The Selling Process
Steps to Selling Your Home for the Highest Possible Price.
Initial Meeting
Step #1 Working Relationship
Let’s get together to discuss the selling process and see if we are a good fit to work together. When we meet, we will determine your key objectives, review the marketing plan, strategize how we will negotiate offers up to the highest possible price, and discuss the right pricing strategy for your home.
You may also want to meet with your tax professional and consider some of the following:
✓ What am I going to do with my money?
✓ Who is on title?
✓ Have I talked to my CPA about selling?
✓ What taxes will I owe?
✓ Capital gains?
✓ 1031 Exchange?
✓ What are my current loan commitments secured by this property?
✓ Have I paid my property taxes?
Step #2 Home Preparation
I love selling turnkey, fixer-uppers, and everything in between! But getting your home ready to sell can often be very overwhelming. I will help you prioritize what improvements, if any, will generate the highest return on your investment and my team will help coordinate and oversee the preparation process from start to finish. We will get bids, develop a timeline, track the budget, and follow up with vendors.
Order Inspections – The most common inspections performed are the home, pest, and sewer lateral inspections. If any issues are found during these inspections, you can choose to disclose and repair them or only disclose the issues. Any issues disclosed upfront cannot be negotiated later in escrow by the buying party, therefore, I find it very beneficial to perform inspections at this time. You can find a list of my trusted inspectors here.
Complete Planned Improvements – Before professional photos are taken and your home goes on the market, you’ll want to complete any planned improvements such as landscaping, cleaning, painting, or new flooring. View a list of my preferred vendors here.
Home Staging – After any improvements are completed, you may want to consider home staging or hiring a design consultant! Staging your home can be the very reason why buyers are able to visualize themselves at home in your property. Click here for a list of my staging partners. If you’re still living at the property during the sale, check out these helpful tips on how to prepare your home.
Disclosures
Step #3 Disclosures
Providing complete disclosures and reports of your home is an important strategy when selling your home and prevent the need to negotiate any unforeseen issues during escrow. Seller disclosures can be completed in person or via Glide and should include information regarding property history, improvements, and the current condition. Also included in my listing package is Disclosures.io, which is a cloud-based tool that stores all the disclosures and reports and is also accessible to home buyers and buyer’s agents. Disclosures.io easily compiles disclosure packages with drag and drop organization and allows controlled distribution with customized invitations and alerts. Knowing who is serious about buying your home with real-time data gives us a competitive advantage when negotiating multiple offers.
Step #4 Marketing Components
Once inspections and pre-listing work are complete it’s time to start the marketing portion of selling your home! As your agent, I offer an inclusive and extensive marketing package that includes:
✓ Professional Photos
✓ Virtual Tour
✓ Aerial Photography and Videography
✓ Floor Plan Rendering
✓ Descriptive Marketing Copy that Highlights your Home as Well as its Location
✓ Single Property Website with Custom URL
✓ Paid Facebook and Instagram Just Listed Ad
✓ Email Marketing to over 10,000+ agents in the Bay Area
✓ Social Media Marketing
Weekly Marketing Review
To ensure that our marketing is effective and the buyer feedback is positive, it is important that we monitor the analytics for your property. Each week, until the property is in contract, I will follow up with agents who have shown the property for buyer feedback and compile listing analytics from the property website, Disclosures.io, broadcasted listing websites, and private showings.
Step #5 Offers & Negotiations
After showings, I will follow up with the buying agents to gauge their client’s interest in making an offer and to gather their feedback on the property. Whether we receive one or multiple offers there is always room for negotiation to ensure you are getting the highest possible price. Some examples of terms that can be negotiated in a counteroffer include escrow length, price, who pays for the home warranty, seller in possession, and rent backs just to name a few.
If we are countering more than one offer, we will counter it with a Seller Multiple Counter Offer. This form notifies the buying party that you are countering multiple offers, though the terms in the counteroffer can be different for each party.
Once one party accepts the offer or counteroffer you are officially in escrow and the countdown to close begins.
Step #6 Escrow
Once you have accepted an offer, we will enter into the escrow period. During the escrow period, my team will:
✓ Create an escrow calendar for important dates
✓ Ensure the buyer and buyer’s agent have received all the disclosures and reports.
✓ Review and negotiate any backup offers.
✓ Review documents and confirm that they are properly signed and acknowledged.
✓ Follow up on the progress of the buyer’s loan application, appraisal, and time frame.
✓ Ensure contingency removal dates are met, review, and negotiate any request for repairs (if applicable).
✓ Schedule a final walk-through for the buyer.
Sign Off and Closing
Step #7 Closing
You’ve made it through the preparation, listing, and escrow stages and now it’s time to close! In the last week before closing escrow, you will:
✓ Review the closing statement from the title company
✓ Schedule and confirm the sign-off date
✓ Sign-off at the title company
Once the loan is funded, the buyer’s name is recorded at the County and escrow will close. I will exchange keys with the buyer’s agent and you will receive a copy of all the disclosures and reports electronically. That’s it, you did it!
If you are selling an investment property, I can help you facilitate a Tax-Deferred 1031 Exchange. I invite you to get in touch with my preferred Wealth Manager and CPA with any other questions about selling.
Reviews
Highly likely to recommend
“I couldn’t be happier with my experience working with Sam to sell my little cottage in Seabright. Sam is professional, knowledgeable, and incredibly competent, but also warm, approachable, and always available. His app made communication quick and seamless, and his entire team was friendly, efficient, and wonderful to work with. My cottage had its own charm, along with a few challenges, particularly when it came to navigating the City. Sam was incredibly helpful in guiding me through the process and making what could have been an overwhelming experience much easier. He went above and beyond, often checking in just to see how I was feeling and whether there was anything more he could do to help. That personal touch meant a great deal to me. My house sold very quickly, and I couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out. Beyond his expertise, Sam is clearly someone who is well connected and genuinely respected in the community. While I was living in Seabright, I often had people walk by the house and say, “Oh, I know Sam! What a great guy!” That really says it all. I’m so grateful to Sam and his team and would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone looking to buy or sell a home.”
Highly likely to recommend
“Sam is the best! He was our buyers agent and throughout the process he was always super on top of everything - excellent communication, excellent memory, honest, direct, basically everything you want when making a life altering decision. We were making the move from the East Bay to Santa Cruz and while we were looking for rentals we decided to look for houses to purchase at the same time. A friend recommended Sam and then we did some due diligence using AI to find realtors who have experience specific to the Westside - Sam was high on that list. Since inventory here is always very low, we knew we would probably be looking for a house that wasn't on the market yet. In the end, Sam was able to find us a house off-market on the lower westside, exactly as we'd hoped, and was able to negotiate a tricky long leaseback situation down into a standard transaction that was much less stressful to figure out. Sam got the deal locked in before other buyers had a chance to outbid us and we feel extremely lucky to have landed here. We still message Sam all the time asking for recommendations for local contractors to work with and he's super helpful and friendly all the time. 1000/10 would recommend to anyone.”
Highly likely to recommend
“Charlie and Sam helped us navigate a challenging market this past summer and sold our townhome in Scotts Valley within 60 days. I really hope we don't have to move again anytime soon, but highly recommend the Sam Bird-Robinson Compass team for your real estate needs and would definitely work with them again!!!”
Highly likely to recommend
“Working with Sam Bird-Robinson and his team was a pleasure. They were very straight forward and organized explaining each step along the way. They took care of arranging all the inspections and work that needed to be done . Sam was there keeping us up to date throughout the sale. Any time we had a question or concern all we had to do was send a quick text on the Sam app and we would soon have a response. We appreciate the expertise of the whole team as well as associates Sam referred us to.”
Highly likely to recommend
“5 stars to Sam and his team. I love Sam’s enthusiasm, knowledge, and determination to get the job done. Sam and his associates are so easy to work with. Special kudos to Nic! If you want to sell your home in a timely fashion this is who you wanna hire!”
Highly likely to recommend
“My partner and I were toying with the idea of moving from the East Bay to Santa Cruz and decided to find someone who we could ask some questions about the market. I basically cold called Sam after finding him on the internet, looking for someone who had experience buying and selling on the lower west side/ ChatGPT said he was the guy and his reviews were great, so why not. I had never bought a house before - I was overwhelmed by the idea and the number of major life events that I had recently experienced. Sam got to know us super well just chatting over the phone a bunch and going to a few open houses together, to the point that we had total confidence in his recommendations. He challenged us to do what was right for us, not just what seemed like the right thing to do. We decided to move, rent and take our time - see what made sense, and revisit in a couple of months, maybe take a year or two. One week later, Sam said “I found your house” and it seemed unbelievable but ended up to be totally true. Based on my experience with Sam and the team I can say all the other reviews are 1000% accurate. It has been a wild ride, but they made a process that is otherwise stressful and exhausting feel feel easy and even fun at times. If I could work with them to guide me through the all of my major decisions for the rest of my life I would!!”
Highly likely to recommend
“Great experience working with Sam and his staff regarding residential home on King Street in Santa cruz. Through his exceptional negotiation and advice regarding two offers we received a higher than asking selling price! Thanks again, Sam!!”