OUR STRATEGY is to provide premium service to every client
The Colorado Department of Real Estate requires all agents to provide certain minimum services to every client. While I won’t list every one of them here, they don’t really relate to marketing. Rather those services are more closely related to confidentiality, fiduciary, honesty, reasonable skill and care, among others. I’ll provide the full list as part of our Agency Agreement, or if you prefer I can send you a copy.
The reason that I mention this is that many Real Estate Agents consider the items on that list as sufficient, and advertise themselves as Full-Service Agents. Seriously.
So let me just state that yes, we provide everything on that list as a most basic starting point. Then we add a whole bunch more for every Listing:
1
Research Ownership and encumbrances
We use our Title Company partners to investigate the ownership history of the property to make certain that there are no hidden liens against the property that would interrupt the sale and cause unintended delays.
2
We protect your property
Most agents in the Denver area use cheap hardware store lockboxes that have a fixed combination code. These are inherently unsafe because it’s very easy for a bad actor to steal the code and come back later and ransack the house…or worse. I can show you how they do it.
We use bluetooth-enabled electronic lockboxes that dynamically change the code for every showing. It is virtually impossible to crack the code.
3
Professional HDR Photography
Most people start their home search on the Internet. They scan a page full of pictures looking for something that catches their eye. We only use experienced professional real estate photographers who understand composition, presentation, and exposure. Never settle for less. These photos are your homes’ first impression, and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Our photographer will spend anywhere from an hour to 2 hours photographing every aspect of your home so that prospective buyers will be able to tour your home online before they ever even set foot inside your home.
4
Your home will have its own website
This website will have detailed information about your home to help the buyers make their decision. It will have its own virtual tour presentation as well as the HDR photographs.
5
Your home’s listing will be published to all major real estate sites on the internet
We won’t hold back. We want as many eyes as possible to see your home, quickly. Yes, it will be on Zillow also.
6
Showing appointments must be scheduled through a centralized showing service.
Showingtime is the centralized service in use here in the Denver area. Showingtime validates the state license of everyone who requests a showing, makes certain that there are no overlapping showings, informs the showing agent of any specific instructions that you, the seller, require, and prompts the showing agent for feedback afterwards.
Showingtime also creates and dispenses the dynamic lockbox codes for our Sentrilock electronic lockboxes. We use bluetooth-enabled electronic lockboxes that dynamically change the code for every showing. It is virtually impossible to crack the code.
7
Full-time transaction coordination and communication
The real estate transaction consists of dozens. sometimes over 100, of activities that must be performed in specific sequences. In most cases these activities are dependent on previous activities, and sometimes additional activities can be introduced into the plan based on the results of a previous activity.
Most of these activities are executed by myself, members of my team, or the buyer’s team. Some activities are your responsibility. Don’t worry though. We will let you know well in advance when you need to do something, and we will show you the complete end-to-end sequence of activities and milestones.
We will be in regular communication with you so that you always know the status of the transaction, what has happened, and what will be happening.
8
Expert negotiation
We are trained and certified real estate negotiators. Selling or buying a home isn’t just about price. It’s also about scheduled dates, contingencies, inspections, inspection resolutions, concessions, offers and counter-offers, inclusions, exclusions, post-closing agreements, who pays for what, appraisal objections, loan conditions, possession, and potential contract amendments.
Each of these items is a point of negotiation, and could cause major or minor changes to the sequence of activities, or even new activities, in the transaction.
Yes, they can cause angst, but it would be very unusual to encounter something that we haven’t seen before.
9
In addition to what you can see above, I also have a checklist of 41 items that we manage so that your transaction is as smooth and worry free as possible.
I won’t detail them here, but we can review them when we meet to get your home listed for sale.
This list, 1 through 9, shows you what we provide for every one of our seller’s listings, even the most basic plan.
A Real Estate sales commission has 2 parts, the Listing Agent fee and the Buyer Agent fee. The commission percentages that are shown here do not include the coop commission fee that will need to be paid to the Buyer’s Agent, typically 2.5% to 2.8%. Please understand that there are no “standard” real estate sales commissions. All commissions are negotiable.
Also note that the fee structure that I have shown here is specific to Jerry Downer, Realtor at West+Main Homes Colorado, and his team. Other agents within the same brokerage may have different fee structures and service offerings.
Did I mention that we will never lock you into a long-term listing contract. Our listing agreements can be cancelled at any time as long as someone has not made an offer on your home.