New Beginnings. Fresh Starts. Clean Slates. Those have been the buzzwords around our home the last six months as we have purchased and sold a property at the same time! Talk about stressful! It did not help that the Sequester kicked in a few weeks after we moved/closed on our new home. YIKES! Let me say irrevocably that buying and selling can be some of the MOST STRESSFUL things you will EVER do. BUT they can also be among the BEST! Here are a few things I learned – hopefully they help someone and save someone a lot of GRIEF and STRESS and make YOUR experience the BEST!
SELLING 101
I was NOT prepared to be a seller. I thought that you find a realtor, they sell your condo, you accept an offer, a month or so later you sign papers, and done! Easy!!! Right? WRONG!
1) Selecting a realtor is one of the MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU WILL DO! We chose our realtor from when we purchased our home. We are friends with her — had a great experience when we purchased, anticipated the same. I never thought about asking questions about her philosophy, what she felt her role was, what we were paying her for, what life events she had coming up that might make it difficult for me to get in touch with her, etc. Turned out, we should have asked about ALL of those things! Since we didn’t, our experience was incredibly stressful. Miscommunication, faulty expectations, let-downs, family events getting in the way of professional needs. It was a mess! Perhaps your FRIEND who is a REALTOR isn’t the best person to hire as YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT!
2) Know what you are getting into financially – to the smallest details! The key to this is to ask lots of questions. When you first meet with your realtor, ask for a layout of what your costs as the seller will be. One thing no one told us is that we would be responsible for the taxes for the year we had owned it — which you would expect, right? However, we did not know that the taxes we had been paying each month as part of our mortgage payment were NOT those taxes. In other words, the taxes we had paid all year with our mortgage payment were from last year, and at closing we would be responsible for the rest of those taxes AND the ones for the current year. In our situation, that added up to $1,200 that we did not anticipate going into it and accepting our offer. Know Your Expenses – Set Your Bottomline
3) Know what your bottom line is – communicate it to your realtor and stand by it! If you need to JUST break even on your Payoff amount, then that is your bottom line. If you have other debts associated with it that you’ll be paying off and need to make more, figure that out and add it to your Payoff amount. That then becomes your bottom line. I knew what my bottom line was. I communicated it to my realtor. However, she did not stand by it. When an offer came in, she encouraged us to accept the offer, even though it was $3,500 lower than our bottom line. If your realtor does this to you, get a new realtor STAT! Talk to the broker at their agency and find someone else. A realtor who asks you to do more than you have communicated is possible is looking out for the sell (and their pocketbook) more than your needs! And if there are unexpected expenses at closing (like $1,200 in taxes) or you end up closing later than expected (also costing you money), you will already be getting less than you anticipated and could find yourself in an impossible financial situation while you wait to close. Decide – Communicate to Your Realtor – Stand By Your Decision – Expect Support from Your Realtor or get a new realtor.
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