Selling a home in Palo Alto What actually happens between “yes” and sold.
The homepage makes the case. This is the calendar — who does what, in which order, where you are involved, and what it is reasonable to expect.
The sign goes up 
Going through it 
Signing 
A good day The sequence
Five phases, in order.
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Understand
Goals, timing and priorities — before any advice
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Strategize
Preparation scope, pricing and launch timing
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Prepare
Improvements, vendors and staging — managed for you
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Launch
Storytelling, photography and buyer engagement
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Negotiate
Price, terms and execution through close
The calendar
Most of the work happens before anyone sees the house.
Sellers picture the open house. The open house is two weekends at the end of a process that has already decided the outcome.
- 01
Understand
One conversation
Goals, timing and what you actually want out of this — before any advice.
- 02
Strategize
A week or two
What to touch, what to leave, what it should cost and when to launch.
- 03
Prepare
The long part
Trades, repairs, staging. Managed for you — this is where the time goes.
- 04
Launch
Two weeks, loud
Photography, the story, broker tour, open houses, private showings.
- 05
Negotiate
To the keys
Offers, terms, contingencies and escrow, through to close.
And on which month to start — the answer, from five years of Palo Alto sales, is not the one most sellers are given: when to sell in Palo Alto →
Preparation
The cheapest money in the whole transaction.
Preparation is the cheapest money in the whole transaction, and it is the money most sellers are most afraid to spend.
In Maggie’s experience the budget comes back many times over — often ten times or better — because the work is aimed at the specific thing that would have made a buyer hesitate, not at a general improvement of the house. That is the difference between spending money on a property and investing it in a sale.
What it would cost at your house is not something a website can tell you, and any site that gives you a figure is guessing. It depends on what is already right, what is visible from the street, what a buyer will find in the disclosures — and on what you want out of the sale. That is a conversation, and it is a free one.
What that looks like
1560 University Avenue.
On one of the busiest streets in Palo Alto, with the original 1930s windows. The work was aimed at the two things a buyer would have walked in thinking about.
Before 
After 
What the sellers wrote afterwards
Creativity, tenacity, and calm confidence.
Dear Maggie,
It has been a pleasure working with you.
Your creativity, tenacity and calm confidence helped us.
We are very grateful.
The house was listed on January 15, 2026 and closed on February 26 at $5,110,000 — $122,000 above asking, thirteen days on the market.
Your part of it
You make four decisions. Maggie does the rest.
The most common thing a seller says afterwards is that they expected it to take over their life and it did not. This is why.
You
Four decisions and a signature
- Tell Maggie what you actually want — the price, the date, or the quiet.
- Approve the preparation scope and the budget.
- Approve the list price and the launch date.
- Be out of the house for photography and for the open weekend.
- Read and sign. Everything is explained before it is in front of you.
Maggie
Every judgment call
- Walks the house and decides what is worth doing and what is not.
- Builds the preparation plan and the budget, and defends both.
- Prices the house — the strategy, not just the number.
- Writes the story the house is marketed on.
- Runs the broker tour and the open houses herself.
- Takes every agent call, and reads every buyer before their offer arrives.
- Negotiates price, terms and contingencies.
- Stays on it through escrow to the keys.
The team and the trades
Everything with a schedule attached
- Booking and sequencing the trades so they are not tripping over each other.
- Painters, floors, landscapers, handymen, cleaners.
- Staging — delivery, install, and removal after close.
- Photography, video and floor plans.
- Print, signage, mailers and the listing everywhere it appears.
- Disclosure packages, inspections and the paperwork trail.
- Escrow coordination and the dates nobody should have to remember.
What the trades themselves charge on the Peninsula — roofing, paint, termite, landscaping — is published separately: what preparation costs →
Getting it in front of buyers
Exposure is the easy part. Attention is the job.
Every agent puts a house on the MLS. What happens either side of that is where listings separate.
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The house is photographed like a house, not like a listing
Daylight and twilight, interiors and garden, a floor plan, and video where the house needs to be walked rather than looked at. Shot after staging is finished, never during.
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It arrives with a story, not a feature list
Bedroom counts are on every portal already. What a buyer cannot get anywhere else is why this house is the way it is, what was done to it, and how it feels to walk in — which is the part that changes an offer.
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Maggie runs the broker tour and the open houses herself
Not a stand-in, not a weekend assistant. The agent who can answer a buyer’s agent’s question on the spot is the agent who priced the house, and that has moved more offers than any advertisement.
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Marketed in English and in Mandarin, everywhere
A significant share of Palo Alto buyers are more comfortable in Mandarin, and most listings reach them in translation or not at all. Maggie writes both versions herself and speaks to those buyers directly.
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Where it actually appears
The MLS and every portal it feeds, the brokerage network, print and signage, email to the agents who sell in your neighborhood, and direct outreach to the buyers Maggie already knows are looking on your street.
Pricing
A list price is a marketing tool, not an estimate.
The number you put on a house is not a prediction of what it will sell for. It is a decision about who walks through the door, how many of them there are, and what they think the others are willing to pay.
Two houses on the same street, worth the same money, can be listed three hundred thousand dollars apart and both be priced correctly — because they are being aimed at different buyers, on different calendars, with different amounts of competition in the market that month. Getting that wrong in either direction is the most expensive mistake in the transaction, and it is made before the house is ever photographed.
Maggie has a specific method for choosing that number, and for the offer mechanics that follow it. It is the part of this job she is least willing to publish — partly because it is genuinely what she is hired for, and partly because it depends entirely on your house, your street and the week you launch.
So this page stops here. Bring her the address and she will walk you through exactly what she would do with it, before you have agreed to anything at all.
And what it costs
Published, unlike almost anywhere else.
One rate, all in, and a list of the twenty-six things it covers — including preparation management, staging, photography, advertising and the events. The third-party costs it does not cover are named on the same page, in the same size type.
The honest part
Sometimes the answer is not yet.
A listing agent is paid when a house sells, which means every seller is being advised by someone with a reason to say yes. Worth knowing when you are weighing the advice.
There are houses Maggie has told people not to list. A renovation half finished, where six more weeks would have been worth a great deal more than the six weeks cost. A probate that had not cleared, where listing first would have created a problem rather than solved one. A seller three months from a life change that would have made the whole decision different.
And there is the opposite case, which is more common: a house that needs far less work than the owner has convinced themselves it does, and a seller about to spend money on a kitchen that a buyer in this market will replace anyway.
If that is the answer at your house, you will hear it in the first conversation, and it will not cost you anything.
Whatever brought you here
The right move is different in each case.
A house that was left to you, a house with tenants in it and a house you are leaving the state for are three different transactions. They are not the same advice with a different name on it.
The house was left to you
A trust or an estate, siblings to agree with, and a tax question underneath it that is worth getting right before anything is listed.
Start here →There are tenants in it
What you can and cannot do in California, how notice works, and whether selling occupied is ever the better answer.
The rules, plainly →It needs work you did not do
Deferred maintenance, an old kitchen, a roof somebody has been meaning to deal with. Sell it as it stands or prepare it first — and you do not have to pay for the work until close of escrow.
As-is, or fix it? →You are leaving the area
A relocation, a second home, a sale run from three time zones away. It can all be done remotely, and most of it already is.
Ask about timing →Questions sellers ask
The questions, answered properly.
One page per question, each written by Maggie and each dated.
The list I actually give people.
What to fix, what to skip, and what it returns in Palo Alto.
A short, specific guide — the improvements that reliably return more than they cost in this market, and the ones that almost never do.
On its way. — Maggie
One guide, sent once. Unsubscribe any time.
Start with a conversation. Nothing else.
Most of these turn into a coffee and nothing else for a year, which is exactly what they are for. You will hear from Maggie when you ask to, and not otherwise.
Or text her directly on 650.709.5588.