Selling your house (whether it’s your first or third) is super daunting. From finding a real estate agent to setting the price and figuring out what updates are necessary to sell, it’s all pretty overwhelming. Moving is already a huge life change, so I’ve written up our top tips for selling your house as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Before we prepared to put our first house on the market, I spoke to my dad about how to go about finding a real estate agent. My parents have sold 6-7 homes over my lifetime, so I wanted to gain as much insight as possible about the key things they learned and how I could avoid any beginner mistakes.

This list is a culmination of their advice and what I’ve learned through this process as well so selling your house is a breeze.

WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE SELLING YOUR HOUSE

INTERVIEW 3 DIFFERENT REAL ESTATE AGENTS BEFORE SELECTING YOUR SELLING AGENT

Choosing your real estate agent is probably one of the most important decisions you make when it comes to selling your house. As the seller, you pay for both realtor’s commissions (which typically makes up approximately 5-7% of your home’s value — so around 3% per agent), so you want the best agent going to bat for you and representing you well.

However, me telling you to interview three agents is a little less about finding the right one and more about gaining insight into your property. Each agent should provide an initial home analysis of your house based on current market conditions and comparable sales in your area.

Why is this so important? All three agents should give you a similar ballpark of the worth of your home — but you may find that one person recommends to sell your home about $10k lower than the other two. Maybe that’s because the agent wants to sell your home quickly and move on to the next without maximizing profit. But leaving $10k on the table is a pretty big deal. Similarly, you don’t want someone who will overprice your home because they don’t know the area or other factors that may leave your house on the market longer than what’s ideal (making people wonder what’s wrong with it).

We interviewed two different larger agencies and one smaller, but super local, agent. Why was that helpful? The local agent had more valuable information about our home’s value because she understood each neighborhood and how that impacted each sale. Our area had very contrasting neighborhoods quite close together, so her evaluation of our home’s value was slightly higher than the others because our neighborhood was nicer.

Here’s some questions we asked during our interviews:

• How many homes have you sold in our area? Any in our neighborhood?
• What is the estimated value of our home? What would you recommend for the listing price?
• What does the housing inventory look like for this area? How many in our price range? On average, how many days/months are these houses staying on the market?
• What is your marketing strategy?
• After touring our home, what touchups or updates (if any) do you think are necessary for us to sell?
• What commission and other fees do you charge? Are they negotiable?

DE-CLUTTER AND “STAGE” YOUR HOME BEFORE YOU INTERVIEW SELLING AGENTS

It may seem annoying and a lot of extra work when you’re trying to pack, but make sure the house is clean and “staged” for your selling agent interviews. Treat it as though the agents are a potential buyer coming for a viewing.

Why? Think about it — if there are boxes everywhere and you haven’t cleaned for weeks, you’re making it harder on the agent to assess your home properly. Maximize your time with these professionals so you can write a quick list of their feedback regarding selling your house. You don’t have to do everything mentioned, but anything that is free or a quick fix will only help.

Think back to when you were house hunting: the best homes were probably the ones that were clean, most likely had no or limited personal items (like photos) and the rooms were likely pretty minimal in terms of “stuff” so it’s easier to picture your family living there.

Move any packed boxes to closets or the garage, wipe down all surfaces, vacuum, make the beds, put away laundry, etc. If you haven’t already, do a massive de-clutter and start packing any items you won’t need so the house feels more light and airy.

WAIT TO DO ANY COSTLY TOUCH-UPS OR UPDATES UNTIL YOU SPEAK WITH SELLING AGENTS

Another reason I recommend meeting with three agents is to get a gage from each agent what they feel you need to do to spruce up your house prior to selling. As the selling agents, they are constantly receiving feedback on homes so they should be able to pick out any red flags immediately.

However, when you’re selling your house, always pay attention to the market. Is it a buyer’s market? If so, you will likely need to spend a bit more to entice buyers (like buying new carpet or making other updates to the kitchen or bathroom). If it’s a seller’s market, that usually means there’s more buyers than sellers, so some things that feel important may not make a difference in the sale of the home because buyers are looking at a smaller inventory pool.

When we sold our home in Georgia, we were in a major seller’s market. I had a long list of things that bothered me, but when we spoke to the agents, we got a range of recommendations — from do nothing to some minor touchups and replacements. Ultimately, we chose to not update or do any major touchups. We did some simple projects and other free things to remove any distractions, but we were told re-painting rooms and other projects we thought we would need to do wouldn’t recoup the costs because the buyers would likely change those things upon move in.

One other thing to keep in mind is that after your inspection, buyers will ask for a bunch of things to be fixed or changed. Of course everything is negotiable, but it is something to keep in mind.

REQUEST THAT ANYONE WHO COMES TO VIEW YOUR HOME IS PRE-QUALIFIED

Showings are a pretty exhausting part of selling your home (we were gone almost all day for a week), but you don’t want to waste any time. All showings should be done with a realtor present, but definitely ask that anyone who wants to see the property is pre-qualified. This helps reduce the chances that their financing falls through later in the process. It also ensures that only qualified buyers are able to schedule a time to see your home and you don’t risk them moving on to another house if there aren’t available time slots.

The financing period occurs after the due diligence period and the inspection (normally it’s around 10 days for due diligence and then 21 days for financing). Should anything happen during the financing period, you potentially lost 2-3 weeks and likely lost any other potential buyers you had before.

Related: How to Create a Smart Home – The Top 10 Devices You Need

FINALLY: DON’T BE GREEDY, DON’T BE STUPID

Although emotions tend to be heightened during major life events, it’s important not to make any hasty decisions. My husband and I (and our realtor!) honestly were shocked at some of the requests the party who wanted to buy our house submitted.

There are three points of negotiation when you’re selling your house: the offer, following the inspection, and following the appraisal. There’s a balance to getting the right price for your home, but also being fair if something should be repaired or if the price needs to come down.

Remember, the buyers can walk away from the home if they don’t like your counter-offer because the ball is back in their court. But if you have multiple offers on the table, you can counter or reject their requests. You just have to be okay with going back on the market and waiting longer for your house to finally sell. Hence: don’t be greedy, don’t be stupid.