Selling your home

What it is worth, and what it costs to sell it

Those are the two questions almost every seller opens with, and neither has a useful answer over email. What a house is worth depends on what has actually sold near it, what is competing with it now, and what it does better than the rest of them.

What it costs to sell is answered directly rather than published as a rate.

How a house gets in front of buyers

Before anything is listed there is work on the house itself — what to fix, what to clear out, and how it should be photographed and described. What that involves is different for every house, and it is agreed before the listing goes up.

Once it is listed it goes onto TRREB’s MLS® System, which is where other brokerages and the public listing websites read it from.

Then showings, and what comes back from them. Feedback after a showing is the most honest information available about whether the price is right.

From the offer to the closing

An offer arrives with a price, a closing date, a deposit and whatever conditions the buyer wants. Any of those can be negotiated, and the highest number is not always the best offer.

Once the conditions are satisfied the sale is firm. The lawyers handle the rest, and on the closing day the money and the keys change hands.