The Home Field Advantage
Listing a home and selling a home are two different jobs.
Most of what happens after the sign goes in the yard is waiting — for another agent to bring a buyer. I’d rather go find the buyer. Here’s exactly how that works, and what your house is worth before we start.
Worked out from real comparable sales, not an automated estimate. No cost, and no obligation to list with me.
What actually goes wrong
Almost every house sells. The question is what it cost you to get there.
Three things account for most of the difference between a sale you feel good about and one you just wanted finished. None of them are about the house.
The price came from hope, not evidence
An agent who wants the listing will agree with your number. Then the market disagrees, quietly, for six weeks — and the price cuts start. By then the house is stale and every buyer knows it.
It got listed, then left alone
A sign, a lockbox, and a listing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is where most agents stop. That's farming — putting it out and waiting for someone else's buyer to wander past. It works fine in a market that sells itself.
Nobody told you the truth until it was expensive
Bad news gets softened. Showings drop off and you hear that it's seasonal. The most useful thing an agent can tell you is usually the thing they're least comfortable saying.
The advantage
The Home Field Advantage is five things, and one of them matters more than the other four.
The part that does the work
I go find the buyer
Relocation traffic, out-of-state visibility, my own database, and a content engine that puts your house in front of people who aren't watching the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Hunting, not farming. This is the part most listing presentations don't have, and it's the reason I ask for the appointment.
Pricing, shown three ways
Aggressive, market, and conservative — side by side, with what each one actually costs you in time and in dollars. You pick with the trade-offs in front of you instead of being talked into a number.
The market you're actually in
Not Utah averages. What has sold near you, what's sitting, and how long it took — for your street and your price band, refreshed before we meet rather than pulled off a quarterly report.
A timeline you can hold me to
Week by week, what happens and who does it. You should never have to call and ask what's going on with your own house.
Someone who's been where you're going
Twenty-seven years in uniform and twenty as a corrections officer. If you're military, a veteran, law enforcement, fire, or a first responder — a Permanent Change of Station (PCS) window, a Veterans Affairs (VA) loan on the other end, shift work that makes showings a nightmare — I don't need it explained to me.
The appointment
What we’d actually cover, in order.
An hour, at your kitchen table or on a screen — whichever you’d rather. The Comparative Market Analysis (CMA), the pricing scenarios and the marketing plan get built around your address, so none of this is a slideshow I show everybody.
- 01
The Open
Why I work the seller side the way I do, and where it came from.
- 02
Why a Local Agent Is a Different Animal
What being from here actually changes about selling your house — and what it doesn't.
- 03
Local Market Command
Your street, your price band, your competition. Pulled fresh, not quarterly.
- 04
Pricing Strategy
Three scenarios with their trade-offs shown, so the number is a decision and not a guess.
- 05
The Marketing Offensive
The buyer-hunting system — where I look, who I reach, and what it costs you. Nothing.
- 06
Process and Timeline
Week by week from signature to keys, including the weeks where it goes quiet.
- 07
The Commission Conversation
Raised by me, before you have to ask. The number that matters is what you net.
- 08
Veterans and First Responders
Not a loan explainer. What changes when your agent has actually lived the schedule.
- 09
Your Questions, Answered Honestly
Including the ones where the honest answer isn't the one I'd prefer to give.
- 10
The Close
One clear next step. No pressure, and no script about signs in yards.
You don’t have to wait for the appointment to see it. The whole thing is here — all ten sections, the pricing tool, and the part where I tell you what I’d turn down. Read it before you decide whether I’m worth an hour.
Who you’d be working with
I’m not from around here in the marketing sense. I’m from here.
Grantsville. I know which streets buyers ask for by name, which ones they ask about after they’ve driven them, and what a view of the Oquirrhs is actually worth to somebody moving out from the valley.
Twenty-seven years in uniform — Marine Corps first, then the Utah Army National Guard, with two deployments to Iraq. If you’re selling around a Permanent Change of Station (PCS) window or a set of orders that moved twice, you don’t have to explain that to me. I’m certified as a Military Relocation Professional (MRP), but the useful part is that I’ve packed a house on someone else’s schedule.
Alongside that, twenty years as a corrections officer for Salt Lake County. It is not a job that rewards telling people what they want to hear, and I didn’t leave that habit at the door. If your price is wrong, you will hear it from me first and early, while it’s still cheap to fix.
Home base is Tooele County. I work Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties too — and I’ll tell you plainly if your address is one where somebody else knows the street better than I do.
Start here
What’s it actually worth?
Tell me the address and I’ll pull the comparable sales myself — what sold near you, what it sold for, and how long it sat. You get a range and the sales it came from, so you can check my work. Want it narrowed to a single number? That takes a walk through the house, and it’s your call whether we go that far.
- A person does this, not an algorithm. Expect one to two business days.
- No cost, and no obligation to list with me — now or later.
- If the honest range is lower than you hoped, that's the range you'll get.
- I won't add you to a drip campaign. One reply, then it's your move.
Before you send it
The questions people ask me first.
A real one. Automated estimates work off public records and can't see your kitchen, your roof, or the fact that the house behind you backs onto a field. I pull the comparable sales by hand and read them against what you've told me — that takes a day or two, not four seconds. Walking through the house is what closes the last of the gap, and that part is up to you.
No. You get the range and what's behind it either way. If you'd rather sit on it for a year, that's a completely reasonable thing to do with it.
Then I'll tell you that, and I'll show you the sales it came from. I'd rather lose the listing on the first conversation than take it at a price that has you cutting twice and selling months later for less than you'd have got at the start.
It's the best time. Most of what raises a sale price — the repairs worth doing and the ones that aren't, the timing of the listing — needs months, not weeks. A year out you have every option. Three weeks out you have almost none.
First, a range — no visit needed. I pull the recent sales around you and come back within a business day or two with a bracket and the sales it came from. That's honest, but it's built from the outside: sold records can't see your kitchen, your roof, or the work you've put in, so the range is wider than it needs to be. If you want it narrowed to an actual number, I'll come walk through the place, and that's the visit that does it. Plenty of people stop at the range, and that's a perfectly good place to stop. Either way the figure can move once I've seen the house — that's not me leaving myself room, it's the difference between a record and a home.
One last thing
I’d rather lose the listing than take it wrong.
This is my business. Not something I do around the edges of something else — it’s what I’m out doing, with people in this county who are making the same decision you are. I want your listing, the same as any agent would.
What I won’t do is buy it by agreeing with a number I don’t believe. Three things make me tell a seller I’m not their guy: a price more than three percent above the top of what the recent sales support, an unwillingness to put a written price-improvement plan behind a reach, or a house that isn’t going to be made ready to show. I say it in the room, calmly, on the first visit — because telling you then is a short conversation, and telling you in four months is an expensive one.
That’s the slow, honest way, and it genuinely is slower. It makes for a longer first meeting, and sometimes it costs me the job. But an agent who’ll agree to any number to win the listing isn’t doing you a kindness — they’re moving the bad news to a point where it costs you real money. That’s the whole advantage, and it’s the reason the rest of this page is worth anything.
Buying as well as selling? The Real Buyer’s Guide is thirteen sections on the other half of the move, free, and you don’t have to work with me to use it.