Posts with tag 'Selling your home'

Buying and selling a home at the same time is essentially doing two jobs at once. Coupled with other life obligations, you will have a lot on your plate. While our real estate agents know it seems like a daunting challenge, the following tips can help you sell your home, buy a new home, and stay balanced.

1. Study the Market
   Timing is critical, and you should have a solid understanding of prevailing market trends where your home is located and where the home you want to buy is located. This can help you position your home to sell so you won't have to wait to buy a home where you want.
   
   
2. Secure Funds for a Down Payment
   Apply for a home equity line of credit (HELOC) before you list your home. This will give you access to funds you can use as a down payment. Alternatively, build up your savings, or speak with your bank about a bridge loan.
   
   
3. Be Ready to Make a Contingent Offer
   If you find the home you want before you selling, then you may want to broach the subject of a sales and settlement contingency with the seller. This allows you to put an offer on a home with a first-right-of-refusal if the seller accepts your offer. Ideally, you will want to wait until you have an offer on your own home and then discuss a settlement contingency that allows you to buy the home when your home is sold.  

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Achieving any big goal starts with understanding why you want it. Our real estate agents believe this is especially pertinent when selling your home. If you don't feel motivated, it may never get done.

That's not surprising since selling your home can seem like an intimidating prospect. That's true of just about anywhere, including our local Central Virginia real estate market.

But, if you feel drawn to pursue your goal, everything becomes much easier.

We advise sellers to clarify in their mind exactly why they are selling and what they hope to accomplish by doing so. This clear mental picture helps them take action – for example, moving faster when they find the right next home for them.

Naturally, all sellers have their own motivations. Let's consider some of them now:

• Improving Your Financial Health
  Sometimes, the cost of maintaining a home simply becomes too much. You might find that the utilities are much more expensive than you thought or that major repairs are becoming a fact of life. While you might have to cut back on location or size, the sacrifice need not be dire. A real estate agent can help you find a home that matches your needs better and provides peace of mind.
  
  

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It might feel like winter is never going to end, but spring will be here before you know it.

If you're planning to list your Tri-Cities home for sale on the spring real estate market, now is the time to prepare. Getting your home ready now will minimize your stress later and allow you to get a jump on your listing before other spring home sales come on the market.

Not sure where to start? No problem! Our REALTORS® are here to share their list of the top seven things you can do now to help make your house stand out this spring.

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Every once in a while, you'll pass by a home that's for sale by owner (FSBO). If you're selling a home you may wonder if that homeowner knows something you don't know. The truth is that FSBO comes with many risks because listing (and selling) a house effectively requires time, experience, and specialized skills. Working with a REALTOR® makes life easier when selling a home, and our real estate agents are excited to tell you more about how we can help.

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If you're the kind of person who likes to do things on your own, you might find the idea of an FSBO sale – for sale by owner – intriguing. Unfortunately, the benefits that people expect often fail to materialize ... and the final sale turns out to be much less profitable than planned.

Homeowners who are going into their first sale often believe they can save money and even speed up the process by going it alone. When things go poorly at first, it's easy for inexperienced sellers to double down and feel like they just need to "tough it out."  By the time they decide to work with a qualified real estate agent, they may have done more harm than good selling their home.

By the time someone is there to get the sale on track, trends in the housing market could be shifting. Sometimes, the changes are positive ones. In many cases, though, sellers find themselves running after the initial conditions that persuaded them to sell in the first place.

That can be a disaster – it could even sabotage the prospects for selling at all.

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