Selling Your Home with Tim Harvey

I grew up in this part of Massachusetts and I work here. Before real estate I was COO at Curaytor, a real estate marketing company — that job was marketing leadership for other agents across North America. It is not a count of my own closings, and I will not present it as one.

What follows is the order a sale runs in, what you decide versus what I do, and what Massachusetts asks of you.

Why there are no market statistics here

Medians, appreciation percentages and days-on-market figures get copied from page to page until nobody can say where they came from, and they describe an area far larger than your street. This page used to carry several. They are gone. What matters is narrower: the last six months of closed sales within about a mile, checked against the assessor’s record. Closed prices are the only ones that mean anything.

1. Valuation

I walk the property, note what a buyer’s inspector will find anyway, and build the comparison from closed sales. You get the reasoning, not just a figure — which sales I used, which I threw out, and why. This is what goes into a home valuation and what I need to do one. If you would rather work the number yourself first, the net proceeds worksheet starts from a sale price and takes everything off it, with no figure filled in that you have not supplied.

2. Preparation

Preparation is where the money is, and where it gets spent badly. Paint, decluttering, light fixtures, landscaping cleanup and a pre-listing look at the systems generally earn their keep. Large renovations started weeks before listing do not. We go room by room and I tell you where to stop. The deeper version is the strategy for maximizing a sale price. Gather the paperwork too: permits for additions or finished basements, septic pumping records, well tests.

3. Pricing

Pricing is your decision and my advice. Overpricing is not a free option — a listing burns through its most attentive audience in the first two weeks, and a later cut is read as a signal. I will say when a number looks wrong, then list at the number you choose.

4. Marketing, and how public you want the sale to be

Photography, a floor plan, an accurate and specific description, and syndication to the portals buyers use. Copy that oversells brings showings from people who leave annoyed.

Not every seller wants a public listing: estates, divorces, tenants in place, or simply no sign on the lawn. There are quieter, off-market ways to sell, which trade exposure for discretion — fewer competing buyers usually shows up in the price.

5. Showings

We agree how showings are scheduled and how much notice you get, and you decide whether there is an open house. I collect what comes back — specifically what people hesitated over — which after two weeks tells you more than the pricing analysis did.

6. Reviewing offers

An offer carries more than price: the financing type and the pre-approval behind it, the deposit, the contingencies and their deadlines, the closing date, and anything the buyer asks you to contribute. A lower offer with clean financing and the right closing date can beat the top number.

The accepted offer is followed by a purchase and sale agreement, the document that really governs the deal. Have a real estate attorney review it. I am not one, and no agent is.

7. Inspection, and what comes back

Assume the inspector finds things. The recurring list here is septic and Title 5, private wells, knob-and-tube or ungrounded wiring, water in basements on ledge, radon, older roofs, buried oil tanks, and additions built without a permit. Few are deal-enders, and your response matters more than the finding: repair, credit, price adjustment, or hold your ground, weighed against what starting over would cost.

8. Closing

The last stretch is the appraisal, the buyer’s loan commitment, the certificates below, final utility readings and the walkthrough. Mostly it is coordination between the attorneys, the lender and the two agents, and most trouble is a schedule problem caught late. You sign, and the deed records at the Worcester District Registry of Deeds.

What Massachusetts asks of you as a seller

Confirm all of it with your closing attorney; the exceptions are real.

Disclosure

Massachusetts is still largely a caveat emptor state for residential sellers: there is no state-mandated condition disclosure form. That is narrower than it sounds. You cannot answer a direct question falsely and you cannot conceal a known defect, and the two things sellers must disclose affirmatively are lead paint and a septic system. My obligations as your agent are not identical to yours.

Lead paint, for anything built before 1978

If the home predates 1978, you and any agent involved must give a prospective buyer the state’s Property Transfer Lead Paint Notification package before a purchase and sale agreement is signed, along with any lead inspection report, risk assessment, Letter of Compliance or Letter of Interim Control, and whatever you know about lead in the house. Selling does not require you to delead: that obligation attaches to an owner when a child under six lives there, and a new owner in that position has 90 days from taking title.

Title 5, if the house is on septic

Massachusetts requires a Title 5 inspection at or within two years before transfer of title, or up to three years if it comes with records showing annual pumping since. If weather makes inspection impossible it can be completed after the sale — no later than six months — provided you notify the buyer in writing. The report goes to the buyer, and certain inter-family transfers are exempt. Book it early: a failed system is solvable, but only if you learn of it before you are negotiating.

Smoke and carbon monoxide certificate

Before closing you need a certificate of compliance from the local fire department covering smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms. Which smoke alarm standard applies depends on when the house was built or last substantially permitted, so ask which one they inspect against. In a busy stretch that appointment is what holds up a closing.

The municipal lien certificate

The buyer’s attorney orders a municipal lien certificate from your town’s collector. It states what the municipality claims against the property — taxes, betterments, other assessments and fees — and is recorded with the deed. The collector has a statutory window to produce it — ten working days in the larger towns, twenty in the smaller ones — anything unpaid is settled at closing.

Commission and buyer-agent compensation since 2024

Commission has always been negotiable and still is. What you pay your listing broker is a term of your listing agreement, agreed before the house goes on the market.

What changed in August 2024 is the buyer’s side. Offers of compensation to a buyer’s broker can no longer be published in the MLS — not in a field, not in the remarks. An agent working with a buyer must also have a written agreement with that buyer before touring a home, stating the amount or rate of that agent’s compensation, and cannot then collect more than it says.

The effect for you: whether you contribute anything toward the buyer’s agent is now negotiated as a term of the offer, like price or the closing date, rather than advertised in advance. You can decline; a buyer can ask, and can fold the cost into what they offer. Decide where you stand before the first one arrives.

If a conventional listing is not what you want

Some sellers want speed or certainty more than the last few percent of price. Look at what a cash offer on your home involves and at a sale run on a compressed timeline, knowing the trade: fewer contingencies and a faster close generally net less than a well-prepared listing given time. Sometimes that is still the right deal. I will run it both ways and show the gap.

The towns I work in

Upton, Westborough, Hopkinton, Northbridge, Grafton and Mendon. Each has its own bylaws, building department and conservation commission, and its own mix of municipal water and sewer against private wells and septic.

Starting

The first conversation costs nothing. Send the address and your rough timeline and I will come back with what I see, including the parts you may not want to hear. Here is how to reach me and what to put in a first message.