Once you put your home on the market for sale, it becomes a product.  It can be difficult for you to change your preception about the place you live from “home” into its new identity as a commodity.  But that’s what it is now, and more so, it’s now business.  For many homeowners, selling your home may be  big business, the biggest you may ever conduct.  Your  financial future may be determined by the success or failure of the sale.  We’re not fooling around here.

You need smart, objective business decisions followed by energetic action and a sharp eye toward the bottom line, the net, the size of your check when all is said and done.

Your agent should (must!) provide you with a net sheet, or multiple net sheets at different selling prices, so that you can get your mind on the net where it belongs.

Smaller decisions about costs, who pays what, during marketing and escrow should be examined only in regards to how they affect the net.

I frequently hear things like this from the homeowner:

• “I’m not paying for a home warranty for the buyer!”
• “When I bought this house I had to pay the escrow fee, and now that I’m selling it, they want me to pay it again.  It’s the buyers’  turn to pay.  I won’t do it!”
• “The buyers want me to give them 3% back to help them with closing costs?  Nobody gave me help.  No way!”

I keep reminding you over and over, “just look at the net.”

If the buyers want you to absorb $3,000 in closing costs (the nerve!), but they are offering $5,000 more for the sale, you are netting an additional $2,000.  It seems like a no-brainer to me, but real estate transactions can become emotional, especially if you are still wrapped up in the perception that it is your “home” that you are selling.

• Keep your eye on the goal.
• Don’t lose sight of the forest among all the trees.
• Don’t lose a fortune bending over to pick up a dime.
• The net, the net, and nothing but the net.

In an ideal world, you would give me the keys to your house, and then you would fly off to Maui and sit on the beach until I called you to come back and pick up your check.

(Or maybe I’ll bring the check to you.  Maui, you said?)