A Team Approach Negotiating Offers
Preparing Your Home Finalized Agreement
Establishing the Asking Price Option Period
Marketing Your Property Buyer’s Mortgage Approval and Appraisals
Planned and Frequent Communications Closing and Funding
Showing Your Home Possession
The question anyone considering selling a Dallas area home must answer is, “Why should I have any particular real estate agent represent me?” From the B’s, the answer is clear and direct. They use their knowledge and experience to guide you through the entire process. Their professionally developed, award winning marketing plans use proven marketing elements combined with the latest technological e-marketing. These elements include extensive use of the Internet, the innovative use of multiple web sites and comprehensive agent email networking.

The selling strategy produces results. That’s why each year over 75% of the B’s business is repeat customers and customer referrals.
Although the B’s award-winning sales strategy is customized for each property listed by the B’s, a general overview follows:
A Team Approach
The B’s Selling Strategy is a team approach and the most important member of the team is you. You are the captain of the team and your role is vitally important to the success of the selling strategy. Your responsibilities are as follows:

  • Getting the home ready to list
  • Making the final decision on the pricing strategy
  • Approval of the B’s custom marketing plan designed for your home
  • Keeping your home show-ready
  • Keeping the graphics tubes full (if you are still in the house)
  • Participating in regularly scheduled update meeting to approve ongoing strategy

While the B’s Selling Strategy may start with you, it stops with them. They assume total responsibility for every aspect of achieving the results you expect. Plus, when you hire the B’s you are getting two experienced, very knowledgeable agents that will both work with you to achieve the results you expect. You always work with a boss and are never “handed-off” to an assistant or junior agent.
The other member of your sales team, is the 500 agent strong Virginia Cook, Realtors. It is by far the most dynamic, innovative and fastest growing real estate firm in the Metroplex. It is second in relocation service volumes and is the technology and marketing leader. Also very importantly, the co-owners and founding partners of Virginia Cook, Realtors, Virginia Cook and Sheila Rice are involved daily in the management and direction of the firm.
Preparing Your Home to Sell
To get a high price for your home in today’s real estate market, it must be in near-perfect condition. The B’s will help you identify areas in your home that may need repair or improvement. They will make suggestions about the amount and placement of furnishings and decorating ideas.In some cases, they will arrange for a professional decorator to advise in staging your home.If you have already moved or are moving soon, the B’s will also discuss with you the pros and cons of bringing in home tenders instead of leaving the house vacant.

Establishing the Asking Price
The next step is establishing a pricing strategy for your home. A pricing strategy is more than just how much you would like to get for your home or its fair-market-value. Developing an effective pricing strategy is a cooperative, interactive effort between you and the B’s. It involves careful evaluation of market conditions, consideration of neighborhood competition, a comparative market analysis of similar properties to yours that have recently sold in the neighborhood, consideration of your final net amount after the sale, and typical discounting of asking price for homes sold in the neighborhood.
Regardless, of how the initial listing price is developed, the decision is only yours. The B’s will give you all the advantage of their experience and analysis, but ultimately, you make the final decision.
Once the initial list price is established, then the rest of the pricing strategy is to consider time frames for re-evaluating the price if certain showing and offer goals are not met.
Marketing Your Property
Next the B’s will develop a sophisticated marketing plan for your home. The plan will include a profile of likely potential buyers for your home, define the target market for those potential buyers and then define the marketing elements and a timeline for executing those elements. Finally you will be given a written copy of the plan and asked to approve the plan timeline.

Then the approved marketing activity begins in earnest. Generally, your custom marketing activities will include many of the following elements:

  • Listing on MLS*
  • Hire professional stager to stage the property+
  • Sign and information tube*
  • Notify potential buyers with which the B’s are currently serving*
  • Notify Virginia Cook, Realtors Global Relocation Services+
  • Present your home to the 500 Virginia Cook Realtors at Monday tour+
  • VCR agents with potential clients for your home will preview it that morning+
  • If home is in North Dallas, present it to 1,200 other agents at weekly MLS tour*
  • Have professional inside and outside photos taken of home+ Produce professional 360o virtual tour of home
  • Produce dynamic, 4-color property graphic
  • Produce quality B/W property graphic for tube stuffer
  • Produce dynamic 4-color e-brochure with virtual tour for response to Internet inquires and Realtor announcements+
  • Mail 4-color+ “Just Listed” card to targeted potential buyers
  • E-mail 4-color brochure to 500 selected agents that commonly work the area+
  • Advertise “Open House” in local papers*
  • Hold your home open bi-weekly*
  • Display home on “front-page” of VirginiaCook.com for a week
  • Display on “front-page” of BledsoeBuzz.com and BranchBuzz.com at all times+
  • Display property on Realtor.com and related public web sites*
  • Display property on Realtor.com and related site with 25 pictures, features listing status, high priority-zip code search+
  • Display on AOL.com, MSN.com, WSJRealEstate.com and WorldRealEstate.com in features listing status+
The marketing elements marked with * are elements that the B’s consider fundamental or basic elements and should be offered by any Realtor, even the “discount brokers” and “start-up” agents. The items not marked are important additional marketing elements, and are commonly provided by most “full service brokers.” The marketing elements marked with the + are enhanced elements that the B’s consider very important, and are not provided by many agents.
The B’s are committed to giving your home the broadest exposure possible and today that means On the Net. It is estimated that the web sites engage by the B’s are visited by 98% of all potential homebuyers that search the Internet. Nationally, only 8% of all Realtors have made the investment that the B’s have made to show your home this broadly. The websites used by the B’s are not even made available to “discount brokers,” which means that those FSBO brokers are limited to minor sites like Homestore.com and Homegain.com.
Planned and Frequent Communications
Through the entire selling process, the B’s will keep you informed every step of the way. As a standard part of the written plan you receive, periodic debriefing and strategy meetings are pre-scheduled. The B’s Sales Strategy is indeed a team effort and it is important that everyone on the team has the same information and direction.

Showing Your Home
Now the B’s and other Realtors start showing your home. You will ALWAYS be notified before a showing. You will be notified personally by the B’s, by someone in the B’s Virginia Cook office, or most often by a reservation service retained by the B’s and many other agents — Centralized Showing Systems (CSS.)
The B’s hire CSS to make appointments when another Realtor schedules a showing. If you are at home, it is generally recommended that you “stage the home” and not be present while the Realtor is showing your home. At your option, if you are not at home, appointments will be scheduled and showings will continue even during the day. To maintain tight security, the key to your home will be placed in an electronic key-box on or near the front door. Only members of the North Texas MLS may access the key and every member that enters your home is electronically registered via the key-box.
The B’s give detailed written instructions to CSS that reflect the times you will allow your home to be shown and the amount of advance notice you want before a showing may be scheduled. The B’s get a daily report of the Realtors that have made an appointment to show your home. They contact each one of the agents for any feedback they may have on your home and to make sure they are aware of all of your home’s features

Negotiating Offers.
An “offer” is the first step in negotiating an agreement for someone to buy your home. A potential buyer offers to buy your home for a certain prices and with certain contractual terms and conditions. You will discuss the price, terms and conditions with the B’s and with their advice, you will direct them to accept the offer, make a counter-offer or terminate negotiations. The back and forth negotiation continues until a final agreement is reached or until one or the other party terminates negotiation.
Generally, all offers and counter-offers are made in writing. The party to whom the offer or counter-offer is made may accept it by signing the contract, initialing the other party’s changes and filling in the contract’s Effective Date. However, while you are negotiating one offer, you may still accept offers from other buyers. Obviously, negotiating multiple offers is a great position for the seller. However, you must be careful not to put yourself in the contractual position of selling your home to both buyers.

Finalized Agreement.
Once the purchase contract is finalized, the buyer is legally obligated to purchase your house. The contract, with the buyer’s earnest money, is sent to a title company for eventual closing. However, the B’s work for you is far from finished. There are many standard contingencies built into the contract that can still “blow up.” The B’s very carefully monitor issues like the buyer being able to get financing, survey problems or failing inspections during the “Option Period.”
Option Period
The Texas Real Estate Commission conceived the “option period” a few years ago to protect buyers from buying houses with defects that may not be seen by the typical buyer. The concept is that the buyer pays the seller a nominal, none refundable fee for the unrestricted right to terminate the purchase contract during the “option period” while a state registered inspector executes a state defined inspection of the property.

Buyer’s Mortgage Approval and Appraisals.
The B’s track each of these events with the title company just to make sure everything stays on track. The B’s stay on top of the following: buyers get their mortgage financing approved on time, the home appraises for at lease the sales price, the house inspector finds only minor defects, the survey finds everything exactly where it should be and the title company commits to title insurance. After the contract is signed, they will likely talk dozens of times to the various players involved in getting your contract to closing.

Closing and Funding.
At least one of the B’s will be with you at the closing table. They will review the standard HUD financial documents with you and all you have to do is sign on the dotted line, after of course reading everything carefully. When the buyers close, their mortgage company will generally wire transfer the proceeds of the sale to the title company’s bank account. The title company will deduct the closing cost, including the B’s and the selling agent’s commission, and then distribute the net proceeds to you. Your money, at your option, will either be in the form of a check or wire transferred directly to your bank account.

Possession.
Sometime after closing, you have to give the new owners possession of their house. Often possession of the property is permitted within a few hours after closing when the total sales price less expenses and your previous mortgage pay-off is at the title company’s bank and available to you.
Another common practice is to ask the buyer during contract negotiations to lease the property back to you for a few days after closing. This allows you some time to move out of the house after funding and without concern that something might delay “closing and funding.”

If you have any questions about the B’s Award-winning Home Selling Strategy, please call or email the B’s directly. They will happy to help in any way they can