Home/For sellers

YouTube — “The Seller Process Guide”

For sellers

I ran a marketing company before I sold houses.

Pricing it right, prepping it properly, and putting it in front of the people most likely to buy it. Start with a free, no-obligation valuation.

How I sell a home

01

Four decisions actually move the number.

What it's priced at, how it shows, what buyers see of it, and how the offer gets handled. Everything else is noise. Here's how I think about each one — so you can disagree with me before we list rather than six weeks in.

01

Pricing

The price has to answer three things at once: what your home is, what the market is doing, and what else a buyer could go and look at this weekend instead. It is not the number that wins me the listing.

Before we set it, I'll show you the sales behind my recommendation and how long each one took. If your number and mine are different, you'll have everything you need to make the call — it's your house and your money. What I won't do is agree to a number I can't defend and then spend two months walking it back.

Overpricing has a predictable shape. Buyers wait, the listing sits, and by the time you correct it the days on market are doing the talking for you. Starting in the right place is worth more than any marketing decision I make afterwards.

02

Preparation

You'll get a short list, in priority order, and you can work through it at your own pace. Paint, deep cleaning, decluttering and landscaping return more than they cost almost every time. Large renovations usually don't — you rarely get back what you spend on a kitchen right before a sale.

Where work is worth doing I'll connect you with trades and help you get real quotes, and I'll tell you which items on the list are genuinely optional. Half of this job is talking sellers out of spending money that won't come back.

03

What buyers see

Most buyers meet your home on a phone screen before they ever stand in it, and they decide in about four seconds whether to keep scrolling. That's the moment the marketing background earns its place — I came into real estate from running a marketing company, so the campaign gets built rather than posted.

Local buyers and out-of-province buyers don't find or judge a home the same way, and the plan should account for that instead of treating exposure as a box to tick.

04

Negotiation

An offer is more than a price. Dates, deposit, conditions, what's included, and how much leverage each side believes it has will all move your net. A higher number with the wrong dates can be the worse deal.

I present offers in person wherever I can, which almost nobody does any more — it means your position gets explained rather than emailed, and I can respond to an objection in the room instead of two hours later. When an inspection comes back with a list, we argue the actual scope of the work rather than conceding a number to keep things pleasant.

The uncomfortable part

If it isn't selling, you'll hear it from me first.

Good homes sit sometimes, at numbers that looked right the day we set them. When that happens I call you — not to reassure you, but to tell you I'm not seeing the momentum and I don't think this price gets us there.

What that call sounds like

First we go back through everything we've already done — the photography, the exposure, the feedback from every showing, the changes we made along the way. If there's a lever still unpulled, we pull it before we touch the price.

But when the marketing is fully covered and the traffic still isn't converting, price is the last lever left. Nobody enjoys that conversation. What you won't do is get three months into a listing wondering what I actually think.

Media and presentation

02

Shot properly, on a house that's ready.

Media happens after the preparation, not instead of it. No amount of production saves a house that wasn't ready to be photographed.

01

Photography

High-resolution stills, properly lit, of a home that has been prepped first.

02

Video walkthrough

For homes where moving through the space is the thing that sells it.

03

Aerial and drone

Where the lot, the setting or the elevation is a meaningful part of what you're selling.

04

Twilight

For view properties. Planned around the weather rather than the calendar.

05

Floor plans

More important than most sellers expect, and not optional on a vacant home.

06

Social campaign

Run as a real campaign with a budget behind it, not a post that gets eleven likes.

Vantage West

03

You're not just hiring me. You're hiring the certainty system.

Vantage West built its brokerage around removing the parts of a sale you can't control. Four kinds of certainty, backed by written commitments rather than assurances over coffee.

01

Price certainty

The Market Value Promise™ — a written commitment to the value we agree on, rather than a number that quietly drifts down over three months.

02

Sale certainty

Sale Assurance and Cash & Sell, for sellers who need to know the home moves rather than hope it does.

03

Timing certainty

Trade Assured™ and the Assured Move Program, for when you're buying and selling in the same window and the sequencing is the whole problem.

04

Equity certainty

Fix & List with nothing upfront, plus Sell & Stay, so the work that lifts your sale price doesn't have to come out of your pocket first.

Which of these apply depends on the listing package we agree to, and each carries its own terms — including Accountability Credits payable to you if a commitment isn't met. I'll walk you through the whole agreement line by line before you sign it, and I'll tell you plainly which programs are relevant to your situation and which aren't.

Program availability, eligibility and terms are set out in the Vantage Certainty Seller Agreement and vary by package. Nothing on this page is an offer or a guarantee on its own.

Free · No obligation

What's your place actually worth?

Not an automated estimate. I'll look at your home, what's sold near it recently, and what's competing with it right now — then send you a real number with the reasoning behind it.

Seller questions

02

The ones that decide whether you list.

What's your commission?

Commission in BC is negotiable and isn't set by any board or brokerage. What I charge depends on the property, the price and the amount of marketing involved, and I'll give you the number in writing before you sign anything. I'd rather have that conversation directly than post a figure here that turns out not to apply to your place.

How long will it take to sell?

It depends on price, condition and the segment your home sits in — a well-priced townhouse and a high-end acreage behave completely differently. At our first meeting I'll show you how long comparable homes have taken over the last several months, so you're working from real numbers rather than a feeling about the market.

What should I fix before listing, and what should I leave?

Paint, deep cleaning, decluttering and landscaping return more than they cost, almost every time. Big renovations usually don't — you rarely get back what you spend on a new kitchen right before a sale. I'll walk your house with you and give you a short list, in priority order, with an honest note about which items are optional.

Do I need to stage it?

Not always. Occupied homes often just need editing rather than staging. Vacant homes benefit far more, because empty rooms photograph badly and read smaller than they are. We'll decide once I've seen it.

What happens if it doesn't sell?

We look at why. Almost always it's price, photos, or access for showings — in that order. If it's price, I'll tell you plainly rather than letting the listing go stale for three months. A listing that sits gets treated as a problem by buyers, and that costs you more than a correction would have.

Should I sell before I buy, or buy before I sell?

The safest sequence is to sell first with a longer completion date, which gives you a known number to work with. Buying first is possible with bridge financing but carries real risk if your sale takes longer than expected. If you're doing both at once, this is the single most important conversation we'll have.

What do I owe in taxes when I sell?

If it's your principal residence, the gain is generally exempt from capital gains tax. Investment properties, second homes and properties you've rented out are treated differently, and there are other rules that can apply depending on how long you've owned it and what you did with it. Talk to an accountant — this one genuinely needs professional advice specific to your situation.

What do you do that other agents don't?

I built and ran a marketing company before I sold real estate, so the video, the photography direction and the social campaign are directed by someone who has actually done this for a living rather than handed to a template. Whether that's worth anything to you depends on your property — I'll be straight about the cases where it doesn't matter much.

General information for BC sellers, not legal, tax or accounting advice. Reviewed annually — last reviewed: [date].

No pressure, no pitch. Just a conversation.

Twenty minutes, on your schedule. Even if you're twelve months out.

CallBook a call