An offer has been made on your Edmonton home for sale by a prospective buyer, and now it’s time for the home inspection. You want this process to go as smoothly as possible, and there are some things you can do to help the Home Inspector and buyer perform their inspection efficiently. Leaving your home ready for an inspection will help show your confidence in your home, and leave a positive impression with the buyer. A professional home inspection is part of the Edmonton Real Estate selling process: if you’re ready for it, and already know what the home inspector will find, then there’s no reason to sweat the inspection.

Before Your Home Inspection

Clean Your Home
A simple yet extremely effective way of preparing for your home inspection. Home Inspectors are people too, and everyone assumes that a clean home is also a well taken care of home, so make sure you take the extra time to clean and tidy prior to the inspector’s arrival.

Leave All Utilities Connected
If the home you are selling is vacant, it’s important to leave all the utilities on and functioning, including water, power and gas. Make sure your pilot light is left on so that a proper and full inspection can be done on your furnace, water heater and gas stove.

Remove Clutter From Workspaces
The Home Inspector will need to be able to access circuit boxes, air conditioning units, water heaters and furnaces. Since these are often in storage areas, take the time to remove any boxes or clutter from around them and leave the Home Inspector four or five feet of working space.

Attic, Garage & Shed Access
Make sure the inspector can access your attic, and leave keys or auto-openers for your garage and shed. Make sure your garage and shed spaces are tidy. If there are any other outboxes or electrical boxes that require keyed access, leave those as well. Condo sellers should leave both interior and exterior door keys for their building.

Clear Access for Exterior Inspection Points
In Edmonton especially, the winter snow can pile up around the house, so before your inspection make sure you’ve kept a path cleared around the perimeter of your home. Pull trash cans and barbecues away from the house.

Provide Repair Documentation
If you’ve recently remodelled, renovated or recently done major repairs, leave these receipts and documents. The same goes for any newly purchased appliances, electrical boxes or landscaping. Your buyer will be extra confident in the quality of these repairs if they have documentation and an inspection.

Leave For a While
Prepare to be away from your home for at least three hours. The prospective buyer will likely accompany the home inspector, and will want to ask them questions as they go through your home, but many buyers will feel uncomfortable doing so if you are hovering. It’s best to be out of the house and allow the inspector to do his work and the buyer to feel confident. If you have pets, it is best to take them with you or crate them so they are not in the way or underfoot.

The single biggest fact that will affect the sale of your home is the price you set, so determining what that price will be is no small decision.

By setting your price too high, you run the risk of not being taken seriously by prospective Edmonton Home Buyers, and your home will waste away on the market: every week your home is listed, it becomes less and less attractive. You will ultimately need to go through price reductions to bring in buyers, and may end up selling for less than if you’d set the right, lower price in the first place.

If you set the price too low, you risk selling your home for much, much less than it’s really worth. Undervaluing your home could send a message that you think it’s inferior, or that you’re in a hurry to sell, which puts you at a serious disadvantage. Though if your primary concern is selling your home fast, a price under the market value of the home can accelerate a sale.

There are lots of factors that contribute to setting the correct price for your Edmonton home for sale. From current market trends to the specific market value of homes in your specific neighbourhood, these external factors must be weighed along with any renovations or improvements you’ve done that increase the value of your home in particular.

It takes a trained, experienced Edmonton real estate agent to sort through all the data and pinpoint the best selling price for your home during an Edmonton Home Evaluation process.

For those do-it-yourself fans, the idea of hiring someone to sell your home might be easy to dismiss, but you should know that selling a home is not as easy as it looks. It may be tempting to try being an Edmonton For Sale By Owner seller, but the reality of selling a home is much more complicated, time consuming and expensive than you may think.

Professional Edmonton Realtors are trained and have a wealth of real estate experience to lean on. They have marketing experience, understand the tactics and strategies of selling a home, are practiced negotiators, and understand how to set the best price for the current Edmonton real estate market trends. They are available to show your home at any time, can assist with getting all the paperwork done right the first time, and can be an invaluable “second opinion”.

Learn more about the difference between the For Sale By Owner process and having a professional Edmonton real estate agent sell your home on Paranych TV.

Once you’ve decided to sell your home it’s important to start looking at it as a product for sale rather than as a loving homeowner. It can be difficult to separate the house itself from the memories you’ve made their with your friends and family, but being able to look at the sale of your home like a businessperson from a purely financial perspective will make tough decisions easier.

The process of staging your home for sale can help distance you, and establish a line between the warm home you know and remember and the house you are trying to sell. By removing all the personal touches and photographs that are your imprint on your home, you also make it easier for prospective buyers to envision their own lives taking place in your rooms.

Detaching from the emotional investment will also help you make the best financial choices, especially when it comes to pricing your home. Home prices are determined primarily by the current Edmonton real estate market conditions, and if you’re too attached to your house it may be difficult for you price it realistically.

Recently on Inside Real Estate, Michael Kryton and Terry Paranych sat down to discuss how to market and sell Edmonton Luxury Homes successfully.

Anyone who has ever looked at buying or selling luxury property knows it can be very different from the typical process of selling Edmonton real estate, and the key takeaway is to be sure you’re working with a top Edmonton Luxury Realtor that specializes in executive homes in your area. Each market is different, and matching the right buyer to the right luxury property can be a challenge.

You can learn more about how to market and sell Edmonton luxury property effectively on the Paranych Luxury Homes blog, and browse the RE/MAX Collection and other local Edmonton Luxury and Executive Homes on our exclusive Luxury Homes website.

If you enjoyed this episode of Inside Real Estate with Terry Paranych, you can watch past episodes or check back every Wednesday and Thursday at 3:00pm to watch the show live right on Paranych.com!

As a general rule, the Edmonton real estate market slows down in the winter months, especially around the holidays. And while there are still good deals to be made at all times of year, it’s much more complicated to sell your home during the winter months. There’s snow to shovel, floors to keep clean, and holidays to work around. Why would you want to add one more layer of stress to an already stressful time of year?

It’s harder to keep your house in show home condition during the winter months, and cold Edmonton weather makes house hunting much less appealing. Because fewer buyers are looking to buy, it may take longer to sell your home at the price you want. There are opportunities in the winter months, and great deals to make, but on average selling when the snow is flying is more stressful and can take longer.

If you’re thinking of selling now, consider making your move sooner rather than later. Autumn real estate is usually a much better market for sellers: contact an Edmonton real estate agent from the Terry Paranych Team for a Free Edmonton Home Evaluation, and we can help you decided whether you should jump into the market now, or wait until spring.

If you’re considering selling your home, it’s a good idea to consider about how well your home will do in a Home Inspection. As the most common condition put on the sale of a home, almost every buyer will insist on having the home inspected before finalizing a sale, and a savvy Edmonton home seller should know before hand how their home will stand up under the eye of a qualified home inspector.

To avoid potentially costly surprises, you might want to consider paying for an inspection yourself before you put your home on the market. This will give you time to make any major repairs needed, and if you keep the inspection paper and repair receipts, you will instill extra confidence in your buyer and bypass the inspection condition altogether.

Home inspections don’t need to be stressful affairs for home sellers. By knowing which key systems are most likely to influence buyer confidence and price, then making repairs beforehand, you can go into the inspection process confident.

Major Home Inspection Hot Spots

Basement Water Damage
Home Inspectors and buyers will look carefully at the walls and floors in your basement for any sign of dampness. Signs of a problem include powdery white mineral deposits or the telltale door of mildew. Since moisture attracts insects and can wreak havoc with building materials, dampness can be a huge red flag for buyers. Often this is a symptom of poor drainage that is funneling water toward the foundation rather than away from it. Depending on the severity of the problem, repairs could be as simple as cleaning or replacing gutters and downspouts, or could require more costly foundation waterproofing.

Plumbing Problems
Fix leaks and clogged drains before you put your home up for sale. Home Inspectors will turn on multiple faucets and simultaneously flush toilets to check the water pressure. Inspectors may also check for backup problems by flushing dye to see if it shows up in the water or drain fields of other sinks in your home. Major plumbing problems can be costly to repair, so it’s a good idea to be aware of any your home might need.

Deteriorating Roofs and Shingles
Home Inspectors will make note of the condition of your house’s roof and shingles, and if they are moist or rotting it’s likely repairs will be requested. If your roof is still in working order but getting old and due for replacement, most buyers will still be interested, but you may need to further negotiate the price to reflect the cost of the upcoming re-shingling.

Old or Inadequate Electrical Systems
Your electrical panel and circuit breaker configuration should be appropriate for the size and electricity demands of your home, and all wiring should be up to code. Home Inspectors will look for ground fault circuit interrupters in all bathroom and kitchen electrical outlets, and test to make sure these have been properly installed for safety reasons.

Heating and Cooling Systems
A Home Inspector will make note of any heating inefficiencies, including common problems like a lack of proper insulation or an old or malfunctioning furnace. Most furnaces have a life span of 15-25 years, and if yours is getting on in age the cost of replacing could affect the sale price of your home. It’s good to make sure your furnace has been recently cleaned and is in good working order before you put your home on the market.

Your motivation to sell Edmonton Real Estate is a determining factor in how you will approach the home selling process. It affects everything from what your asking price will be to how much time, money and effort you’re willing to invest into the marketing of your home and preparing it for Edmonton house hunters.

For example, if your goal is a quick sale then you would likely be willing to negotiate a lower price in order to get your Edmonton home off the market sooner rather than later. Conversely, if your primary reason for selling is to maximize profit, this will have an effect on the way you market your home: you might consider having it staged, and you could look at what repairs or renovations have the best ROI.

Understanding why you are selling is important, but make sure you keep this information between you and your Edmonton Realtor. By keeping this information to yourself, you don’t provide any prospective buyers with negotiating levers that could put you at a disadvantage. When asked, the best reply is to simply say that your housing needs have changed.

“The local real estate market is looking up according to the current statistics released by the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton. The average residential sales price is up, the price of a single family detached home or a condo is up, number of sales is up and inventory is up over the previous month.”

Overall, the numbers show that the Edmonton Real Estate market is doing great! The Terry Paranych Team were busy during the month of May. We launched a new website/brand ParanychLuxuryHomes.com, purchased additional investment properties for Paranych Rentals and continued to exceed our client’s real estate expectations.

Ready to buy or sell in the Edmonton Real Estate Market – Contact the Terry Paranych Team today!

The Paranych Team is excited to announce the launch of ParanychLuxuryHomes.com, a website dedicated to the Edmonton Luxury Real Estate market. Featuring only high-end Edmonton and area properties, the Paranych Luxury Homes website will be the premier home of Edmonton Executive Properties on the Internet. Browse the exceptional upscale properties for sale in our Top Ten lists, read our Trends blog, or learn more about our Luxury Home Marketing System and International Real Estate services.