When Chris M. decided to list his home in upstate New York and move closer to Manhattan to ease his wife's commute to her new job, he ran into a major hurdle: "There was no consensus among the agents we spoke with about what our house was worth," he said. The solution? Hire a local appraiser to handle the job of evaluating the home's worth to help arrive at a listing price.

While appraisals are associated with the buyer's side of a home-buying transaction, they offer a useful and potentially headache-saving tool for sellers. However, there are important things you need to know when considering an appraisal before you list your property. Here are a few pointers when it comes to home appraisals for sellers.

To put it bluntly, Carrie and Ryan Fitzgerald of Washington, D.C. were "clueless" about home buying when they decided to purchase a condominium.

"We weren't sure where to start. A friend in Boston suggested getting a buyer's agent instead of a real estate agent, so we thought we'd give it a try," says Carrie.

She went online, and using the search words "buyer's agent" for the Washington area, came up with Steve Israel, a broker for Buyer's Edge of Bethesda, Md. Two months later, the Fitzgeralds signed a contract for a two-story loft condo.

"Steve totally exceeded our expectations," Carrie says.

An exclusive buyer's agent differs from other real estate agents or brokers in that they don't represent sellers. Some, like Israel, never list properties for sale and only work with...

Realtor Deb Staley has seen it a million times. She pulls up to an open house at a fabulous property, in a great neighborhood, at the right price, only to find an overgrown lawn, a leaf-strewn front porch and a front door covered in spiderwebs. In fact, it's not uncommon for potential buyers to be so turned off by an initial view that they refuse to even exit the car. "I have been a real estate broker for 22 years, and I am still amazed every time I show a house that is not ready for the market," says Staley, who's based in Searcy, Ark.
We never get a second chance to make a first impression, and for motivated sellers a first impression of their home can often make or break a deal. Realtors know that a potential sale starts in the moment that a buyer pulls into the driveway. That's...

Selling your home is stressful even during the best of times, but when the market is slow it sometimes seems like "Mission: Impossible." In order to sell your home for top dollar in a down market, you need to be proactive in making your home stand out from the huge inventory of listings that buyers have to choose from.

Thankfully, there are many small improvements that you can make to get a big return on your investment and help your home sell faster: