clients the way I expect to be treated. I don’t lie. I don’t skirt the truth. I come at home sales with a different mindset, which comes from my 15 years as a newspaper journalist with a highly developed sense of right and wrong.

Even if it’s to my detriment, I try to do the right thing for people.

When you have me as your listing agent, you get a Realtor® with a real tenaciousness to cut through red tape and get to the bottom of things — one who provides you with all of the needed information to help you make informed decisions. And when you’re armed with the right information — in plain English — you won’t have to worry about being surprised by something you wish you’d known before getting to the closing table.

So, if you’re thinking of selling and you’d like to work with an experienced Realtor® who gives you the unvarnished truth, is fast on follow-up and takes care of today’s business today, email or call me at 251-591-2411 and let’s get acquainted.

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