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 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:
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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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!
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.
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!
