Sell Smart in 2026: 5 Critical Steps to Maximize Your Home Sale Price (And the #1 Mistake Sellers Make)

If you're planning to sell your home in 2026—or you're a real estate agent helping clients do it—this episode is your blueprint.

In this solo episode of the Be The Solution Podcast, Maria Quattrone breaks down the 5 most important steps out of a 12-step selling system that directly impact how fast your home sells and how much money you walk away with.

From understanding market conditions to pricing strategy and high-impact marketing, Maria shares what actually works in today’s market—and what mistakes are costing sellers thousands.

And most importantly… she reveals the #1 reason sellers leave money on the table.

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Understand Market Conditions First

2️⃣ Prep the House Like a Product

3️⃣ Price Strategically (And Never on the 9s)

4️⃣ Hire the Right Realtor

5️⃣ High-Impact Marketing Wins

🔥 Best Quote

Maria Quattrone:
“When you emotionally detach from the sale, you can think strategically—and that’s how you make the most money.” 

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
Facebook: Maria Quattrone
LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Transcript

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What Sellers Must Nail In 2026

Maria Quattrone 0:00

If you are a potential home seller in 2026 or you are a realtor who is looking to sell more homes in 2026 and want to help your clients do that, this is for you today. I'm going to discuss the key items that impact the sale of the house, why it's important to get them right from the beginning, and the most important thing that sellers overlook to make the most money possible. So there are 12 steps that you need when you're selling a house. Today I'm going to go through five of them. Five important ones, okay? Number one is understanding the market conditions. Number two, prepping the house for sale for both the house and the market. Number three, pricing strategically and never price on the nines. Number four, hiring the right realtor. Number five, high impact marketing techniques that include pre-launch, launch, and live. And if you get this wrong, you're leaving money on the table. And at the end of this video, I'm gonna reveal the number one thing that holds sellers back from making the absolute most money possible when you're selling your house.

Reading Today’s Market Conditions

Maria Quattrone 1:42

So number one, understanding the market conditions and why this is important. So understanding the market conditions, whether it's a market for a buyer or a market for a seller. So this sets the stage for the selling strategy. You know, back in 2021, it led to record record low interest rates. So that led to bidding wars. That's a different strategy than the market that we're in today. So the rates have cooled, and right now we're sitting at about 6%. People have been waiting for three years, sellers have been waiting for three years to put their houses on the market. So really understanding in your particular area what the market trends are, what the conditions are, aligning that. Last uh couple weeks ago, I did a video about absorption rate. If you haven't seen that and you want more information, because that really impacts the sale of your house, that shows you how long it's going to take. So this is part of the market trend, understanding what's selling in the market, how fast it's selling, or slow it's selling, how many homes are on the market in your neighborhood, in your price range. All of these things are super important when as a seller looking to net the most money possible. And as sellers, that's the number one thing is usually people want either how do I net the most money possible or how do I sell this thing if it fastes? And sometimes it's both. But we can't always address both. Sometimes we're gonna we're gonna sell it fast and may not get the most money because fast is more important than getting the most money, and sometimes the most money is more important. So we gotta unpack that for each individual client and see where you are at and produce a strategy for you based on that. So understanding

Speed Versus Net: Setting Priorities

Maria Quattrone 3:55

the market conditions is number one. Prepping your house for sale. Now, when we're going to talk about prepping your house for sale, there's the house itself, and then it's the house that you're going to show to everybody else. Because nobody lives in their house the way that we're going to market and sell a home. Nobody, myself included. Although we keep things pretty neat and tidy in here, I could tell you I have closets that are overflowing with stuff. Those things, if we want to net the most money, we have to take care of them. So we have the number one thing: curb appeal. How do you make a great first impression? That's important. Do you have a wreath on the door? Is your door freshly painted? If it's appropriate, can we have some nice flowers out front? You know, it's the little things in selling real estate that matter. The devil's in the detail. It's in the detail of this. Decluttering and depersonalizing the interior as much as possible. I've had people where they have, you know, maybe a book about something that could be considered in this environment, uh maybe would bring up some feelings for some people. Like maybe they have a book on Hillary or they have a book on Trump or they have a book on whatever. Somebody is not going to like it. So getting rid of anything that would not be for the new buyer to envision themselves in the home. One of the things I see all the time is lights. Lighting is critical. I see a lot of times people have these white lights that make you look not great, and in fact, they do not bring warmth to the house. Okay, there's no warmth. So I suggest changing lights, and I could tell right away when I walk into home if it needs to be done or not. There's a big difference. My husband and I went to look at a house a couple months ago, and the kitchen lighting was this bright white light, and it didn't make me feel homey. I in fact, I said, I can't believe they didn't change this light for wanting to get the top money because you want the house to feel homey, you want it to feel inviting, and white sorrow lights do not do that. I cannot express enough how deep cleaning and a spotless home shines. Many people don't have their houses deep clean, and that's okay.

Prepping The House To Win

Maria Quattrone 6:38

But if you want to get the most money out of your house, you got to do a deep cleaning. Staging it and moving furniture around to maximize the space. I actually have helped many clients do this, and in fact, they go, I don't understand why we didn't do this before. I get this all the time. And then taking care of minor repairs that need to be made, and this is part of the pre-inspection that we're also going to do. And that's something that is going to allow us to identify anything that could come up during the sale of the home. I believe that knowledge is power, and why not know up front instead of behind the eight ball after we're already under contract? That makes no sense to me. So the going back, you got curb appeal, decluttering, brightening the rooms, deep cleaning, staging, and minor repairs to make this a great product that somebody wants to buy. Remember that when you are selling your home, detaching yourself, that you don't own the home anymore. You gotta think about it like that. You've already sold it. Pretend you've already sold it. This way we're positioning it for the new buyer. The new buyer is gonna love your house as much as you loved your house. So the next thing I want to talk about is pricing. So you probably see this all the time when you're on a third-party site or on the MLS. $3299. That is like the worst way to price a house because it doesn't follow the algorithm. Okay, and the the price that you pick is extremely important. I price on the fives and the zeros, and there's a specific reason why I do that. It's how the algorithm works. Why fight against that? You know, and you have one chance to make a first impression on the price. So we want to price in the target, in the bullseye, where we're gonna attract the most buyers for a house. And that requires thought, process, and really understanding how pricing works. And this comes with years and years and years and years of doing it. Over 3,000 times I've done it. Well, actually more than that because I sold over 3,000 homes, so I priced homes that we never listed. We didn't list because lots of reasons they weren't clients weren't ready at the time. So I'm looking at data-driven pricing strategies, and then there's a golden window. We have this golden window of time in the first two to three weeks that we get the most showings, and so we want to maximize and make sure the most amount of buyers can see your home. Don't want to miss this window. This is critical. It is so important that everything goes off without a hitch. And overpricing, if you watch my video from last week, overpricing is just a huge mistake. It is such it's it's detrimental. Sellers that overprice never make the most money on their house. Never, ever, ever do they make the most money on the house. Number three, hiring the right realtor. So here are some questions that you should ask when you're looking who you're gonna hire. Never hire somebody based on price. Never ever do that. That is like that's a critical mistake. So, number one, you want to know are they a professional full-time realtor? Meaning they don't have another career that they work. How many years have they been in real estate? Success leaves clues. In my case, I'm on year 23 and year 34 in sales and marketing. How many families did they help last year? Like how many other sellers did they have did they help? I helped over a hundred last year.

Lighting, Cleaning, And Repairs

Maria Quattrone 11:12

You have a team of people that work with you. I don't understand how in this day and age that we're in, you could do this all by yourself. And I don't. I have a team of people that help with everything. Marketing, contract to close, open houses. There's so many things. Field services, you know, getting the sign, pictures, lockboxes, there's so many details, people don't really even understand the details that go into selling a house. And asking this question to the to the realtor, do you actually think you can sell my house? Because the realtor needs to believe that they can actually sell your home. And will how do they work? What are their hours? How do they position houses? Do they have a process and a system? Is that do they have a budget on marketing? I spent hundreds of thousands a year on marketing. Do they have a budget? We talk with our clients every week, as long as they answer the phone, uh, to give updates. It's really important to update on the market, to update on the house, to give any information about what's going on in the market. So I'm putting out videos every single week to educate both the our clients but also the real estate agents in the marketplace. So those are some questions that you can ask next week. I'm gonna have a deep dive in some additional questions, so join me for that. So that was number four. Number five. Number five is all about marketing, and marketing isn't just about when the house goes on the market, it's about all the things that are done prior to going onto the market. So there's three parts of this: there's the pre-launch and what's done in the pre-launch, and the pre-launch, there's a lot of work that we do in the pre-launch between pre-inspections, getting home RNG, uh, ordering title, all kinds of things for prepping for the house or sale, prepping not only the house for sale, but prepping the marketing, prepping how we're going to go live, spending a week in the pre-launch mode so that you can track the most buyers for the house. So there's pre-launch, then there's launch. How does the house get launched into the market? What tools are being used? What's the online presence look like? What does the content look like? The actual description we use, we put it through SEO to maximize the words actually in the listing. How many views is the house going to get? Traditional marketing still works as well. Direct mail. I get a ton of opportunities, people calling me from direct mail. We use it for our houses as well. We add on our signs additional signage that people can text 24-7 a day to find out more information about this house. High-end photography, uh, 3D tours, professional photos. Uh there's so many additional things that go into this high impact marketing techniques that we do. And remember, there's three parts. It's the pre-launch, the launch, and then going live. So those are the three, those are the three things. And all these things are important. In fact, there's 12 steps to this. 12 steps. Today I impact the five most important steps. Okay. And one of the things that I see, the number one thing that I see, which causes sellers to not make the most money, is not being detached from the sale of the house. Is when you are emotionally attached to the sale, is when, as a seller, you make the least money possible. What do I mean by that? Buyers are gonna say, I don't like the hell, I don't like the paint, I don't like the curtains, I don't like the wallpaper, I don't like the kitchen, I don't like the bathroom, this, that, and the other. Because that's what they do. When I work with my clients from the very beginning, I say, listen, if you can do listen to anything I say, you gotta listen on praise now. Listen to anything I say, emotionally detach

Strategic Pricing That Works With Algorithms

Maria Quattrone 16:05

yourself from this sale. I know you've lived in the house for 20 years, and you mean memories here, and it was your home, but it's no longer your home. You have to mentally say, I've already sold this house, and say, wherever you're going to Florida or LA or you're staying here and you're just getting a condo instead of a house. Mentally detaching yourself from the sale of this home will net you the most money. Because when you can emotionally detach from this, you can think strategically. You can think not with your heart, but with your mind. And when that happens is when we really can net you the most money because gotta think of this as a business. My house, I want to get the most money, I have to put my business hat on and not my emotional seller hat on. You gotta take that hat off, put on the new hat. So if you'd like more information about how to sell your house for the most money possible, just put in there seller2026, drop it in the comments, and I'm gonna send you information on this. So you can get my download, seller 2026, drop it in the comments, happy to send it out to you. Happy selling and happy spring market.