Everything You Need to do For Your New Listing

First off, congratulations! You’ve already conquered the hardest part of the process, landing yourself a listing. Today, I am going to walk you through all the steps that you need to take in order to get your new listing off to a great start. If you are interested in additional guidance on how to prepare for a listing appointment, refresh your memory by reading that article here.

Step 1: Do you research.

Look up the property in the MLS and start digging through previous listings of the home. Pay attention to the room dimensions, year build, bathrooms, bedrooms, and total square footage. Next, begin to look at recently sold houses within a ¼ radius of the subject property. Then pull active and pending listings within those same parameters. If there is not enough inventory to make comparisons, then expand the search to be within a ½ mile of the subject property. You should be focusing on comps that are sold/and or pending within the last 6 months of the current date but if there are few houses that are meeting your subject property's criteria, feel free to push this back to a year.

When you are comparing two houses, pay attention to the overall curb appeal, the design of the interior and compare the quality of updates as well as the current age of appliances and basic systems. Pay attention to when the house was built. For example, you can’t compare a house built in the 1970s to a new construction build. If you need more assistance on building a comparative market analysis, click here, for our article that walks you through how to accomplish this step by step.

Step 2: Pre-listing walk through.

Set a time with your clients to perform a pre-listing walk through. Use this time to strengthen your relationship and build repour. Allow your clients to walk you through their home and talk to them about what they should expect from this transaction moving forward.

Things you’ll want to discuss:

• Comps
• Price
• Active listing timeline/coming soon options
• Listing expiration
• Commission
• Property Disclosure
• List of property updates since purchase
• Age of all main operating systems
• Pre-listing repairs/to-do list
• Pictures
• Marketing
• Signage
• Open house
• Showings expectations
• Offer expectations
• Closing timeline

Step 3: Required paperwork.

Once you know all the information listed above, you’ll need to input the information on the required listing documents. You’ll need to obtain signatures on these documents from the sellers. You can either do this electronically or in person at the end of your preliminary walk-through.

Here’s a list of all the paperwork you will need to get your listing up and running.

• MLS New Listing Validation Form
• This is a form needs to be signed by both the seller and the listing agent. It confirms when the listing will enter the market and when the listing expires.

• Exclusive Right to Sell Listing Contract
• This is the written contract between the buyer and the listing brokerage as well as the agent. It is the document that secures that the listing agent is the only person that can sell this home within the specified time frame.

• Residential Property Disclosure Form
• A real estate disclosure statement is a legally binding document in which the seller comes clean about any potential flaws and issues the buyer needs to know about.

• Lead-Based Paint Disclosure
• A lead-based paint disclosure form is issued to all tenants and potential buyers for residential properties built before 1978 to outline the property's history of exposure to lead-based paint.

• Exclusive Seller Consumer Guide to Agency Relationships
• The Consumer Guide to Agency Relationships is a document that is thoroughly discussed in both the Law and the Principles & Practices classes for real estate pre-licensing requirements.

• Your State’s Consumer Guide to Agency Relationships (If applicable.)
• This document is specifically for sellers explain the working relationship between the broker and the client.

• Lead Base Paint Brochure
• Make sure to get signatures on this brochure that confirms that they’ve read it.

• Agency Disclosure Statement
• This document is a written explanation, to be signed by a prospective buyer or seller of real estate, explaining to the client the role that the broker plays in the transaction.

• Multiple Listing Service- Residential Sheet
• This document is for updating the MLS, it’s an input sheet so you or your admin can easily upload all the correct information pertaining the listing.

• Fair Housing
• You will need signatures from the buyers on the Fair Housing form. The Fair Housing Act declares a national policy of fair housing throughout the United States. Any discrimination in the sale, lease, or rental of housing, or making housing otherwise unavailable is illegal. 

Step 4: Prepare for your listing to go active.

After you’ve completed the paperwork, take out your calendar and mark down the date the listing will go active in the MLS. If you are doing a standard listing, then the property must go active within 3 days of your clients signing the listing contract. If you are doing a “coming soon” listing, then you have an additional 10 days before the home will officially go on the market.

Tasks to complete before your listing goes active:

1. Help clients prepare for pictures.
2. Make sure to minimize clutter and take any family pictures off the walls to ensure their privacy.
3. Schedule a photographer.
4. Pick a photographer that specializes in photographing houses. Talk to your client about whether they want a video or any drone photos. Because Covid has people doing a lot of activities virtually, videos are usually a great way for buyers to view the house before an actual showing.
5. Once you receive the pictures from photographer, go over them with your clients and pick the ones they’d like you to use for the listing and the ones you’d like to use for additional marketing material.
6. Put sign in the yard.
7. Put lockbox on front door, update showing instructions, and make a copy of the seller’s keys to place in lockbox.
8. Create additional marketing material to be placed in the home for agents and potential buyers to take home with them.
9. You can also create mailers for people in the neighborhood and send them the marketing materials to your client database.
10. Create a property “feature sheet” and include any updates that the buyers have made to their home.
11. Upload additional documents to listing.
12. These documents include:
13. Property Disclosure Form
14. Lead-Based Paint Disclosure
15. Agent Disclosure Form
16. Property Feature Sheet
17. Set date and time for open house and input it into the MLS.
18. Submit listing to the MLS for approval.

Once the listing is active you can post about your new listing on social media, post the date of your open house, and send out any emails to people who might be interested. 

Step 5: Manage your listing.

Phew! You did it, your listing is now on the market. Now you’ll want to manage your listing and keep your clients updated on communications from other agents and showing activity. Be sure to pick up your phone whenever it rings, it could be a full-price offer on the other line. Thanks for reading our article and be sure to check in with the Career Corner for our next article about how to manage your current listings. You got this!

About the Author

Recent Posts

Follow us on and become part of the PREC community

Never miss a tweet by connecting with us on Twitter

Check our our posts about trends in real estate industry and market