Tips For Sellers

Congratulations on making the choice to sell your home. If you are a first-time seller, you must be wondering, now what? On the road ahead there are many questions that will need to be asked related to selling your home. The biggest one may be, why sell at all?

We know that it is not easy to put the "For Sale" sign in front of your home. We recommend you take a careful look at where you want to move. You could be moving because your family has outgrown the home you're in or your job is relocating you.

Now it's time to talk about moving, but before you pack your stuff and move, make sure when you move you're not bringing the reason you moved with you. Be it a small kitchen, not enough bedrooms, too small of yard, whatever the reason is.

With that out of the way, it's time to ask yourself some questions, we recommend that you write your answers down so you have a list you can follow up with.

Do You Gain Anything by Selling Your Home?
Be honest with yourself on this one and ask yourself what you gain by selling. Is there a bigger and better home in the future for you or does the new home fit your needs better? Even downsizing can be a great reason. If your current home is bigger than you need and you would like a smaller home to lower bills and taxes that is a great reason. Sometimes the reason will be money from the sale to finance something important in your life.

You will usually have to coordinate the sale of your current home with the purchase of your new home. The timing for this can be tricky, feel free to ask us for help with it. We can give you advice on this and help you with the timing and coordination. You will need to think about which avenue you should take first, buying your home or selling your home. If you need the income from the sale of your current home to help finance the purchase of your new home, then obviously, you will need to sell your home first. However, if you do not need the income from the sale of your current home to finance your new home purchase, then you may be able to avoid some unnecessary headaches or delays by purchasing your new home before your current home sells.

Buy First
Buying first is a great choice for several reasons. It will provide you with a home to always go home to during the process. But on the other hand, this can be a risky move because you could potentially end up with two mortgage payments. You can always make the buying of the new home contingent on the sale of your old home, but sellers generally do not like this because they have no idea how long it will take or what your old home looks like. If a seller receives another offer, you will want to be sure you have the right to remove the contingency and buy the home or withdraw your offer.

Sell First
Selling first is a great strategy. It puts you in a great position to buy a new home, but there is a risk here that you might end up without a home at all, at least temporarily until you find another one. Selling your home first also ensures that you don't have two mortgage payments.

Buy and Sell at the Same Time
This is what most people will strive for. It is the best choice of the three because you will sell your home and get your new one almost at the same time, sometimes within days, which may work perfectly for you.

Cost of Selling                                                                                                                                                                                 We want to let you know what the costs of selling your home are so that there are no surprises down the road. What are the costs you might ask?

How Much is My Home Worth?
We know that pricing a home is the single hardest part of selling a home. You always hope that your home is appreciated in value and usually that is the case. We know that you want to ensure the best price for your home, try filling out our questionnaire, "What's My Home Worth?" form on our website to give us some general information about your home. This will help us get some basic information and provide you with an approximate value to start with.

Using an agent is the most tried and trusted way of establishing a sales price. Real Estate Agents know what other homes in the area have sold for and can give you a great idea of how much your home is worth. If you are wondering before you are ready to sell your home, try attending the open house of a home that is similar to yours, same number of bedrooms, bathrooms, same type of house, and a home around your neighborhood.

Marketing Your Home
We will deal with this part for you. The marketing of your home is covered by your Real Estate Agent. We can gladly say that this is one thing during the process that you will not have to worry about. We will put out the "For Sale" signs and will provide other kinds of marketing that range from internet listings to print material.

Closing
The closing is where it all comes together. All the documentation will be signed by both the buyer and the seller. During this process, the buyer has to do much more than the seller.

What Does the Seller Have to Do for Closing?

What Can Go Wrong at Closing?
As much as we would love to tell you nothing can go wrong, that just isn't the case. There are many reasons that a closing may not happen on the assigned day. We feel that it is important for you to understand these reasons in the event that you run into one of them.

We hope that this information has proved useful to you as you prepare to sell your home. Please contact us if you have any questions or would like more information. We are here to help you make the sale of your home a success.