Month: June 2017

Tips to Ensure Your Home’s Showing Is a Success

The purpose of showing your home is to hook a buyer. You want the buyers to come through your house and be impressed – so impressed in fact, that they’re ready to make an offer! You’ll have one chance to make a great first impression on the potential buyers, so make sure to follow these five helpful tips to really make it count!

1. Focus on the outside. Make sure that you don’t neglect the outside of your home. Curb appeal can make or break the odds of someone even bothering to get out of the car to come in. If they pull up and see a home with a lawn that obviously needs edging and has an unkempt flower bed, they’re going to wonder what else hasn’t been cared for properly. You want the outside of your home to be spotless. Clean the siding, the windows, and the doors. Make sure there are no dirt smudges, no cobwebs, and that anything that needs painting has been spiffed up. 
2. Take yourself out of the house. That means that you want to take out all the personal stuff. Remove the family photos from the wall or tables. You want the home to look neutral so that the potential buyers can look at your house and picture it as themselves living there. Everything should be as neutral as possible in terms of personal items. 
3. Remove all the extra clutter you see at first glance. If you look around, it’ll amaze you at how much stuff you’ve accumulated over the years. Some of it might very well be important, but that doesn’t mean that your potential buyers should see it. When you have a lot of clutter, it shrinks the living space of the house. It makes it look and feel cramped and smaller. Many homeowners get something called house blindness. They’ve lived in the home for so long with the same clutter that they don’t even really see it anymore. But a stranger will always notice. So clean out your house and make the space as big as possible.
4. If you have a pet, no one that walks through your house should be able to notice it exists. That means no cat litter box, no dog to jump on anyone, no food sitting around in a dish. Your home should not have any pet odors. Having a clean house that’s odor-free is a big selling point. You don’t want to lose a possible deal just because they can smell your pet’s presence or your pet makes a bad impression.
5. Stage your home! You can hire a professional or you can do it yourself. Stage your living areas in a way that shows off your home. You can rent furniture to make your home furnishings look good if you don’t use a stager. Someone who knows how to stage a house knows how to play up the best features of your home and knows what to bring in or get rid of to make the entire house appeal to a buyer. 

First impressions are HUGE when showing your home to potential buyers, but by following the simple tips above you will be well on your way to making a great impression and, hopefully, receiving multiple offers!  (And if you are at all anxious about this important step, just reach out to a trusted real estate agent in your area who can help guide you through this process!)

Selling a house is a big deal and you stand to gain or lose money depending on how the transaction is handled. You can put your home on the market and try to sell it on your own or you can hire an agent. 

There are pros and cons for doing it either way. If you sell your home yourself, you’re the one who has to handle all the showings. You might be someone who enjoys meeting people and letting them come into your home and sometimes having a good connection with the homeowner can lead to a sale. However, you can miss out on potential buyers if you don’t have an agent because most agents want to show homes to people who are represented by other agents. It’s a professional courtesy and agents know that other agents are aware of the ins and outs of home selling, whereas a homeowner won’t be. When you’re the one handling the sale, you’re close to the situation. 

Anything that a buyer points out that you don’t like can sound like a personal criticism. Sometimes buyers will point out what they perceive to be as faults with the home and inexperienced homeowners might be tempted to take less money. 

An agent is your go-between and handles any issues like that which might come up. When selling a home yourself, you might run into a case where the house sits on the market and just isn’t selling. You might not understand why that’s happening, whereas an agent would. However, you know your house better than an agent and you know which selling points to push that an agent may not point out. 

Selling a home is a lot of hard work. If you handle it like a business transaction and you have the time to be there to show your home or answer questions when prospective buyers reach out, then you can save on the expense of hiring an agent. 

One problem you might encounter, though, is that you might not have the kind of time that it takes to deal with potential buyers. An agent fields the calls, the email inquiries and the showing. He or she can also help a potential buyer know what to do in order to prequalify. Some homeowners have a large social media presence and a large circle of contacts that they can tap to put out the word that they’re selling their homes themselves. 

In some cases, for sale by owner homes have sold because of word of mouth. But on the other hand, the size of the audience that a real estate agent can reach will be larger. The bigger the potential buying audience, the more chances that your home will sell quickly. Once you have an interested buyer, you’ll have to have a contract drawn up. For this, you’ll need to pay for the services of an experienced real estate attorney. You’ll also have to hire an attorney to handle the closing. Real estate agents include this in the price of doing business with you.

A real estate agent understands the importance of an escrow and earnest money. If you’re selling your home by owner, you need to know what these are and how they apply to you. 

Earnest money is just like it sounds. It means that the potential buyer is earnest in his desire to buy your home. While you don’t necessarily have to have earnest money when you’re selling your home by the owner, it’s a good idea. It helps to weed out those who waste your time from those who are truly looking to buy. If you and the potential buyer are able to iron out all the issues during the negotiation, that earnest money is then considered part of the cost of buying the home. It gets counted as part of the down payment if one is required or it goes toward paying the closing costs. Keep in mind that earnest money does not always lock a potential buyer in. 

If, during the home negotiation, an issue arises with the house, the buyer has a right to get his money back. If you don’t know what to charge for the amount of earnest money, you can look at what the laws are in your state regarding that if there are any. As the usual rule of thumb, at least 1% of the home’s value should be offered. Some real estate deals though have set amounts in place as the earnest money such as $1,000 to $2,000. 

The supply and demand of the market can also impact the amount of earnest money required. You can’t spend the earnest money that you receive. You have to place that money in an escrow account until the home sale is finalized. Escrow is basically the same thing as earnest money. It just means that it’s where the earnest money is. Escrow funds are kept by the person dictated by the laws of your state. In some cases, it’s going to be the title company representative. It might be the company handling the closing or it could be a real estate attorney. This is known as third party handling. The purpose of this is to make sure that the transaction is completed and that the funds aren’t dispersed until it is. It protects both the seller and the buyer until all the documents are signed and the home changes ownership. It’s a way of making sure that all the agreements or contingencies between the parties were met. If, at the last moment, the buyer just decides he doesn’t want the house even though all his conditions or contingencies were met and breaks the deal, then the seller can be entitled to keep the escrow.

Buying a home is a big event, especially if it is your first home.  There will probably be many things you don’t know, because you simply haven’t been through the home buying process before.  One of the most common questions of first-time homebuyers is whether they need to hire a buyer’s agent.

There is nothing that requires anyone to hire a buyer’s agent.  You can find homes for sale on your own and work directly with the seller’s agent.  The problem with that is that the seller’s agent has the seller’s best interests in mind.  He will try to get the highest possible price for the seller, and is in fact contractually bound to do so.  He is also obligated not to share any confidential information about his client with you.

Working with a buyer’s agent gives you the advantage of having a knowledgeable and experienced agent looking out for your best interests.  Your agent will help you find property that meets your needs.  He will then assist you in negotiations to help you get it at the lowest possible price.

You can work with an agent without signing a buyer’s agency contract.  In fact, it’s a good idea to do so for a while until you’re sure that you want that agent to represent you.  You need time to determine whether the agent will listen to your needs, and whether the two of you will be able to get along.

An agent is not legally bound to keep information, such as the highest price you would pay for a property, confidential until you sign a contract with him.  If he is a dual agent that also represents sellers and you want to buy a home that belongs to one of his clients, he has to share that information unless he is legally representing your interests.  So keeping such things to yourself until there is a written agreement is a good idea.

An agent should not pressure you into signing an agreement right away.  That is a bad sign in and of itself.  If after a while you’re still unsure, you can talk to the agent about signing an agreement that only lasts for a short time.  You could also consider a non-exclusive agreement, which allows the agent to represent you but also allows you to work with other agents.

A buyer’s agent is not necessary when you are buying a home, but having someone with experience on your side can make your home buying experience a more pleasant and potentially less expensive one.  In many cases your agent and the seller’s agent will split the commission.  That means that you can have your own agent without having to spend more money.