SELLER REPRESENTATION
How I sell a home
Four decisions really matter: the price, the preparation, what buyers see, and how the offer gets handled. Here’s how I think about each one, so we’re on the same page before we start.
Pricing
The price has to answer the market, the house, and everything else a buyer could go look at instead. We’ll work it out together, with the evidence in front of us.
Before we set it, I’ll walk you through the comparable sales behind my recommendation, and you’ll tell me what those sales can’t show about your home. If we land on different numbers, you’ll have what you need to make the call. It’s your house.
The first few weeks are when a listing gets the most attention it will ever get, from the buyers who have been waiting for exactly this home. Starting where those buyers are ready to act is worth more than any single marketing decision I can make later.
The call I’d rather make early
This market is strange right now. Pricing is all over the map, sales are thin, and there isn’t much recent data to anchor to. Good homes sit sometimes, at numbers that looked right the day we set them.
So if your listing isn’t getting the response it should, I phone you. I’ll tell you what I’m seeing in the showings and the feedback, where I think the trajectory is heading, and the options I’d weigh.
Then we go back through everything we’ve already done. The photography, the exposure, the changes we made along the way, the feedback from every showing. If there’s a lever still unpulled, we pull it first. But when the marketing is fully covered and the traffic still isn’t converting, price is the last lever we’ve got.
It’s a better call to make in week six than in month four. You’ll always know what I actually think, and why.
Preparation
You’ll get a practical checklist and you can work through it at your own pace. Not every project pays you back, so we put your time and budget where buyers will actually notice it.
Where the work is worth doing, I’ll connect you with trades I actually use and help you get real quotes. Six years as a journeyman HVAC technician is useful here: I have a good sense of which items a buyer will care about and which ones won’t change their offer.
Media and presentation
Photography, video, drone and floor plans on my listings are handled by me. They’re not added to your costs at completion.
Photography
High-resolution stills, shot properly, of a house that has been prepared first.
Aerial and 3D
For anything where the setting, the elevation or the lot is part of what you're selling.
Video
A moving walk-through, for homes where arriving is the experience.
Floor plans
Buyers lean on these more than you'd expect, and they're essential on a vacant home.
Virtual staging
For empty houses, where buyers can't judge the scale of a room. Always labelled as virtually staged.
Exposure
The listing needs to be where buyers are actually looking. For the right property, it also needs to reach people who weren’t looking yet.
Local buyers and out-of-town buyers don’t find or judge a home the same way. The plan should account for that instead of treating exposure as a box to tick.
Negotiation
An offer is not just a price. Dates, conditions, and how much leverage each side thinks it has will all move the outcome.
This is where the mechanical-room years pay off again. When an inspection comes back with a list, I help separate the routine items from the ones that matter, so any credit we agree to reflects the real scope of the work.
What this looks like on real homes
224 Lost Creek Court, listed at $1,384,900 and sold in 36 days, after about nine months on the market with another brokerage.
A sale with tenants in place, listed at $924,900 with two tenancies in the building and showings limited to three days a week.
Downsizing out of a custom build, a custom rancher priced to the buyers its features were built for rather than to the neighbourhood average. Accepted offer in two days.
Things sellers ask me before they list
Can I sell my house with tenants in it? Yes. The showing rules, the three month notice, and the timing that catches sellers out.
Does Poly B hurt my home’s value? The honest answer, and why Poly B insurance in BC is the real mechanism rather than leaks.
Does geothermal increase my home’s value? Loop fees, service intervals, and why publishing the number beats letting a buyer imagine one.
Can I buy a house before I sell mine? The three ways to sequence it, and how bridge financing works in BC.
Want to see how a listing appointment runs? Here’s the listing presentation I walk through at the kitchen table. It opens with a code — ask me for it.
