Five must-do's to sell your home the right way.

Selling your home can be daunting and scary, but with a few MUST-DO tips, we can get you feeling comfortable throughout the process! 

Wrapping your head around the different ways to sell your home can be challenging to understand. Today we will review five MUST-DO things that will make selling your home a breeze. A few different things we will discuss include pre-listing inspections, seller disclosure, multiple offers, lenders, and finding a trusted agent. All of these topics are very important to start the process of listing your home. Without these points, you may jump into the process and miss out on potential buyers, because you weren't prepared. I’d say it's a pretty good thing you're here right now reading this article.

Pre Listing Inspections

Let's kick it off with pre-listing inspections! Getting your house inspected before listing your property is always a smart idea. Doing this will reveal everything that may be an issue when you start the closing process. This issue could be the foundation, roof issues, water damage, mold, termites, the list goes on and on. Having this information ready for the future owners of your home will also show them that you're very serious about selling. Waiting till the closing process to find out this issue may reveal things that could scare away potential buyers. Pre-listing inspection feeds right into the seller's disclosure. 

Sellers Disclosure 

The seller's disclosure goes hand in hand with the pre-listing inspection or the general inspection that comes with the closing process. This document is required to sell your house in the state of Iowa. It will include every finite detail about the faults, don't worry every home has them, (even mine). An example of this would be if your home was a part of a hail storm and the shingles on your roof have minor damage or if you have cracks in the foundation. This form will disclose all of these defects to the willing buyers and their agents. They will then look over these faults and decide if they want to renegotiate the purchase agreement.  The purchase agreement comes from their original offer made when your home was originally listed. Sometimes you might even have multiple offers on your home, that's when the fun starts!

Multiple Offers 

The process of selling your home may involve getting multiple offers on your property. Each offer is different in its own way. They contain vital information like the offer price, contingencies, escrow period, disclosure, and closing date. It is very important to read through each offer carefully before accepting or countering. Sometimes you may get one to a hundred different offers with different terms and conditions. For example, you are selling a beautiful home here in the Altoona area for $350,000. One of the offers may be for a $340,000 cash offer, another offer may be $350,000 with financing from a lender. Each of these offers is great, some differences with these are if you need to close on your house fast. The cash offer could close on your home in the next 10 days while the financing offer may take a month. On the topic of contingencies, there can be a bunch of different topics like Financing, Homeowners insurance, contingent on you buying your next house. In general, having more offers will allow you to weigh out your offers with what fits your timetable the best. 

Lenders

Another crucial part of selling your house to purchase a new house is finding a reliable lender. This task can be daunting and overwhelming cause there are thousands of leaders out there each with different styles of lending. They offer a wide range of mortgage options like conventional, jumbo, or government loans like VA, FHA, and USDA loans. The primary objective of going through a lender is getting pre-approved to purchase a house within a certain price range.  Our office highly recommends getting connected with a local lender. If you do not know a direct line to your loan officer that is a red flag and you need to find someone you can call on-demand. The whole goal is to get you into your new home as seamless as possible. In 23 years of business, the best way is through a local lender.

Finding a Trusted Agent.

There are a few ways to go about finding a Good Realtor. In the Des Moines metro there are somewhere around 3,000 licensed agents. How do I know if I have a good agent? In an attempt to summarize what a Good Realtor looks like. A Good Realtor is doing everything in their power to best position you whether you are buying or selling. This should include, but is not limited to, being available, great at collaboration, provides insight into the market, insures all checks and balances are taken care of, putting your best interest in the forefront, and simply working hard. A Good Realtor does not have it easy, they should be putting in the miles, the hours, and research to set you up for success.

In conclusion, selling your home can be a daunting task, but there are a bunch of ways to help prepare for it. Above are just five ways out of the hundreds of things you can do to help you prepare. The main two takeaways from this article are to prepare yourself for the adventure you are about to take or hire an experienced agent to guide you through the process.