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Home Selling Jitters

Choosing to sell your house can be an exhilarating moment in your life, whether you are upgrading for a growing family, downsizing to your retirement dream home, or relocating for a new opportunity. However, selling your house can also be pretty scary. There are a lot more decisions now than there were when you bought that home, mainly if you were a first time home buyer

As you prepare to sell your house, you have to be thinking about your next step. Are you able to buy your next home before you have to sell your current home? Are you going to rent a short time until you find your dream home? Or are you going to hope that you can close on your old house and a new home on the same day? 

Seeing the “For Sale” placed in front of your house is a pretty exciting day. But what is even more exciting is the day you accept an offer. That means no more cleaning in between showings, relocating your pets for a few hours, or making your home inviting for open houses. However, you are not done yet. Now it’s time for the buyer to bring in home inspectors and also appraisers if they are financing. 

Now is where those pre-inspections and pre-appraisals (that we hope you opted for) come in handy. You don’t have to worry about any surprises when the second set of inspectors come through. Occasionally, you don’t even have to worry about the buyer ordering their reports because they may accept the pre-reports. But you should always be prepared for hiccups and the chance that the contract may fall through.

Most contracts do get all the way to the closing table, however, according to Trulia, 3.9% written in 2016 failed. Why is that? Contingencies. The home can be contingent on financing, home inspections, or the buyer’s home also selling. When it comes to money, the buyer may not have gone through a pre-approval or jinxed their credit with any recent purchases. (Note: Require that pre-approvals must be submitted with any offers.) The home may not appraise at the sale price, you may be unable to lower the cost nor the buyer, or they will not fork out the difference. The home inspection could reveal a massive problem, usually structural, which often scares off the buyer. It will be necessary to fix significant issues if you want to continue with the sale of your home, but that initial buyer may not wait around for the completed repairs. 

We want to think positive, but let’s say the contract on the sale of your house falls through. What do you do? Step back and take a breather. Ask your agent to temporarily withdraw your home from the market until you can sit down with them and put together a game plan. If you didn’t get a pre-listing inspection the first go-round, here’s your second chance! If your home didn’t appraise at asking price, now you know where you need to be. If the buyer’s financing fell through, consider our previous suggestion of requiring pre-approval letters with all offers. Get all your ducks back in a row before you have your agent relist your house. Then ask them to host a few open houses to give your listing a big marketing push. 

Have you been tossing around the idea of putting your house up for sale? Let us guide you every step of the way. Give us a call today at 855-HEY-JEFF!

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