Selling process

Summer is one of the strongest selling seasons in the Twin Cities. Longer daylight hours mean more showings, buyers are motivated to close before the school year, and your home's outdoor spaces — the deck, the yard, the porch — finally get to sell themselves. Chris can help you decide whether summer timing aligns with your specific situation.

Spring (March-May) gets you the most buyers and highest prices—but also the most competition. Fall (September-October) has serious buyers who need to move, less competition, and beautiful staging with autumn light. Winter? I've sold homes in January that got multiple offers because inventory is thin and buyers are motivated. The 'best time' is when your home looks its best AND you're ready. Don't chase the market—prepare properly and launch when ready. Tell me your timeline and I'll show you which window actually fits your house — send me a text.

Only if it's genuinely outdated AND you can do it cost-effectively. In Southwest Minneapolis, updated kitchens matter—a $30K kitchen can add $40K to sale price. In the suburbs, a $60K kitchen renovation might only return $30K. The better play: Deep clean, fresh paint, new hardware, and professional staging. Let buyers see the potential rather than forcing your taste on them. I walk every client through the 'ROI on updates' conversation before they spend a dime.

Pricing isn't about what you want or need—it's about what comparable homes have sold for in the last 90 days, adjusted for condition and market trajectory. I price slightly below market value to create competition, which often drives the final price above where we'd have listed higher. A $525K home priced at $499K can get 5 offers and sell at $540K. The same home priced at $540K sits for 30 days and sells at $515K. Pricing is strategy, not math. Grab coffee with me and I'll bring the last 90 days of comps for your block — no pitch.

The best time to sell is when you're ready — and spring in the Twin Cities is genuinely different from every other season. April through June is when buyer activity peaks here. The snow is gone, people can actually see the yard, and buyers planning around the school calendar are trying to close before the year ends. More buyers competing for the same homes means stronger offers and shorter days on market. That's real, and the data backs it up every year. But 'best time' assumes everything else is equal, and it never is. A well-priced, well-prepared home in October will still sell — it'll just have a different pool of buyers, mostly people who need to move regardless of season. Less competition from other sellers can actually work in your favor in the fall. What I'd push back on is the idea that you should hold off for months waiting for a 'better' market when your situation is ready now. Timing the market the way people time the stock market almost never works. What works is pricing it correctly for whatever the market is doing when you list, and having the house in a condition that earns its price. When you're thinking about selling, call me. We'll look at what's actually happening in your specific neighborhood right now — not what the market is doing in general, but what's moving on your block, at your price point. That's the conversation that matters.

Walk-through first, pricing conversation second — that's the sequence. Before we talk about what to spend, I need to see the house as a buyer would. The first thing I do is walk through the house with you — not as someone who lives there, but as the first buyer who's about to walk in cold. There's a gap between what you've stopped seeing and what a buyer notices immediately. My job is to close that gap before we go live. What moves buyers in Minneapolis: light, cleanliness, and the sense that a home has been cared for. You don't need a full renovation. You need the things that read as neglect to be addressed — the scuffed baseboards, the dated light fixtures, the bathroom grout that's seen better days. These are small costs with outsized impact on first impressions. I also do the homework on pricing before we talk staging, because sometimes the right move is a different conversation. If the comparable sales in your area say a $15,000 kitchen update returns $8,000 in price, I'm going to tell you that. For most homes, the preparation checklist is shorter than people expect: deep clean, declutter, address the obvious deferred maintenance, get the lawn presentable, and stage the main living areas so they photograph well. Professional photography is non-negotiable — that's where buyers form their first impression now, before they ever set foot inside. I've done this enough times to know what matters and what doesn't. I'll tell you where to spend and where to save.

Not automatically, and not without running the numbers first. The instinct to fix everything before listing makes sense emotionally — you want to put the best version of the house on the market. But some repairs return less than they cost, and some buyers would rather take the credit and hire their own contractor. Spending $8,000 on a project that moves the price by $4,000 is the wrong call. The category that's worth addressing before you list: anything that reads as deferred maintenance or neglect. Peeling paint, soft wood on the exterior, a roof with visible wear, a furnace that's past its useful life. These don't just affect price — they affect the buyer's confidence in the whole house. When someone sees obvious neglect in one place, they start wondering what else was skipped. The category worth leaving for negotiation: cosmetic updates that the buyer is going to change anyway. If the buyer hates the carpet and you spend $4,000 replacing it, there's a real chance they pull it out for hardwood six months after closing. A flooring credit lets them choose what they actually want. The category I'll give you a straight answer on after walking through the house: everything in the middle. I'll tell you which repairs are likely to come up in an inspection anyway (and become a negotiation item regardless), which ones are worth getting ahead of, and which ones aren't worth touching. The goal is getting you the best net result — not the cleanest inspection report for its own sake.

Start by settling one thing: who speaks for the sale. Divorce sales go sideways when two people hand the agent conflicting instructions, so we set communication ground rules first. From there the work is normal — pricing, prep, showings — just handled with more privacy and less noise. Discretion isn't hiding; it's dignity. I keep both parties equally informed, route decisions through whatever your attorneys advise, and keep the house from becoming one more thing to fight about. The goal is a clean sale and a fair split at the lowest possible temperature. You don't have to be in the same room for any of it.

First, breathe — nothing has to happen this week. Before any sale, three things usually need sorting: the probate status, the title, and whether other heirs share the decision. In Minnesota, most inherited homes pass through probate unless there's a trust, and that affects when you can sell. Tax-wise, inherited property usually gets a stepped-up basis, which often means less capital gains than people fear — confirm the specifics with a tax pro. Then there's the house itself, full of a lifetime. The memories move with you; the building is just the building. When you're ready, I'll walk the place with you and lay out the options, no rush.

Because buyers can't move into a house that's still fully yours — and the photos, more than anything else, keep it yours. Nobody's erasing your family. We're making room for a stranger to imagine theirs, which is the only way they fall in love enough to buy. Here's what actually happens in a showing: a buyer stands in the kitchen and test-drives a life. Every personal photo interrupts that test — it turns "could we live here" into "we're guests in someone else's home." Collections do the same thing. So does the children's art gallery on the fridge. It's not a judgment of your taste. It's stagecraft with a purpose: the blanker the canvas, the easier the projection — and projection is what writes offers. The part nobody says out loud: packing the photos hurts because it's the first real moment of leaving. Let it be that. Make the photo box the first one packed and the first one opened at the new place. The family doesn't come off the wall — it just changes walls.