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Get Your Home in Selling Shape with Listing Concierge

March 25, 2021

If you want to sell your San Francisco home faster and for more money, you should know about our Listing Concierge service!

Our partnership with Side and Revive enables sellers to make presale improvements to their home that will help attract buyers and increase their closing price — at no up-front cost, interest-free and with no hidden fees — via this exclusive program.

Sounds great, right?

In this article, we’ll share how Listing Concierge works, and the best ways to utilize the program to improve your outcome when it comes time to sell.

Listing Concierge: How it Works

Listing Concierge allows you to tidy up, beautify, even remodel your home to get it in its best selling shape, without footing a hefty bill before you reap the rewards of your investment. This helps solve a common pain point for sellers.

Many San Francisco home sellers face the same issue: their money is tied up in their home, so they are not able to make any necessary updates or repairs to the property, or they simply do not want to liquidate funds to cover those costs.

Listing Concierge solves that problem by shifting the costs of home improvements to after your home is sold, when those liquid funds are more readily available to you.  

It gets even better, because we do all the work for you! Let’s take a look at how the Listing Concierge process works:

  1. You (the seller) talk to us (the expert San Francisco listing agent) about selling your home. You’ve done your research and it’s a perfect match — you like us, and of course we like you (who wouldn’t?) — so we each sign the dotted line and agree to put your home on the market together.
  1. Strategy! We analyze the best, highest-ROI opportunities to improve your home before it’s listed. Often that includes cleaning, painting, repairs, lighting and staging, and sometimes more. One of our specialties at Danielle Lazier Real Estate is knowing what San Francisco homebuyers want and how to give it to them. We’ll put our expertise to work to shine up your home.
  1. We create a plan and submit all the necessary information. Once approved, our team schedules and oversees the work performed by our network of vetted, high-quality vendors. You can sit back and relax — whether you are at home, down the street, or across the country — while we handle all the phone calls, emails, meetings and details.
  1. Once your home looks mighty fine, it’s time to hit the market. We show it off to the world through professional photography, videography and virtual tours. Ideally, the offers roll in, and we help you negotiate a sale price that will knock your socks off. It’s not uncommon when your home is in fabulous condition (which so far hasn’t cost you a penny, thanks to Listing Concierge).
  1. When your home is sold, the costs of your Concierge-enabled improvements are reimbursed via close of escrow. Alternatively, if your listing agreement with Side is terminated or expires, or if your home is not sold within 12 months of the Concierge start date, your Concierge costs come due. (Thanks in part to the competitive edge gained by Concierge improvements, each of our sellers who have utilized the program paid back their costs via escrow.)

What’s Covered by Listing Concierge Services?

Listing Concierge was intentionally designed with flexibility in mind, so most vendors and services can be used at no up-front cost to you, with no interest and no hidden fees.

Examples of services that are commonly covered include:

Staging • Painting • Deep Cleaning • Cosmetic Renovations • Decluttering • Landscaping • Pest Control • Moving & Storage • Electrical Work • Water Heater • Seller-Side Inspections & Evaluations • Custom Closet Work • Roofing Repair • Water Mitigation • HVAC • Fencing • Plumbing Repair • Sewer Lateral Inspections & Remediation • And More…

Note that there are some limitations to your Concierge budget based on your home’s list price, so you can’t use the service to rebuild from the ground up, for example… but why would you do that anyway?

Which brings us to our next topic: What improvements do we recommend (or not recommend) to San Francisco home sellers who utilize Listing Concierge?

Small Projects, Big Impact: Recommended Use Cases for Listing Concierge

painting home interior

Not all home improvement projects are created equal.

In the age of HGTV, it’s fairly common knowledge among current and aspirational homeowners that a huge project like installing a pool will likely not recoup its costs when you sell.

Sure, you get to enjoy a pool while you’re still living there, but that’s not the point of Listing Concierge. Through this program, we aim to make a big difference in the relatively short time between you signing the listing agreement and moving on to your next adventure.

For our San Francisco home seller clients, we recommend using Listing Concierge to make lower-cost updates that net a high return on investment. Such as...

Staging

A few decades ago, a home was considered ready to sell after scrubbing it down, vacuuming pet hair, and hiding the kids over at Grandma’s house. But listing a home is a competition for buyer interest, and since then staging has become a key weapon in the arms race to stand out from other properties on the market.

The majority of San Francisco listings are staged, and for good reason. According to a 2019 report by the National Association of Realtors, more than four in five buyer agents said staging a home made it easier for their clients to visualize the property as a future home. Roughly half of buyer agents agreed that staging improved the dollar value offered, with estimates ranging from 1% all the way to 20% higher price. Less than a third of buyer agents said that staging had no impact on offer price.

Now more than ever, homes are being viewed online, through photos, videos and 3D tours. The NAR reported way back in 2017 that 95% of buyers view listings online. That means a decluttered, beautifully decorated home, targeted at the broadest swath of current homebuyer tastes, is critical to a successful sale. Staging is how we make that happen, and it’s covered by Listing Concierge.

Painting

A fresh coat of paint is among the less expensive and most impactful presale improvements you can perform. Not only does painting cover up any blemishes that naturally occur while living in a home, it’s also another opportunity to provide a neutral canvas that vibes with a wider range of buyer tastes. We want to make it easy for buyers to imagine themselves living in your listing, and painting plays a big part. Depending on the state of your home’s exterior, it may be worth painting or refinishing surfaces outside too, like your siding and fencing.

Cleaning

Maybe this is obvious, but your listing should be clean before you let buyers in to see it. It’s not so much that buyers will swoon over your gleaming floors and countertops, but you can be sure they’ll notice if things are a mess. Then they'll wonder what else is wrong. Fortunately, a thorough, professional deep-cleaning is another service covered by Listing Concierge.

Landscaping

Whether your home has a sprawling yard or a cute little back patio, professional landscaping will make it more inviting. Attractive, manicured landscaping in your front yard gives a boost to your curb appeal and helps make a great first impression to prospective buyers and passers-by. Buyers are also putting more weight on exterior living space these days, so a neat and beautiful backyard is important too.

Landscaping and staging go hand-in-hand, with modern patio furniture, potted plants, planters and privacy hedges all working together to provide that lush exterior buyers want. A few days of landscaping work and materials won’t set you back much in the grand scheme of things, and it’s covered till closing by Listing Concierge.

Upgraded Lighting

Every home has light fixtures, and they present a great opportunity to upgrade your rooms at a relatively low cost. You’ll be amazed by how a modern, $250 chandelier will completely change the vibe of your dining area, or how a $50 dimmable light will give your bathroom the glow-up it’s always deserved. Light, whether natural or artificial, can make or break a home. Don’t skimp on this cheap and easy way to make a statement.

Touch-ups and Repairs

Adults, kids, pets, parties — life is lived in a home, and with life comes wear and tear. To present an ideal living environment to prospective buyers, you will need to fix the bumps and bruises that inevitably happen in your home.

The biggest thing is making sure everything is in working order. Does your bathtub drain, does your dishwasher work, are your countertops cracked and crumbling? You can simply inform buyers of what’s wrong in your home without fixing it (they’ll find out through inspections anyway), but it pays to go the extra mile and get everything in good shape before you sell.

After all, San Francisco is a highly competitive market. You want every leg up that you can get on the competition. While you might not see a direct line to a 1:1 bump in your selling price by replacing an appliance or refinishing your hardwood floors, don’t underestimate the value of offering a home that is truly move-in ready. Rest assured, the value is there, and your repairs are covered by Listing Concierge.

Less Recommended or Situational Home Improvements

backyard pool with ladder

Now that we’ve covered some of the easy, low-cost home improvements we recommend to most San Francisco home sellers, let’s analyze the value of bigger projects.

Listing Concierge was designed with flexibility in mind. In some cases, you can undertake larger-scale improvements. But should you?

Here’s the thing: When prepping a home for sale, return on investment is the name of the game.

There is no point in making big, expensive changes when you’ll be moving before you can enjoy them, and when — most importantly — you will end up with less money in your pocket when all is said and done.

High-Cost, Low-ROI Home Improvements

Take a look at these home renovation ROI statistics sourced from Remodeling Magazine and ThisOldHouse.com. If you sell your home one year after certain improvements, they average:

  • 87% ROI for a minor kitchen remodel
  • 83% ROI for a second-story addition
  • 81% ROI for a bathroom addition
  • 80% ROI for a major kitchen remodel
  • 78% ROI for a family room addition
  • 75% ROI for a new deck
  • It just gets worse from there...

Long story short, even the best-performing big renovations will typically lose you money upon sale. So, even if you can perform major home improvements through Listing Concierge, you probably shouldn’t.

Of course, outside of Listing Concierge, there is real benefit to these kinds of projects. Just make sure to do them well in advance of selling, so you get a chance to enjoy all the work and expense involved!

Sell Your San Francisco Home Faster, For More Money with Listing Concierge

Our San Francisco home seller clients who improved their homes through Listing Concierge were able to position their listings for the best, highest sale without spending a penny until closing.

Listing Concierge is one of many exclusive programs we offer and help our clients use to make the most of their home sale.

It’s important to note that neither we nor Side nor Revive make any extra money from the Concierge program. When we say that it involves “no up-front cost, no interest, and no hidden fees,” we mean exactly that.

Our team reaps the benefits of doing a better job for our clients, which is reward enough in an industry so reliant on referrals and repeat business from happy clients. Your success is our success, now and in the future.

Listing Concierge helps you prepare your home for a successful sale, no matter what kind of funds you have on-hand.

Get in Touch with Top San Francisco Listing Agent, Danielle Lazier Real Estate

Are you thinking of selling your San Francisco home, or maybe someone you know is considering the prospect?

We would love to get in touch for a no-pressure consultation to discuss your options, including how you might utilize Listing Concierge.

To start the conversation, tell us more about your situation by filling out our San Francisco Home Seller Worksheet, or shoot us any general comments or questions here. We look forward to hearing from you!

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