Sunday, 22 January 2012

Being Prepared Can Help You Sell Your Home Easier

By Christy Lyons


Before you can even advertise your home for sale, you have to take care of a good number of things first. If you take care of these things first, your sale will go much more smoothly.

The process of selling a house can be quite Byzantine in nature. The myriad forms to fill out and the various characters you have to meet with are one thing, but time is really the big issue here. That said, anybody who wants to sell their house must prepare well in advance. Before you step out there with "for sale" sign in hand or post a "for sale" ad on the 'net, you must make sure that some things are duly taken care of. We shall now explain these things quickly to help readers have an easier time at selling the house.

Here a some suggestions for you before you put your home for sale:

Do you plan to work with a realtor? Don't hire this one "R" unless you do the other, bigger "R", meaning research, of course. You want a wizened master in the world of real estate, somebody with quality experience spanning years, even decades. You don't want to entrust this task to a realtor with milk on his or her lips, an absolute tyro in his or her profession. The big "R" will again serve as your most powerful weapon if you cannot find any realtors to work with and decide to sell your house independently - the Internet and real estate books are great resources. The letters FSBO may not mean much to you now, but they should - it simply means For Sale By Owner.

Is your property all set to be sold? Is it in tip-top shape? Does it need a new paint job? Roof maintenance, pray tell? Yard maintenance? These are things you want to have ready ahead of time. Always remember that it is so difficult to make a good first impression, yet so easy to make a bad one that may last forever. This applies to the interior of the home, as well. Before you show it, you need to make sure that it's clean and tidy.

Pre-approved loans - can they help? Getting pre-approved for a loan is something you must put on the top of your bucket list if you are planning to buy new property after selling your old house. As a result, you can shop for your new home with less inconvenience involved. An even better idea would be to apply now for a home equity line of credit on your existing property. So that way, if you ever find a nice new home while still in the process of selling the old one, you wouldn't have to worry about your down payment.

Should you have your property appraised? While realtors have a good idea of how much a home should sell for, you may not if you are selling it yourself. Plus, both mortgage and appraisal fraud are quite common these days. Having a third party appraisal would not be a bad idea at all, and may be much safer for you.

Selling a home isn't particularly complicated; millions of them are sold every year. Perhaps the people who have said it is difficult were those who weren't as prepared as you should be to sell your property.




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