How to sell a property in Ontario?

How to sell a property in Ontario?

Written by Jiayi (Joy) Zhang from GTAHome.com Real Estate Team

Tags: real estate agent training, listing, real estate, listing agent

Reading time: 2 minutes

Are you new to real estate? Are you a new realtor or are you planning to get your realtor license? Do you know what activities need to be done when selling a property? Let’s walk through the main steps: 

1. Sell yourself to the seller is the first and most important step. Currently, Ontario has over 80,000 realtors. With so many choices, why the seller should choose you? Highlight your experience and differentiate yourself from rest of realtors.
2. Negotiate the commission. Once the seller and you agreed on a commission, indicate the listing commission and coop commission clearly in the listing agreement.
3. Prepare the listing paperwork. 
4. Walk through the property with the seller and recommend areas for improvements.
5. Hire professional for staging. Typically, seller pays the staging cost first. And after closing, some realtors reimburse the staging cost. The staging cost varies from $1,500 to $5,000 or even more depends on the size of the property.
6. Hire professional for photo and video, you can also enhance the buyer experience by creating 3D virtual tour. Ensure you allocate proper time for these activities.
7. Create flyer to promote the property.
8. Utilize the social media to promote the property.
9. If the seller wants to hold back all offers until offer presentation day and do not want to review any offer before that, you should have a letter of direction from the seller.
10. Prepare disclosure, Schedule B, (Optional) Schedule C.
11. Prepare for Locker box, For sales sign, Open House etc.
12. Determine the listing pricing strategy with Seller. 
13. Upload the listing to MLS when everything is ready.
14. Negotiate offers with the buyer agents.
15. Once an offer is received, present the offer to the seller, explain all the terms and clauses, and guide sellers accordingly.
16. If the offer has conditions, find out if the buyer can remove some of them as these conditions are for the interest of buyers. Most common conditions are mortgage clause, home inspection and status reports for condo corporation.
17. Work with seller and buyer agent closely for anything required (buyer visits, repairs) before final closing.
18. Don’t forget to ask for seller’s testimonial after the transaction is closed. 
19. After the deal is closed, farming in the surrounding area would be an efficient way to get more listings. 

After reading this, hope you can have a better idea on how to help clients to sell their properties. If you would like to obtain more information, feel free to contact GTAHome.com Real Estate Team.