How Selling Your Home Works

The first thing is a conversation about what your home is genuinely worth, on your water or your street, rather than a number pulled from a county-wide average. Sellers almost never ask me for options. They ask me what I think. So I tell them.

Then the paperwork, and none of it should be a surprise on the day:

The listing agreement. Term dates, price, the fee, what is offered to a cooperating agent, concessions, key box authorization. Everything in it is negotiable and all of it is agreed in writing between us.

The Seller's Property Condition Disclosure. You complete it, and you carry a standing duty to update it in writing if anything changes before closing. That duty does not end when you sign it, which is the part people miss.

A lead-based paint disclosure if the house predates 1978. On an older home this has to be complete before an offer can be accepted, so it is worth doing early rather than at the worst moment.

Authorization for title to pull your payoff, so the closing figures are real rather than estimated.

And if you want time to prepare before anyone sees it, there is a form that formally delays the MLS submission to a date you choose. Until that date there is no marketing anywhere and no showings. Useful when a house needs work first, and better than quietly sitting on it.

This is the stretch most sellers never see described, because most of the time it does not happen.

Presentation comes first. I build the photography, video and copy before anything is public, for somebody deciding on a phone. On the water that means showing what the water actually does, the frontage, the access, the outlook at the hour it looks best, rather than proving it exists.

Then paid, targeted marketing while the home is still being prepared. In front of people who were not searching yet, which is where the buyers for a lake place usually are. They are not refreshing the MLS at nine in the morning. They are two hours away, thinking about it.

The first week is the week you never get back. A home that arrives to an audience that already knows about it behaves differently from one that arrives to nobody, and that difference shows up in the number.

There is also a route for a seller who is not listing at all and has one specific buyer in mind. It is a different agreement, with no marketing and showings by appointment to that buyer only. Worth knowing it exists.

You have three choices on any offer: accept it, counter it, or decline it. Changes go on an addendum, which both sides sign, and there is no limit to how many times that can happen. Nothing is fixed until it is on the contract and the offer has been accepted. Even then, an addendum can change it if both of you agree.

Price is not the only thing that makes an offer good. The inspection window, the mortgage application window, the closing date, the earnest money, what happens if the appraisal comes in low, and what stays with the house all change what an offer is actually worth to you. A higher number with a long contingency chain can be worth less than a lower one that closes.

In competition you may see an escalation clause, where a buyer offers to beat others up to a limit. If one is invoked, the seller has to show the competing offer, so it is not a free option for the buyer.

And if the buyer's agent is asking you to cover their fee, that request has to arrive before or with the offer, in writing, so you can weigh it as part of the offer rather than discover it later.

Once it is accepted, the clock starts on the date acceptance is delivered, and everything counts in calendar days, not business days.

Your side of it: title work gets ordered within five days at your expense, any well and septic testing gets arranged inside ten, and you keep the disclosure current if anything changes. The buyer's side runs their inspection window, their appraisal and their financing to whatever was negotiated.

If something comes back badly, whether a low appraisal, an unsatisfactory inspection or a title objection, there is a three-day response chain, and your silence counts as a rejection just as the buyer's counts as acceptance. I do not let either of us get caught by that.

Then a final walk-through within three days of closing, and closing itself by the date on the contract, with a short automatic extension if something correctable needs fixing first.

Through all of it you get the weekly written report. Not a phone call when there is news.