Five Tips for Homeowners From A Top Toronto Real Estate Agent

October 28, 2021 | Selling Your Home

I (Robyn) write all these blogs, and we thought it would be nice for everyone to hear from Kim directly today! Kim manages all of our listings, and she’s one of the best in the biz. Out of approximately 50,000 real estate agents in Toronto, Kim is in the top 100. While Kim and I talk almost every day, today we decided to make our conversation into a formal Q+A about advice for homeowners.

Robyn: What is the one piece of advice you would give to a homeowner who wants to improve the value of their home? even if they have no plans to sell in the near future?

Kim: As a homeowner myself, the best piece of advice I can give is to make yourself comfortable in your home. Have pride of ownership with it and do little things all the time to create a little haven for yourself. Paint the walls every few years, have a nice garden out front, try to keep the clutter down as much as possible. A home that has been well cared for over the years is ultimately far more valuable than a house that has been renovated to sell in the last six months. When I first moved into my current home, I had an ugly kitchen that made me feel sad but no money to renovate it. So I painted everything and bought myself a beautiful dishwasher. Just doing those things made me feel so much better in the space. I have since renovated it, and I now love my kitchen, but until I had the money to do that, my goal was to feel as at peace as possible.

The other great thing about maintaining your home over time is that you can if you need or want to sell quickly. Let’s say you get an amazing opportunity at work, but you need to move across the province in the next two months. It isn’t a huge struggle to get your own house on the market quickly. Because chances are, you’ve recently painted, and it’s clean already. Put some mulch in your garden, and you’re good to go. This sounds cheesy, but a happy homeowner means a happy house, and that’s something that you can feel as soon as you walk into a home.

Robyn: What is the most important thing you can do when you’re selling your home?

Kim: Make it beautiful for photos. The most significant change in the market now from when I started in this business thirty years ago is how magazine-ready everything needs to look. Most of your potential homebuyers spend their days on Facebook and Instagram (I am guilty of this too). They’re going to be more inclined to buy a house that looks like a beautiful Instagram feed. You shouldn’t do an expensive renovation, but you should declutter, paint and fix anything around the house that you can. Tell the story of your beautiful home in the photos. It’s the only way to get potential buyers through the doors. Not to turn this into a sales pitch, but our team does a lot of this for you. You need to declutter, but otherwise, we’ll coordinate all the painting and staging. When you list with us, we become a full-service marketing team. I believe in this approach, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Most of our listings sell quickly and for a lot of money.

★ We have an extensive library of resources for sellers. Start with some of these:

Robyn: What is the biggest mistake a homeowner can make when they’re listing their home for sale?

Kim: Overpricing your home is the single biggest mistake you can make. You can do everything else right. You can hire the right agent, paint, stage and declutter your home, but none of it will matter if you list your house for too much money. Your agent should work hard to get you the most money possible, but that is very difficult to do if you don’t get any showings. And you won’t get any showings if your house is too much money.

ROBYN: What is the one thing you wish everyone understood about the Toronto market?

Kim: That pricing a home is part of a marketing strategy. Bidding wars are created by under-pricing a home to get a lot of showings and a frenzy on offer night. People often believe that houses are listed at value, and then buyers lose their minds and offer 30% over the value of a home. That’s wrong. Instead, houses are artificially listed low to generate as much interest as possible in the home. Yes, we traditionally have a scarcity of listings in this city, but that isn’t the main reason why bidding wars are so common. Bidding wars are common because sellers and agents have gotten very used to this particular marketing strategy. If you want to buy a house, hire an agent who is confident in bidding wars and follow their advice on offer night.

Robyn: What should sellers know before they hire an agent?

Kim: Not every real estate agent in Toronto is equal. The bar for entry into this profession is low, but the bar for being successful is very high. Marketing a house and negotiating in a bidding war takes a lot of professionalism and experience. Interview prospective real estate agents. How many homes have they sold? What is their marketing strategy for your home? How is the commission money that you’re paying them being spent? A good agent should show you their track record and give you the plan for selling your house.

★ For more information on how a qualified listing agent will boost your sale read:

That’s it! Let us know if you have any questions for Kim that we don’t cover here. We’d love to hear from you.

As always stay safe

Robyn VanderVennen
The Kim Kehoe Team