• which home improvement projects, if any, to complete before you sell;
• whether to accept a particular offer; and
• how aggressively to negotiate counter-offers, and on which points to push back against a buyer’s offer.

2. Study the local market. The most successful home sales are the listings that are priced right from day one. Ask any agent: even in the toughest markets, there are listing that sell quickly, mostly because the one-two punch of the property and its price look to buyers like a very strong value.

In order to position yourself and your property at the point of pricing nirvana, you’ll need to do some leg work. stat. You don’t need to pick an exact price this moment, unless you’re planning to list your home super soon, but you can get started on what I like to think of as the ‘thinking seller’s’ three-pronged approach to pricing now, by:

• visiting open houses,
• studying nearby listings, and
• talking with local agents.

Before the year is up, try to visit a handful of open houses in your neighborhood. This will help you get a sense of the types of homes that are on the market, what condition they’re in, and how they are priced. Keep in mind that no home is going to be exactly like yours, but if it’s similar in size, location and features, then buyers that see that property will probably be the same buyers that come to see yours – and they will be comparing list prices.

Another great prep tool in gearing up to sell your home in 2012 is to study similar homes for sale on Trulia! Pay particular attention to what features they have, how they are described and priced, any incentives the sellers are offering (e.g., closing cost credits, etc.) and how long they’ve been on the market. (Hint: you might not want to price your home right in line with one that’s been on the market over a year. Obviously, that home is overpriced, and that is NOT a result you want to replicate!)

Finally, one of the most efficient and nuanced ways to get to know your local market is to begin speaking with agents who sell homes in your area. Get a few referrals, call them up and tour them through your home. Then, ask these pros for their opinion on what you should list your home for, what recent sales they think are the most comparable (and why), and how long they would expect your sale to take given their experience and current conditions.

You can use these same home tours to get a head start on selecting your listing agent by asking the agents you interview to give you a preview of what they would recommend in the way of preparing your home, timing your listing and marketing your house to achieve the objectives you set in Step 1.

3. Gather your paperwork. In planning for your sale next year, you can get a great head start by pulling together the necessary paperwork now. Keep in mind that the specific requirements vary by state, so this is not an exhaustive list. In general, you’ll need to have these ready:

• Disclosure documents: This includes any documentation of anything that might impact a buyer’s decision about your home, whether it be inspection reports, repair receipts or estimates for repairs you haven’t actually had done yet. Your local real estate pro will help determine what exactly is needed here.
• Compliance certificates: In some cities, the local government will require certain conditions be met before a property is transferred to another owner. Examples of these requirements include sewer line condition guidelines, and energy conservation ordinances that require low-flow toilets and shower heads to be installed. Again, your  real estate agent and your city’s website can help you figure out which, if any, of these types of ordinances might apply to your home.
• Mortgage statements: Before the property’s title can transfer to another owner, the escrow or title company will need your mortgage statements to order payoff demands from any mortgage holder who has to get paid before that can happen.
• Financials: If you’re planning on a short sale, you’ll have a lot more paperwork to gather in your process, including paycheck stubs, bank and investment account statements, and two years’ W-2 forms or tax returns – the bank will review these to determine whether they will authorize you to sell the home for less than what you owe.

4. Prep your listing plan and timeline. After you’ve done all your pricing homework and have chosen a listing agent, you can create a plan and timeline for how all the moving pieces will come together – including who is responsible for getting which tasks done. At minimum, your plan should specify:

• prep work you’ll be doing to your property before it’s listed for sale – including decluttering, staging and any repairs or cosmetic power-tweaks you plan to make;
• if you’re planning a short sale, a timeline for submitting an application to your lender for approval (this might be before or after the property is listed – consult with your lender and your agent on the matter)
• planned list price (based on current local market conditions – this could change if you don’t plan to list your home for several months);
• the target date on which your home will be listed for sale in the local MLS; and
• how showing arrangements will work so that local agents can get prospective buyers into your house to see the place, and what.

Agents: What other elements do you encourage sellers to include in their listing plans?

5. Get a head start on your ‘home’work. How much prep work your home needs really depends on its current condition. A good starting point for many sellers is to order an inspection. Most buyers will get their own inspection before closing a deal, but getting ahead of them with your own will help you avoid any unwanted surprises later on in the transaction. An inspection will give you a reality check on your home’s condition, enabling you to decide upfront whether it’s worth it to fix something now or simply reduce the price in consideration thereof.

Your holiday vacation from work is a great time to:
     (a) obtain any advance inspections your real estate agent recommends,
     (b) have any reasonable repairs completed,
     (c) pre-pack and declutter your place, and
     (d) prettify your home’s curb appeal – painting the shutters and sprucing the landscaping goes a long way toward attracting buyers.

Kudos, in advance, for taking the time now to prepare for your home sale in 2012!  Selling in today’s market is no easy task, and doing the heavy lifting now – before your home goes on the market and, hopefully, while you’re on vacation! – will help tremendously in making things go as smoothly, and profitably, as possible.

Today’s home sellers have a hard row to hoe, as my Mom would say. Home values have dropped, the market is flooded with competition and even if a buyer does come along, a record high number of deals fall through. On top of that, they face the age-old conundrum of having two seemingly conflicting aims: they want to get their homes sold, fast, but also want – and need – to squeeze every single possible dollar out of it.  

Here are 5 ‘cures’ to the temptation to overprice your home, all of which can help you max out the chance that your home will sell.

1. Check the Comps!  “Comps” is real estate lingo for comparable sales – the nearby, similar  homes that have recently sold. You might think that your taste level, aesthetic style and home maintenance practices are vastly superior to those of your neighbors – and you might be right. But this will be the single largest purchase your home’s eventual buyer will ever make, and trust me – they will be doing the research. The small contingent of urgent and qualified buyers who are active on today’s market do not want to overpay for a home, and most will view your home as overpriced and not worth the hassle (or the haggle) if it is out of whack with the recent sales prices of similar homes.

Similarly, appraisers will use these numbers when figuring out your home’s value. Even if you do get an offer at a higher-than-justified price, if the buyer’s appraiser finds that your home is overvalued compared to other nearby recent sales, it can cause major delays in your buyer’s mortgage process – or derail it altogether.

Work with your agent to find and evaluate the recent sales in the area, and to ensure that your home’s list price makes sense vis-a-vis the comps.

2. Get inside the minds of the local home buyers. The vast majority of buyers – over 90 percent – start their house huntinhg online. And what most of them do is type in a price range, a range of bedrooms and bathrooms and a geographic area, then spend dozens of obsessive hours perusing hundreds of listings.

Given the flooded market and buyers’ busy lives, many will screen your home off their interest list in a New York minute if it seems overpriced from its online listing. If that one-inch picture and the number of beds, baths and square feet either (a) doesn’t make it into their search results because the price is so much higher than what most local buyers want to spend on a home with those criteria, or (b) seems underwhelming, for the price, compared to the other online listings of similar homes, prospective buyers will never even make it into your home, and all your stunning staging and crave-able curb appeal will never have the opportunity to work their magic.  

Local agents have an inside track on what local buyers care about and what they will and will not spend. Talk to your agent about it, but don’t forget to actually listen to and consider what your agent has to say! If you don’t trust what an agent is telling you about where you should list your home, talk to several agents – if the consensus is a recommended list price range lower than what you had in mind, that’s a sign you should reconsider.

Also, search for similar homes to yours on Trulia, to see how it would stack up against similar listings online at the price range you have in mind.  That’s where local prospective buyers will see it (and screen it in or out) first.

3. Visit competing Open Houses. Buyers do not shop for homes in a vacuum.  They’re out there looking at dozens of homes – or more – to make sure they’re (a) getting the best deal possible, and (b) not missing ‘the one.’ So, while viewing a thumbnail image of your competition and seeing the list prices of other homes online is informative, it is even more useful to walk through the actual properties with which your home is competing, in living color.

Before you put your home on the market, take a few hours and visit nearby Open Houses. This exercise is the most vivid way to get a reality check about what you’re up against and what your home’s strengths and weaknesses are compared with the other homes buyers will see, which will go a long way in getting you to the right asking price. Even if you are unpleasantly surprised at how nice the neighboring homes are at low prices, taking this information in before you list your home is much less painful than waiting months for the market to give you this education (in the form of no or uber-low offers).

4. Get an inspection – in advance. Home buyers have long used the home inspection as a negotiating tool to get the seller to come down on the sale price mid-stream. Get ahead of the game by getting your own inspection(s) – talk with your agent about which ones are appropriate –  and getting the skinny on your home’s condition before you list it. Keep in mind that you will likely need to provide any written professional inspections you obtain before listing your home to the buyer under your state’s real estate disclosure laws.

You might be able to repair some things at relatively low cost and include the recent improvements in your marketing.  Alternatively, you can set and negotiate pricing based on any condition issues or needed repairs you want to pass down to the buyer. This empowers you to get to a final price that aligns with market conditions and the condition of your home without taking massive mid-escrow hits on pricing.  It also empowers you to offer a discount for needed fixes up front, when the price break has the most power to help attract bargain-seeking buyers.

5. When in doubt, go low. An overpriced home, in most cases, will cause a lot more problems in your real estate journey than an underpriced one. Think about it: an overpriced home just sits on the market with little or no buyer interest until the seller cuts the price. And many interested buyers just sit, waiting for that price cut, seeing it as a cue to make an even lower offer.

Now, consider the opposite end of the pricing spectrum: you start with a lower price than you want, but one that is supported by the comps in your market – or even goes a tad bit lower than recent homes have sold for. Lots of buyers are attracted to your house, in part because it looks like a great value for the price. You end up with multiple offers, which gives you the upper hand in negotiating a higher price.

The moral: if you aren’t sure about what price to place on your home, go a little bit lower than the recent comps sold for. Insiders know from experience that you’ll sell your home faster this way – and at a better price than if you overprice it out of the gate.

These steps can help you get out of your own way, get a bird’s eye view on the market and see your home as buyers will see it. And that’s a reality check that can make the difference between selling your home and not.