The first step in selling a house is not cleaning, photos, or signing a listing agreement. It is knowing your real number: what your home is worth based on actual recent sales, what you owe on it, and what you would net after selling costs. Every decision that follows, pricing, repairs, timing, and where you go next, depends on that number being honest, and getting it costs you nothing but a conversation.
Why the Number Comes First
Sellers who start anywhere else make avoidable mistakes. They spend money on a kitchen refresh their street will not pay back. They fall in love with a listing price a website suggested. They start shopping for their next home in Chelmsford or Dracut without knowing what their Lowell home actually puts in their hand. I have watched all three happen, and each one traces back to the same skipped step.
Your real number is built the way a buyer's appraiser will build it later: from closed sales of homes comparable to yours in size, type, condition, and location, sold recently. In Lowell, “comparable” has to be specific. A single family in Belvidere is not priced off a two-family in the Acre. A loft in a downtown mill building is not priced off a condo across the river in Centralville. Getting the right comparable set is the entire game, and it is the work I do first on every sale as the #1 selling agent in Lowell.
The Three Figures to Gather
First, your likely sale range, from the valuation. Second, your payoff: what you owe on your mortgage and any home equity line, which your lender can give you exactly. Third, your selling costs. In Massachusetts, sellers pay the deed excise tax of $4.56 per $1,000 of the sale price, plus smaller items like the smoke and carbon monoxide certificate and recording costs, and if your home has a septic system, a Title V inspection belongs in your early budget because its result can change your plan. Sale range minus payoff minus costs is your net, and your net is the number your next move is built on.
Then Build the Plan Around It
With the number in hand, the rest of step one is a plan. Where are you going, and do you need to buy before you sell, after, or at the same time? What is your deadline, if you have one? What does your home need before it meets buyers, and what will you deliberately leave alone? If tenants are in place, as in many Lowell two and three-family homes in Pawtucketville and South Lowell, the plan has to include notice periods and showing logistics from the start, not as an afterthought.
Only after the number and the plan exist does it make sense to talk about prep work, pricing strategy, and a list date. Sellers who start here almost never end up chasing the market down with price cuts, because their price was defensible on the day the home hit the market.
How Long Step One Takes
About as long as it takes me to pull your comparable sales and sit down with you, usually within a day or two of your call. Bring what you know about the house: the updates you have made, the age of the roof and heating system, anything the tax records get wrong. The more honest the inputs, the more useful the number.
Take step one now. I will prepare a free, no obligation home valuation for your Greater Lowell home, work out what you would net, and help you build the plan around it. Call Doherty Properties at (978) 746-0124 and ask for me, Chris Doherty.
Chris Doherty is the #1 selling agent in Lowell, ranked #1 in the city again and again, including in 2024 and 2025, and he is one of Greater Lowell's top-producing agents. He personally sells 100+ homes a year, with 3,000+ career transactions, and Doherty Properties, the company he leads, has handled over $1 billion in real estate transactions.
Doherty Properties LLC, 14 Jackson Street, Lowell, MA 01852 | 160 Main Street, Unit 7, Haverhill, MA 01830 | 4 Courthouse Lane, Suite 2, Chelmsford, MA 01824 | (978) 746-0124 | [email protected]
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