What To Expect When Selling your Home
First, it is important to understand that selling your home is an important decision that shouldn't be taken lightly. Many things must happen to sell your home and avoiding problems by planning ahead is key to doing this.
There are many ways to sell a home, you can do it yourself as a For Sale By Owner, or you can use a Real Estate Agent. There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of selling your home. For the sake of this timeline we will assume that you are using a REALTOR ®. When choosing a REALTOR ® if you have no experience or personal relationships with a REALTOR ® that you would like to use it would be important for you to interview many agents and get a feel for one that you feel you can work with. This person is working to market, negotiate, and to control the Escrow process of selling your home. This should be someone you believe is competent in their profession.
To make your home more desirable it is worth the effort to ensure that your home is as clean and spacious as it can possibly be. This may require the use of a Staging Professional, but is not always the case. A home that has been arranged in a manner that makes it look more open and spacious will typically sell faster. This is important for future open houses as well as home showings by REALTORS ®, so it is important that once the initial staging or cleaning of the home is completed that it stays in a similar manner throughout the time your home is on the market.
When it comes to marketing your home your agent should have a plan for doing this. Shooting from the hip on marketing usually leads to a long time on the market. Some things that ALL REALTORS® should do (at a minimum) is put your home on the MLS with 6 photos, put a sign in front of your home and make brochures of your home. The Sundin Group does all of these PLUS a lot more with our aggressive 14-Step Marketing Plan.
When your house goes on the market it is important to note that the market typically dictates how fast an offer will come in depending upon how well the home is priced. With that said when you receive an offer you can do one of three things with it. First, you can decline the offer in which nothing happens and your home continues on the market. Second, you can counter the offer, and negotiate with potential Buyers. Or third you can accept the offer, and your home will then be under contract and Escrow will start based upon the agreed to terms of the contract.
Here is where the process becomes more involved and must be done in accordance to the contract once it is accepted. All timelines are agreed to and written into the contract so they might not match the examples we will have here but it is close to the norm.
For all intents and purposes a day is a day, days in a contract are not skipped for weekends or holidays. If a date is missed that calls for action by either the buyer or the seller then the non-defaulting party will issue a cure period notice. The cure period gives the potentially breaching party 3 days to correct the breach and if after 3 days the breach is not corrected then the non-breaching party can cancel the contract if desired.
Within the first 5 days of Escrow many things are required from both sides of the contract. The Buyer must submit to their Lender their loan package with all the needed documentation. As the Seller, you are required to submit a SPDS (Seller Property Disclosure Statement). This document discloses anything you know about the house that may be considered material or relevant. This form is provided in a question and answer format. The Buyer must review the SPDS and after reviewing the document with their REALTOR® they must sign and return the SPDS within five days or the end of the home inspection period, whichever is greater.
Should the home be built before 1978 it is required that within 5 days from contract acceptance that you the Seller give the Buyer a lead based paint disclosure form. From this the Buyer has 10 days to inspect the property for Lead. This is known as the assessment period. The Buyer has 5 days from the receipt of the lead based paint disclosure form or 5 days after the end of the assessment period to cancel the contract. This form acceptance requires an original signature and cannot be faxed.
As the Seller you have 5 days to deliver the CLUE report (statement of property insurability) to the Buyer. The Buyer has 5 days or until the end of the Inspection Period, whichever is greater to disapprove and cancel the contract. Then the Buyer has 5 days after receiving the CLUE report to obtain home insurance.
You have 5 days to disclose if the property is located in an unincorporated area.
The inspection period is typically ten days, and is listed in the contract. At the end of the inspection period the buyer’s agent will send a Buyer Inspection and Seller Response (BINSR) form. There are 3 possible outcomes from this document. One is that you are given a list of items that the buyer would like to see corrected. If this is the case then you have 5 days to respond to the buyer’s request. If you agree to the repairs requested then you acknowledge that on the BINSR and you have until 3 days before the close of escrow to complete the repairs and provide the receipts from the repairs to the buyer. Second, the buyer can choose to accept the property without asking for any repairs. In this scenario you simply acknowledge this on the Sellers response section. And third, the buyer can choose to cancel the contract.
Upon delivery of Title Commitment/CC&R’s (Home Owners Association Rules/Bylaws) from Title Company, the Buyer and Seller are to review the entire document and bring attention to anything out of the ordinary. The Buyer has the right to cancel the contract within 5 days of the delivery of the Title Commitment. For questions regarding time received and any other potential problems, be sure to keep your agent informed of when you receive this document, they will be able to best advise you in case there are existing liens against the property.
The Buyer has 5 days after the delivery of the appraisal to cancel the contract or renegotiate if the property does not appraise for the value agreed to in the purchase contract.
The Buyer and Seller should receive a HUD (Closing) Statement from their Agent or Title Company. If you have not received this within 5 days before the close of escrow, you should call your agent. The HUD Statement will show where all monies in the transaction are being used.
In the last three days before COE, the final walk through must be completed and signed off, you the Seller must deliver any Receipts from repairs made to the Buyers agent, and the Buyer and you the Seller must sign documents for the transfer of your property at the Title company.
As the Seller you must bring to the title company your driver's license(s). You must also make arrangements with your agent to get all keys, remotes, etc. (including all house & mailbox keys) to deliver to the Buyer’s agent, along with any documentation on existing appliances, security systems, etc. Once your home has closed it is officially no longer your home. The escrow company is required to close as soon as they are able to close. It is best if you are moved out the day before you close. The Buyer’s agent will release the keys ONLY after successful COE.
|
