Like it or not, there will always come a time when you have to sell your home. Whether you want to scale down your lifestyle or relocate to another city, going through the selling process is essential to ensuring a good return.
After all, the purpose of selling your home is not just because you don’t want to live there anymore. You also need to get a good price on the property, which you can use to reinvest in a new home.
Home Selling Process
Still, the selling process is just as complex as shopping around for a new home. It involves so many steps that it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening throughout the transaction. On the other hand, everything becomes easier once you already know what to do.
On that note, you should be able to understand the essential parts of selling your home. Once you already know these parts, it will be smooth sailing from there.
Get a Good Realtor:
The first step to starting the selling process is simply getting a professional realtor to help you out. For this, make sure you find a licensed listing agent. This agent is responsible for setting up your home for the multiple listing services and facilitating the transaction with interested buyers.
It’s important that you get the right person who can represent your best interests, so make sure to find qualified individuals or firms that can guarantee the best quality of service for your needs. You should be able to get a ton of resumes from separate listing agents and look for the credentials that stand out. One practical option is to get your current realtor to help you out with selling your property. If you already have a strong working relationship with your current agent, then you may not want to settle for anything less.
Evaluate Your Home:
If you have owned your home for a very long time, you may need to have it re-evaluated to see how much it has grown in value. One thing’s for sure, you have likely made several improvements since you purchased it. Along with a healthy seller’s market, you will definitely get a good price at the end of the day.
Accuracy is important when you’re thinking of pricing your home, so have your realtor run market comparisons. This will help you arrive at a selling price that’s within the range of current market rates, allowing you to find buyers faster.
Announce an Open House:
Once interested buyers are flooding in, it’s time to prep your home for an open house visit. For this, you will need to make your home as presentable as possible. Improvements such as a new coat of paint and a refurbished master bedroom are just some of the best ways to impress home buyers.
Understand Your Role in the Due Diligence:
Marketing and improving your home is but a fraction of the work you’ll be doing to close a sale. The difficult part is due diligence. For this, the buyer will request a home inspection to find any issues that should figure at the final selling price.
For your part, you will need to open up an escrow with your transaction coordinator and conduct conveyancing works. Here, you will need to disclose any liens the property has. Once that’s out of the way, you can finally set yourself up for final price negotiation with a buyer.
Things You Must Do Before Listing Your Home for Sale
Are you planning to finally list your home? Do you feel that you are ready to take your home and bring it into the real estate market? Then, by all means, go! But make sure you do this one thing before you proceed with the listing of your home for sale.
The first thing you need to be aware of is that your local municipality has the documentation of your property, regardless of its size, type, and location. However, there is a chance that the records may not match your home. Moreover, if your home has lingering issues that you failed to resolve, they can derail your sale or end it altogether.
The Building Department:
Thus, you need to get in touch with the building department, which holds the records of every building and home, including their respective permits issued. It is the responsibility of the building inspector to ensure that if there are any changes that take place involving the house or building, it should adhere to the existing codes. In addition, these changes must be administered by licensed contractors.
One of the biggest concerns of the building department is the safety of the homes. The moment you apply for a permit, there must be an inspector who is physically present. He will be the one to approve and sign off the work that will be conducted by the contractor, electrician, or plumber.
Why You Should Care:
As a home seller, you should care about this matter without any questions. After making a deal with a home buyer, he will go and check with the building department to ensure that there are no issues in regard to your property’s document. If they see that there is no existing permit or if the permit is open, meaning the inspector did not sign off the contractor’s work, there is a risk that the buyer may back out of the deal.
Errors in the documentation may have stemmed from a lapse on the part of the previous homeowner. The contractor can also be at fault. In some cases, it is the building department to blame.
The Assessor’s Records:
And then there is also the assessor’s record. The town assessor also makes sure that he monitors the local real estate market. He keeps track if the house is properly assessed and that its value is aligned with what the market currently dictates.
Whenever the local real estate market slows down, the assessor will not lower the assessed value proactively. This is because, in the event that you made some major improvements in your house, the assessor would want to raise your home’s value.
An increase in value also equates to higher taxes on your part. If you are selling your Fort Lauderdale real estate or looking for Fort Lauderdale homes for sale make sure to work with Tim Elmes and his team.
