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Seller's Guide

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. With the help of an experienced agent and this easy guide, you can smoothly complete the process. Following these steps will help you prepare so you can 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 team of real estate agents once you choose one so they 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 team of real estate agents is the best way to determine the right selling price for your home. A team of real estate agents 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

We 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. Our 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 team of real estate agents.

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Step 7: Get Ready to Close

You have accepted an offer and are now very close to the end of your selling journey. But first, you and the buyer must make a list of what needs to be done before closing. In some cases, your home may need to be formally inspected, surveyed, and appraised. In other cases, major or minor repairs will need to be made before the house can close. We will head up efforts to develop and execute this list, get each action item paid for by the correct party, and make sure everything is in order by the closing date. A few days before the closing date, we will call the company closing the transaction to make sure everything is ready to go. If you haven’t done so already, you also need to make arrangements to move out of the home so the new buyer can take possession.

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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 team of real estate agents 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.

What Our Clients Say

Jennifer

Jennifer

Over the past year or so, I've had to be closely involved in 3 home sales, in 3 states with 3 different real estate agents. Kendra and Lindsay were hands down the best of them all. Most brokers will do the basics of listing the...
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Jennifer & Vince

Jennifer & Vince

Recently, my husband and I found ourself looking for more house to make a home. We contacted Lindsay Morris and Kendra Gaeta to help move us through this process smoothly. And, they did just that! After much searching, we found...
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Cynthia & Jeff

Cynthia & Jeff

Best experience ever! Kendra is professional and personable. We were casually looking for a year and she was patient and continued to send us listings and was very accommodating to our busy schedules. When it came time to put i...
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Krystal

Krystal

Kendra was wonderful in marketing and selling my home. She pursued any and all options to keep potential buyers engaged and kept me well-informed throughout the process.
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Danielle & Josh

Danielle & Josh

My husband and I had the pleasure of working with Kendra through the process of buying our first Bay Area home. This was a daunting concept for us, as buying in this area is totally different than buying anywhere else! Kendra w...
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Delphia & Mike

Delphia & Mike

We were very pleased with Kendra's service and support in the sale of our home. She was always professional and communicative. We highly recommend her.
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Robert

Robert

Kendra was great. She is very personable. She managed all the details of the sale, made excellent recommendations, kept us informed, and got us a great deal. We had not moved in 32 years and she made us feel comfortable with th...
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Alexandra

Alexandra

We have worked with Kendra for three separate sales and purchases now and I could not sing her praises more if I tried. To say that we would not have been able to get our dream house without her would be an understatement. In t...
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Kailey

Kailey

My husband and I have been working with Kendra for the past -5 years! I wish I could give her a million stars for this review. We really wanted to buy a house and plant some roots in the Bay Area. Throughout the years, she has ...
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Prasanna & Nalini

Prasanna & Nalini

We were in the market for a single-family home in Sunnyvale or San Carlos parts of the Bay Area. We ran into Kendra while visiting an open house in Redwood City and had a long chat. I was immediately impressed with how much att...
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Charles

Charles

Kendra made my selling experience wonderful and easy by knowing what was coming up and keeping me informed. I wish more businesses worked the way she does.
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Matt

Matt

Over the last 20 years I’ve worked with over 5 real estate agents - actually buying and selling homes with 3 of them - and I have to say Kendra Gaeta is by far the BEST realtor I have ever had the pleasure of working with!!! Un...
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Kavya and Siddharth

Kavya and Siddharth

Buying a home for the first time is an ordeal in many avenues - location, budgeting, personal preferences to list a few. From the start to finish Kendra was both professional and personal with the search of our home providing e...
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Brian & Bethany

Brian & Bethany

My wife and I are huge fans of Kendra and highly recommend her to anyone looking to represent them as a buyer or seller. We've now worked with Kendra on 3 transactions in this volatile Bay Area market. We first met Kendra 4 yea...
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Debra

Debra

Kendra didn't get an easy task when she took us on as clients! Big family, tons of kids and animals, working from home, schooling from home... We had already found our perfect home out of the area and needed to sell our current...
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Thomas

Thomas

We couldn’t have asked for a better realtor! Kendra took the overwhelming process of buying a home and made it smooth and very manageable. She was an invaluable resource while looking at houses, and a helpful guide through all ...
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Patrick

Patrick

As trustee of an estate I worked with Kendra to sell two properties in the San Jose/Santa Clara area within a few months of each other. Kendra did a great job to establish the right price for the market and property conditions,...
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Melynda & Eric

Melynda & Eric

Kendra is amazing! She was very honest with us while we were searching for our home. She told what she liked and didn’t like about the houses and areas we were looking in, she wasn’t just trying to make a sale. She wanted to ma...
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Erik & Christina

Erik & Christina

When my family and I were ready to sell our house and escape the city, we turned to Kendra Gaeta. Ashe came highly recommended through many reviews. We were so happy to have her help us in every aspect of the Realestate game.Up...
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Ricky

Ricky

Kendra was critical to achieving our goal of home ownership. Though we were experienced with the home buying process by owning and selling a home in the Atlanta area, nothing could have prepared us for what we had to face in th...
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Work With Us

Whether you're buying your first home or selling a property, we’re here to make the process seamless and stress-free. With personalized guidance and a commitment to your goals, we ensure every transaction is handled with care and expertise from start to finish.

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