Sean McConnell has spent 13 years selling real estate in the Seattle metro area, and his approach comes down to three things: pricing, marketability, and improvements. Pre-inspections do a lot of the work here — in a market where buyers expect homes to already be in move-in shape, knowing what's wrong before it becomes a negotiating point is half the battle.

One of the more overlooked levers, according to Sean, is bedroom count. When one of his brokers, Maddie, took on a listing that was only two bedrooms, the layout itself was the ceiling on price — a lot of buyers in that price range simply search for three bedrooms and never see a two-bedroom listing at all, no matter how nice it is.

The fix was straightforward on paper: build out a legal, conforming third bedroom before the home hit the market. The harder part is usually funding it — sellers are often mid-move, cash-strapped, or simply reluctant to spend money on a house they're about to leave. Since Compass launched Notable's Concierge program in 2018, that's been less of an obstacle for Sean's team; they've used it for everything from moving costs and pre-inspections to light paint and full roof replacements, without asking sellers to pay upfront.

With the third bedroom in place, the home sold for top dollar — a price point the original two-bedroom layout wouldn't have reached.

The improvements that move a sale price the most aren't always cosmetic. Sometimes it's the layout itself, and knowing which structural change is worth making is part of what separates a good listing strategy from an average one.