How To Sell Your MCM House for The Most Money in The Least Amount Of Time

This Streng Bros home sold in three days with seven offers.

I recently sold a Streng Bros home in the Williamson Ranch neighborhood in Elk Grove. The house sold in three days with seven offers. How did we do it?

Prepare the House for Sale

Make sure that the house is ready for sale. This can be done even if the seller is living in the house. We made sure to clear out personal items and furniture so that the house was easy to view. We made sure a buyer could see themselves in the house without distraction. The landscaping was cleaned up. The house was power washed and the windows were washed. Roof and gutters were cleaned. We made sure the remaining furniture and art complemented the mid century elements of the house.

Do The Inspection Before Listing

Perform a professional home inspection prior to listing so buyers know the condition of the house. We made sure any major items were mitigated and all other items were noted. This let the buyers know exactly what they were buying so that there is no contentious negotiations for repairs after the home was in contract.

Get Great Photographs

Get a concise collection of professional photographs. We made sure the house was in great condition to be photographed and that the resulting professional photographs gave a comprehensive vision of the house. The collection was curated to give the best view of each room or feature so that a potential client could get a good idea of characteristics of the house without having to sort through a large number of photos.

Create A Custom Web Site

Create a custom website for the property with a unique web address. Don’t rely on Zillow, Redfin or the MLS to present your home in the best light. By creating a custom website, we were able to emphasize the best features of the home in the manner we deemed most powerful. The house was still listed in all the usual places, but the website itself was featured in our marketing and emails and had hundreds of hits from interested parties. We put the web address, MidCenturyElkGrove.com, on the yard sign and on all flyers and correspondences.

Door Knock The Neighborhood

Personally invite every neighbor to take a look at the house. This includes having a “Neighbors Only” open house and inviting each neighbor with a custom flyer highlighting the home, its features and the time and date for the open house. We actually ended up with a buyer from the neighborhood resulted from door knocking more than 190 neighbors.

More than 90 groups came through our three open houses.

Have a Neighbors Only Open House

Make the neighbors feel special by inviting them to a preview open house for neighbors only prior to the house going on the market. Neighbors are proud of their neighborhood and have friends and family who might want to move there. We had 33 groups of people from the neighborhood come to our neighbor open house.

Market The House To a Targeted Email List

Send emails to owners, potential buyers and real estate agents who are interested in mid century modern homes. We maintain an extensive database of mid century modern home owners, renters and potential buyers. We also have a statewide list of real estate agents who specialize in mid century modern homes. All of these folks received an email describing the home along with a link to the custom website and dates for open houses. Please email me if you would like to join our mcm email list.

Have Multiple Weekend Open Houses

We had two weekend open houses. We had more than 60 buyer groups come through the open houses. Six of our seven offers came from people who attended the open houses.

Encourage Multiple Offers

Price the house slightly below where you think it will sell. A good mcm agent will know that mcm houses marketed correctly sell for a higher price than similar age, size and condition houses that are not mid century modern. We priced the house below where we knew it would sell and then fielded seven offers for the house. All but one was above asking, but several were just barely above the asking. These offers may not have come in if we had priced the house too high because the potential buyers may have passed on the open house.

Stay Engaged Throughout The Escrow

Make sure your agent stays engaged with the buyer’s agent throughout the escrow process so that inevitable snags can be dealt with quickly without upsetting the deal. Good communication can keep the transaction on track.

Pick the Right Agent

If you are looking to sell your mid century modern home, make sure you work with an agent that does all of these things. I will do them because I wrote this playbook on how to do it. If you want to get the most for your mcm home give me a call.

Get professional photographs highlighting your home’s best features but don’t post too many.