Dear Heather,

I am going to sell my property. I was thinking of selling it myself, it seems pretty easy. What do you think?

Seller

Dear Seller,

Selling or buying a home isn’t quite like buying or selling a smaller, less valuable item like a car, a bike, or a household item. There are many aspects of the real estate market that aren’t immediately apparent, I call them “the seven layers”. In this article I am going to go over the first three; next week I will go over the remaining four.

Price

The price of your home is the first, and most critical, layer when you are listing it. If you don’t nail the pricing, the next two layers won’t matter a whole lot.

It won’t matter how much exposure your home has if the price isn’t in line with the market. Buyers have a good handle on values, and they won’t waste their time looking at a house if the price is way out of whack.

There’s certainly a little room to be on the high side; you don’t need to give your house away. But you really need to be priced well against the current competition, with a justifiable price compared with similar homes to yours which have recently sold. Your agent will provide you with this information, which is very hard to obtain yourself.

Exposure

Exposure has become more efficient over the years because of the internet. But the easiest way to ensure you reach every single buyer in the market is to make sure you’re on a good real estate website. Bermuda does not have a multiple listing service as they do in the US.

However, the island does have a central website that gathers all the main real estate companies’ listings for public view at www.propertyskipper.com. This site is available for posting to leading real estate companies, and not to the general public.

Of course, it is not quite as easy as putting it on one website. At Coldwell Banker we have our own website, www.bermudarealty.com, and our listings get picked up worldwide by other websites such as coldwellbanker.com, coldwellbankerisland.com and coldwellbankerluxury.com. Our Bermuda Realty website alone gets 10,000 unique visitors per month and more than 8.5 million hits per year.

Beyond that, it doesn’t hurt to have some other exposure in terms of marketing. This will vary from agent to agent, and company to company. Most agencies will offer a colour brochure, some newspaper advertising, video, virtual tours or drone footage depending on the quality of the property.

Also, don’t underestimate the power of person-to-person networking. Keep in mind each real estate agent knows, or has connections with an average of 600 people and an active database of people who are ready to buy or sell. So, a larger company with 15 agents potentially has access to more than 9,000 direct contacts.

Ease of access

Your home needs to be easy for buyers to see. That sounds simple enough but if you want your home sold, most people prefer to look during a lunch hour or when the owner is not around. That’s not always practical for you if you are working. Saying no to a showing, or trying to squeeze many showings into a tight window of time, is going to hurt you. Keeping your house ready to show while you are trying to cook dinner, look after children or do the laundry really is not practical.

However, an agent can do these things for you while you are at work, and get your home sold for as much as the market will support, in as short a time as possible.

But the bottom line is this — your home needs to be easily found. And since most buyers are looking online, a good agent will make sure it’s easy to find in as many places as possible.

• Heather Chilvers is among Coldwell Banker Bermuda Realty’s leading sales representatives. She has been working in real estate for 27 years. If you have a question for Heather, please contact her at hchilvers@brcl.bm or 332-1793. All questions will be treated in confidence. Read this article on Facebook: Ask Heather Real Estate