There is a lot to think about when it comes to selling your home in Saskatoon. Everything from the best time and correct price for your listing, to the negotiation process and all the steps required to close. 

If you’re thinking about selling your property, this guide is the resource you want! It includes everything you need to know to sell your home in Saskatchewan, including the steps and the strategy to be successful.

Selling your house involves 2 things:

1. The 9 Steps to Sell a Home
2. The Strategy at each step to get your house SOLD.

We’ll walk you through the entire process to make sure you have the best possible selling experience, whether you’re working with a REALTOR® or selling on your own.

Keep reading for the step by step process or use the table of contents to find the section you’re most interested in.

How to Sell Your Home in Saskatoon

The steps involved in listing and selling your home are really quite simple. The strategy however, is both less obvious and much more important in determining the success of your sale.

The first step in developing your strategy is to determine the Why, When and How of your listing. With that information clearly laid out, you will be better able to come up with a price, marketing strategy, and negotiation tools that will lead to the best possible outcome for you. 

1.) Why are you selling? 

Every choice you make about selling your home will be impacted by your answer to this question. So while it may seem like a generic or redundant question, this is actually the critical first step to selling successfully as you’ll soon learn. 

Before you do anything else, take some time to think about your exact reason(s) for selling. Put another way, what are your goals for selling your property?

Ultimately the goal for any sale is to get the best price in the shortest amount of time. But HOW we accomplish the goal and what ‘success’ looks like is different depending on your motivation for selling.

When you decide to sell, you can be motivated by any number of factors. For example:

• You need a bigger place
• You want something more affordable
• You’re leaving town
• The market is hot and you want to capitalize on the equity you’ve built

Taking the time to acknowledge the primary motivation for your move is essential because it helps you create a strategy for selling your property. 

Do not underestimate the importance of aligning your strategy with your motivation. When they are in alignment the selling process is smoother and ultimately you end up with a better result.

2 Main Categories of Motivation

Almost all motivation can be boiled down to 2 main categories. Time and Money. 

While they’re (almost) always both important, determining which one is most important for this particular sale, even if it’s only by the slightest margin, helps you create a better selling strategy.

One of the most common mistakes we see is that people who are on a deadline (even an extended deadline) incorrectly price their house and ultimately end up with a lower sale price because of their time crunch. 

A proper strategy accommodates the timeline AND allows for a better sale price at the same time. Without a strategy you end up chasing the sale, and chasing a sale gives the buyer the advantage.

2.) When are you going to sell?

Given that you’re looking for information on selling your home in Saskatoon, there’s a good chance that you are planning to sell right away. If you’re on a tight timeline, you may not have an option, but, if you have flexibility, timing your listing strategically can have a big impact on the success of your sale.

Market Trends

People typically decide to list their home for sale in the spring and naturally, people usually think of spring as April and May. This is almost always the busiest time of year for real estate.

Listing outside of peak times can actually be more beneficial for a seller, contrary to popular belief.

Listing during the busiest time of the year means that the market is likely to be at a high in terms of inventory. As a seller, what that means to you is that your house is in competition with more properties.

If you were to list your property ahead of the spring market, say in late January or early February, when buyers start looking to make a move (which usually starts to happen BEFORE spring), yours is one of fewer properties available. 

Fewer properties to choose from means that you have an increased likelihood of successfully selling your property. It’s all about supply and demand! Well, that and a bunch of other things that we’ll talk about later on. 

Supply and demand is really important when you’re on the selling side of a real estate deal. The lower the supply of houses, the higher the demand for the properties that are listed, and if you plan it right, that will be yours.

Think of this like the Tickle Me Elmo craze of 1996. When the dolls were released in July, there were plenty available and nobody was fighting for them. By November, when Christmas shoppers were on the hunt, they were few and far between, to the point where people were doing crazy things to get one. 

As a home seller, you want to be the November version of Tickle Me Elmo, not the July one. And while we certainly don’t want to see a brawl on your front lawn (obviously), we do want to see you capitalize on the timing of your sale.

Other Less Known Considerations

Outside of market trends, there are other things that you’ll want to think about in terms of when to list as well. People often forget to consider things like mortgage penalties, and tenant agreements. Breaking these contracts can cost you thousands of dollars.

Sometimes it makes more financial sense to hold your property a little longer if you’re looking at substantial penalties, or list a little sooner if you want to sell before your mortgage is up for renewal. 

3.) How Are You Going To Sell?

When it comes to selling your house there are generally 3 methods you can use. You can:

1. List with a traditional real estate brokerage
2. List with a discount real estate brokerage
3. Sell it on your own (aka For Sale by Owner or FSBO)

All of these options come with benefits and drawbacks and the best one for you simply comes down to figuring out which one suits your needs the best. 

The best choice for selling your home in Saskatoon is a lot like picking your favorite hockey team. Everyone thinks their team is, hands down, the best. But, in order to choose the right team for you, you have to decide what stats you’re interested in. And, let’s just say, there’s enough Leafs fans out there to prove that winning the cup isn’t everything.

In general, these the selling options for real estate can be broken down like this:

• Traditional Real Estate Brokerages are the ones who have been selling real estate the longest. They typically have the brands that have been around since forever and the names that have become synonymous with real estate. 
• Discount Real Estate Brokerages are a newer trend, built on taking advantage of changes in the industry (namely technology) and offering the same service as a traditional brokerage for a lot less money.
• For Sale by Owner (FSBO) is just that. When you don’t want to pay for a REALTOR®, you can sell your property yourself. 

Here’s the honest truth. Houses are sold using every option, every single day. People will tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t do one or the other because it’s never going to work. That is simply not true. They all work, they’re just different.

What is true, is that to find the best option for YOUR sale, being clear on your motivation (as we talked about in the section on Why You’re Selling) will make a huge difference.

If your biggest motivator relates to time, you’re going to want to use some type of real estate brokerage. Regardless of which brokerage you choose, real estate agents have access to a bigger pool of buyers, especially because in Saskatchewan they have exclusive access to MLS. More buyers means more potential for a faster sale. 

On the flip side of the time spectrum, if you simply don’t have the time to do all of the things involved in selling your home, or you simply don’t want to take on a project this big, you’re going to want to work with a REALTOR®. That way they can take care of selling your house, leaving you time to focus on other things.

If your main motivation is money, you’re not going to want to work with a traditional brokerage, as that is your most expensive option. Deciding how much you want to save on commission fees can help you determine if your best option is to use a discount REALTOR® for low commission fees, or sell it on your own for no commission fees.

Discount brokerages are a relatively new concept in some areas. This Frequently Asked Questions list is full of helpful information if you want to know more. If you’re wondering if other agents will show your property if you offer lower commission, the answer is yes.

The caveat to ‘no commission fees’ when you FSBO is that even if you sell on your own, you may encounter real estate agents who want to bring buyers through your listing, and want to be compensated should their client want to buy your property. 

While REALTORs® wanting to show your property won’t always be the case, it’s good to be prepared and know what commission (if any) you’re willing to offer, if you choose to go the FSBO route.

4.) Prepare Your Property

This is arguably the only step that isn’t impacted by your motivation or reason for selling. Whether you lean more toward the time side or the money side of the motivation scale, getting your house ready to sell is critical to your success.

Clutter and Dirt Detract from the Price

The way your house looks is extremely impactful when it comes to the saleability of your house. When people view it, whether online or in person, they are subconsciously adding and subtracting value from the list price.

Every time they see a new photo or walk into another room, they are assessing items that make the property look more or less valuable to them. When a place is messy, dirty, cluttered, or needs even minor repairs the property becomes worth less in their minds.

Having a lot of things (aka clutter) in your house hides the actual features of your home. Items like countertops, flooring and appliances are features that stay with the home, and are a big part of what a buyer is actually buying. If they can’t see those things clearly, they can’t fall in love with them.

When potential buyers see a fresh coat of paint, no dents in the walls, and beautiful countertops and floors, they see more value because owning this house doesn’t come with a list of projects. 

Curb Appeal Counts

Curb appeal is also critical. When a buyer pulls up out front of your home, the curb appeal is their first impression, and in real estate, first impressions matter! It happens all the time, that people drive up to a house and cancel their showing without ever stepping foot in the front door.

While you can’t always have a mowed lawn and fresh flowers in the garden (#prairiewinters), even keeping your walks shoveled can make a big difference. If your property looks well cared for on the outside, buyers subconsciously assume it’s the same on the inside.

5.) Choose Your Price

Pricing your property properly is critically important to being able to sell. That’s what a home evaluation is for. Now you may be wondering why we didn’t include this section earlier on, and there’s a good reason. 

Earlier we talked about how you’re going to sell your property – either through a brokerage or on your own. Even if you have decided to sell on your own, at this step you still want to involve REALTORs®, and here’s why:

• They have access to more data, including the Sold history in your neighborhood
• Getting multiple evaluations helps you price your property more accurately
• Most REALTOR’s® offer a free market analysis

So what does that have to do with why this step comes after prepping your property? Well, REALTORs® are people too (shocking, I know), and when they evaluate your property, just like with potential buyers you want them to see it in the best possible condition.

If you have a market analysis done before you do all the work, chances are the price is going to reflect the amount of work that needs to be done. By preparing your house first, you ensure that your market evaluation matches the condition of your home. 

Additionally, if you have the evaluation done first, in the time it takes you to prepare your home for sale, the market may have changed and your evaluation could be skewed from that as well.

The last thing you want to do is list your property under market value. By preparing first and pricing second, you increase your chances of pricing properly, which directly impacts your ability to sell. 

Here’s one other thing to consider. Home evaluations are not an exact science. By having multiple evaluations done, you can come up with a more accurate price. 

You can always choose the highest price because you like it the best, but if you have 3 evaluations completed and 2 are very close and one is substantially different, chances are the 2 that are similar are more accurate.

6.) Choose A REALTOR®

If you’ve decided to sell your property with the help of a REALTOR®, deciding who to use is your next step. If you’re going to do ‘For Sale by Owner’, you can jump straight to the next section.

Did you know there are currently over 700 real estate agents in Saskatoon. That doesn’t even include agents who are located in the surrounding areas. It’s crazy, right?!

When it comes to choosing a REALTOR® for your sale, the choices are almost endless.

So how do you sort through all the noise and narrow down your options? This is exactly why you’ve already figured out ‘How’ you’re going to sell! 

You already know you’re going to use a REALTOR®, AND you’ve already decided if you’re going to go with a traditional brokerage or a discount brokerage. 

We started with the brokerage decision, because it can help to limit the number of choices you have to wade through. For example, if you’ve chosen to work with a discount brokerage, there are very few to choose from and the search becomes much simpler. 

Once you’ve decided on which specific brokerage to work with, you can use other helpful tools like referrals, client reviews or testimonials, location, and personal preferences to decide which specific agent(s) you are interested in working with. 

After you’ve narrowed it down to a few, you can then get to know or even interview them. This process can be whatever works for you. Anything from a casual phone call or email to a sit down formal Q&A session is completely normal. It’s about what works for you.

As part of the interview process, you can ask some general questions and have the agent(s) conduct the home evaluation we talked about earlier.  

When it comes to questions to ask a real estate agent, there are typically 3 things that you’ll want to know about:

1. Experience
2. Sales Record
3. Commission Rates

Now, there tends to be some gray area (or “bendability”) in real estate statistics. That means the way you phrase your questions around these topics can have a big impact on the answer you get from each agent. 

For example when it comes to experience, an agent may have been in the industry for many years, but may not have done many deals. Alternatively, another agent may be newer to the industry but could have done a LOT more transactions in fewer years. 

Deciding which experience is most relevant to you, and understanding how to ask your question in a way that gets you the answer you’re really looking for, is essential. 

When you’re not overly familiar with the industry, knowing what to ask (or more specifically ‘how’ to ask) can be difficult. To make it easy, we put together this is of 3 Better Questions To Ask When Hiring A REALTOR® so you can make sure you’re getting the information that you really want.

All in all, when it comes to choosing the right REALTOR® it’s about choosing who is right for YOU. Sometimes it comes down to statistics and sometimes it’s more about a vibe. This is your home and your sale, so go with whoever makes you the most comfortable! 

7.) Market Your Property

Marketing your property is extremely important, because if nobody knows your property is for sale, they can’t buy it!

Before you can begin to market your property there are a few additional things you’ll need to do like: 

• Take pictures
• Take room measurements
• Gather property tax and utilities information

This information will be needed to properly market your property. If you are working with a REALTOR®, your agent will take care of the marketing components for you.

Marketing a property for sale can be done both online and in-person. 

In-person strategies include things like signage in front of your property and open houses. Online marketing is anything that is done digitally, like advertising on social media or various websites. 

One of the most beneficial things your real estate agent will do is publish your property on REALTOR.ca (MLS). In fact, a lot of people argue that it’s the biggest benefit of working with a real estate agent instead of selling on your own.

In addition to having your property on REALTOR.ca, it will appear on many affiliate websites including Point2Homes, other brokerage websites, Kijiji and lots of others.  

If you’re selling as a For Sale by Owner property, there are many companies like Saskhouses and Facebook Marketplace that helps you market your property online as well. 

Marketing is about exposure, so sharing your listing to your personal social media, as well as telling people you know that it’s for sale can be very helpful in increasing the amount of exposure your property gets.

8.) Showings and Offers

Showings are possibly the worst part of the process, or at least that’s what a lot of people tend to say. Ideally you want to keep your house in show-ready condition at all times, so you can accommodate all showing requests, even on short notice. 

It’s important to always be prepared for showings and if we’re being honest, this part can be rough! Showings can be a lot of work, especially if you have kids, pets, work from home or work unusual hours. 

Once your house is on the market, you can expect buyers wanting to see your home to start anytime. Sometimes viewings start the first day, and sometimes it takes a while. 

Booking and scheduling showings is something your REALTOR® will take care of if you’re working with one. If you’re selling on your own, you’ll have to manage showing requests.

Negotiating

With showings comes the offer process. When a potential buyer submits an offer, you then have the opportunity to begin negotiations. Yay!

Negotiating is a big part of selling your home. This is another place where using a REALTOR® can be highly beneficial. Real estate agents have a lot of experience in negotiating. They understand how to use multiple aspects of the sale to negotiate a better deal for you.

In addition to their negotiating skills, using a REALTOR® allows you to be one step removed from the process, so that your emotions don’t hinder your ability to sell your property. As much as we all think we’re not emotionally attached to our homes, when there’s an offer on the table it becomes much more difficult to separate the sale from ourselves.

Having someone in your corner during the process can make for a much less stressful overall experience. It’s also why choosing the agent you’re most comfortable with (Step 6) is so important.

Understanding the Contract

A real estate contract is binding, and if you’re using a real estate agent, they will be able to tell you exactly what terms and conditions have been included in the buyer’s offer. They can explain the difference between a term and a condition and how it impacts the sale.

They also know where to look for additional information that has been included in the contract. A good example of this is the inclusion of personal items like furniture that form part of the offer. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you have a beautiful heirloom piece of furniture that you accidentally sell because you didn’t understand the contract, it can be very upsetting. 

When Something Isn’t Working

Now, if you find yourself with a property listed that isn’t getting many showings or has had lots of showings but no offers, this is where we have to reevaluate some of the choices made during previous steps.

In all likelihood one of 2 things is happening (or it could be a combination of both): 

1. Your marketing isn’t working or
2. Your price is off 

In fact, as a discount brokerage, this is the phase where we commonly see people who opted to sell on their own, come to us looking for another option. Typically, they can’t get the exposure they need to get their property found.

9.) Selling Your Home

When an offer has been successfully negotiated you have what’s called an accepted offer. There are typically 2 parts to an accepted offer: 

1. A conditional sale
2. A firm sale

It is possible to jump straight to a firm offer at the point of acceptance, which is what happens when an offer is made without any conditions. However, it is much more common to have a conditional sale first.

A Conditional Sale

After showings, offers, and successfully navigating the negotiation process, you have a ‘Conditional Sale’, and you’re one step closer to having your property sold!

A conditional sale means that your property is sold, pending specific items agreed upon in the contract. In Saskatchewan, we typically see a condition window of approximately 2-3 weeks depending on the conditions. In some circumstances, however, it can be much longer.

Some of the more common items a sale is often conditional to are:

• Financing
• Home Inspection
• Gas Line Locates or Property Information Disclosure Report
• Property Condition Disclosure Statement (PCDS)
• Sale of the buyer’s current property

There are many, many other things that can be included in a conditional sale. Regardless of what they are, they all have to be satisfied prior to the conditional date on the agreement in order for a sale to be finalized or ‘firm’.  

A Firm Sale

After the conditions of a sale have been met, the sale is then considered to be ‘Firm’. This is the point at which we say, “Congratulations, your house is SOLD!”

There is time between a sale going firm and the date the buyer takes possession of the property. The amount of time for this is also agreed to in the contract. 

This can run anywhere from 1 week to many months, depending on what was agreed to. Most typically possession dates run between 30-90 days from condition removal. 

During this time, there are a number of things that need to be done including:

• Finding and working with a Lawyer
• Hiring movers
• Transferring or canceling utilities
• Transferring or canceling insurance
• Updating your address with Canada Post
• Cleaning the property

The lawyers handle all of the legal aspects of the sale like title transfers and exchange of funds. Both you and the buyer will have a lawyer for your side of the transaction. 

You get paid for your sale by the lawyers once they’ve handled all of the transactions involved with the sale. We usually see people getting paid within 1-3 days of closing, but it’s always best to ask your lawyer what to expect. 

Once the keys have been given to the new owners and you’ve been paid for the sale, you are officially done. Congratulations, you did it!

And that’s that! Add in the required paperwork at each step and you have the ultimate guide to selling your house in 9 simple steps. Selling your house isn’t necessarily difficult, but it can be a lot of work. 

Going in with the right strategy and a solid understanding of the process makes it much less overwhelming. And with this guide in your pocket, you now have that.

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