Imagine a seller lists a house at $500,000 and a buyer agrees to purchase it at that price. But after the buyer’s lender orders an appraisal for the home on the bank’s behalf, the appraisal comes in at $475,000. What happens next? What can a buyer or seller do in the event of a low appraisal? In this scenario, there are three ways the transaction can proceed:
The seller can accept the appraised value as the new purchase price
The buyer and seller can negotiate a middle ground in terms of price
The transaction gets canceled
Low appraisals are something that, unfortunately, sometimes occur in a rising market like ours. The good news is that 99% of the time, deals with low appraisals still get resolved. If you have any more questions about this or any other real estate topic, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to help you.
I get a lot of questions from homeowners about the advertisements you see from cash offer companies. These advertisements promise to buy your home as-is for cash and close in a very short timeframe (e.g., 48 hours). Is it a good idea to sell your home to one of these companies, though? In certain situations, yes. If you need to move out of your home quickly and have it sold within a week, for instance, this is a great option. If this doesn’t apply to you, though, there’s one big drawback that comes with selling to a cash offer company: You won’t get a retail offer (i.e., maximum value). Since these companies are essentially investment companies, their goal is to either sell your home after they own it or rent it out and make a profit, and part of that process requires making an offer below market value.
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Since these companies are essentially investment companies, their goal is to either sell your home after they own it or rent it out and make a profit.
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If you have a longer timeframe in which to sell and you’re looking to get maximum value for your home, you’re better off listing the conventional way with a team such as ours. If you’d rather consider one of these cash offers that will allow you to sell quickly, don’t hesitate to give me a call, because I can refer you to several buyers who’d be interested. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to me as well. I’d be happy to help you.
Many sellers approach me with questions and concerns about selling in the spring market, so I’ve decided to share some insight into this common, yet crucial, subject today.
For one thing, you may believe that it’s best to wait until your yard turns green to put your home up for sale, but consider this: Everyone’s yard looks the same right now. The color of your lawn has nothing to do with your specific property at this time of year, and buyers are savvy enough to know this.
In other words, if you’re thinking of listing, don’t let the hue of your grass stop you from doing so. Also, it’s important to realize that by the time your grass is greener, everyone else’s will be too.
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To attract offers and add value to your home, you need to clean, declutter, and stage.
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So once you’ve decided to move forward with the listing, you’re probably wondering what it takes to successfully attract buyers. It’s simple: To attract offers and add value to your home, you need to clean, declutter, and stage. By doing these things and by partnering with an experienced agent, you’ll be able to sell quickly and for top dollar. If you have any other questions or would like more information, please give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Should you list your home now as we approach the fall and winter seasons? Or should you wait until next spring? People ask me this a lot during this time of year, so I thought I would share my thoughts with you today.
If I showed you a list of the percentages of sale from January 1 to December 31, you would see a bell curve. What's interesting about this bell curve is that, while the volume does increase, the percentage of sale meaning the homes listed and sold, are almost exactly the same throughout the year.
In simple terms, this means that if there are 100 homes listed in January and 1,000 homes listed in June, you'll see the same percentage of homes sold.
What do these numbers mean? They mean that if you're looking to sell a home in the fall, you're going to have less competition. This means you may be able to net more money because there's less to choose from for the potential buyers looking.
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There is never a bad time or a good time to sell if you need to sell real estate.
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There is never a bad time or a good time to sell if you need to sell real estate. The reality is that we'll get it done for you and net you the most amount of money.
If you have any questions about selling in the fall, please let me know. I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Selling a home can be an extremely emotional process, and because it isn’t something most people do very often in their lifetime, it’s sometimes confusing to know what feelings are normal.
Well, if you’ve found yourself riding an emotional rollercoaster during your selling experience, you’re not alone. There are nine emotional stages most sellers go tend to go through over the course of their transaction.
1. Excitement. Once sellers have finally signed the listing documents, they tend to feel energized by the prospect of the sale.
2. Anxiety. After the home is live on the market, a number of “what-if” scenarios can start popping into a seller’s mind. They wonder whether anyone will like their home, whether they’re going to get a fair deal, and whether they’re making the right choice in the first place.
3. Delight. Shortly into the listing process, nervous energy starts to wear off and sellers bounce back to the positive end of the emotional spectrum. Everything appears to be going well, and all signs point to a successful closing being well in sight.
4. Disappointment. Whether it comes from an unpleasant surprise on the inspection report, a difficult negotiation period, or something else entirely, most sellers will have the wind knocked from their sails at some point during the deal.
5. Elation. As the end of the transaction draws near and problems are resolved, the joy of seeing everything come together begins to set in.
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If you’ve found yourself riding an emotional rollercoaster during your selling experience, you’re not alone.
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6. Worry. Until the sellers have reached the closing table, there’s always the chance for more problems to arise. Last-minute details, like the appraisal, can easily take a seller from thrilled to troubled once more.
7. Relief. At last, when they’ve crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s, sellers can finally relax knowing that all their hard work has paid off.
8. Sadness. Even after everything is settled, the reality of knowing their home now belongs to someone else can be somewhat hard to swallow.
9. Joy. After the melancholy dissipates, sellers will find that everything they went through up until this point was worth it.
When you go through the process of selling a home, these ups and downs are normal. As a real estate professional who handles these transactions every day, I still go through this rollercoaster when I sell my own homes. I completely understand what this process and the feelings it brings are like, and would be more than happy to guide you through both.
If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
What do you do when filling out a seller disclosure?
Whenever you sell a home, you have to do a disclosure. Basically, you have to reveal everything that you factually know about the house.
I get a lot of questions about seller disclosures. What should you fill out and what shouldn’t you fill out? If you had a crack in the foundation 20 years ago that hasn’t moved, do you need to disclose that? What if you got the furnace fixed two years ago? What if you repaired a leak in the roof three years ago?
Here’s the thing—those disclosures are sent to the buyer who is purchasing the home so that the buyer understands the history of the home. That way, they know what to look out for in the future.
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If you have any doubts about whether you should disclose something, disclose it.
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If you have any doubts when filling out the disclosures, disclose it. The worst thing that can happen is you don’t disclose something and there’s an issue after the buyer starts living in the home. That could end up becoming an issue; the buyer could sue.
So, if you have any doubts whatsoever about whether or not to disclose something, I say disclose it. That’s always the safest option in the long run.
If you have any other questions about seller disclosures or selling in our current market, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!
When it comes to putting a home on the market, pricing is everything. It can be tricky to know how to find a price that’s just right for your listing—but it’s not as hard as you think.
In today’s hot real estate market here in Minneapolis, pricing is everything. So today I’d like to give you a little insight into what that means and how it affects you.
Right now, inventory is low and the market is extremely hot. These circumstances combined always lead my clients to ask me one key question, “How much do I list my home for?”
To answer this for you, there are a couple of things I’d like you to keep in mind. First off, consider the pricing of homes in your neighborhood. Something a lot of people might not consider is that to best price your home, you need not only to consider your own home’s features and benefits but also those of your neighbors’.
When you look at what those other houses have sold for, or are listed for, you’ll get a good idea of how to list your own home, as well.
Keep in mind though, that while overpricing might seem tempting—given how quickly homes are moving off the market—it may not be such a good idea.
To explain why, I like to use this analogy: When a store stocks new items, they tend to put them in the front. They’re often listed at a higher price and, sometimes, go overlooked until eventually their price is bumped down to the point where they go into the back of the store on a clearance shelf.
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When you overprice your home, you run the risk of it being overlooked and eventually being “put on the clearance shelf.”
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When you overprice your home, you run the risk of it being overlooked and eventually being “put on the clearance shelf,” so to speak.
Pricing can be tricky—because you also don’t want to list your home too low. You should think of pricing like a bell curve and try to put your home on a point where you’ll create a multiple offer or quick offer scenario so we can net you the most money.
If you’d like me to help you learn more, or if you have any other questions, feel free to get in touch. Give me a call or email—I’m happy to help. I look forward to hearing from you.
If you’re looking to sell a home in this market, chances are there are going to be multiple offers on your home. If a multiple offer situation does arise, there are three things you should consider.
First, don’t focus solely on price. Take into consideration what type of financing the buyers have, whether it's a conventional loan, FHA loan, or cash. Also, you’ll want to check out their closing time frames to see which one meets your needs the best. It’s not always that bottom dollar that makes an offer the best one for you.
Second, be patient when you list your home on the market. It’s all about getting the right offer. When you get the offers in, take the right amount of time to truly look through them.
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A great, unbiased agent will ensure you make the best decision for you and your family.
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Third, remember that there are a lot of emotions involved when selling a home. You need to work with an agent to guide you through the process and take the emotions out of it. At the end of the day, emotions make things harder to process, so a great, unbiased agent will ensure you make the best decision for you and your family.
If you have any questions about selling a home or you have any other real estate questions, please don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you.
We're getting late into the winter, which means you might be thinking about selling your house. If you've lived in that house for a long time though, how can you prepare it to sell in today's market?
Being in the late winter, many of us are preparing our homes to sell. Many of us have also lived in our house for many years, which leaves many people wondering what exactly they need to do to prepare it for sale.
There are a lot of little things you can do to prepare your home for sale, but many of us don't want to mess with those things. Luckily, we have handymen, painters, and every kind of service provider you can think of to take care of those repairs for you.
We're not necessarily looking to remodel your home or make it the Taj Mahal. Rather, the goal is to open up the marketplace for you by making your home more appealing to the masses. We don't want to only be able to show your home to a few people who like it.
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We don't have to turn your home into the Taj Mahal to sell for top dollar.
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As agents, our goal is to simplify this process for you, not to make life tougher.
If you're thinking about selling your property but have reservations about how daunting it feels, just give me a call. We can take a walk through your house and create a simple plan of things you need to do. You'll then have the option to do these things yourself or have someone else do them for you. No matter what you choose, we will simplify it for you.
If you'd like to talk more about what your home needs to be ready for the market, just give me a call or send me an email. I'd be happy to help.
Inventory is low and buyer demand is high, making our current market very competitive and difficult to navigate. Whether you are buying or selling, you need an experienced agent on your side.
In our current market, we have low inventory and interest rates are absolutely incredible. As a result, things can get pretty competitive out there. That is why you need to hire a professional real estate agent to help you negotiate the sale or purchase of your home.
Right now, saving 2% to 3% on your home purchase or gaining 2% to 3% on your home sale can mean a difference of $5,000 to $20,000, which is a significant number.
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This is one of the biggest investments you will make in your lifetime.
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When you hire a real estate agent, look for an experienced agent who has been in the game for a long time and sells homes on daily basis. You want to work with an agent who does this for a living, not a part-time paper pusher.
After all, this is one of the biggest investments that you will probably make in your lifetime. Make sure you hire a professional to help you.
If you have any questions, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!
Hey everybody, welcome back to our blog. A question we have been getting a lot from sellers is "How do I prepare my home for sale?" Today we are going to answer the question, and tell you about a few ways that you can add value to your home before you sell.
What is the first thing a buyer sees when they arrive at your home? That's right, the yard. This makes your landscaping very important in capturing buyers' attention. Planting shrubs or bushes and keeping your grass short and healthy are the best ways to do this.
The other important part of getting your home ready for sale is staging. When buyers see a home, it's not about the furniture in the room, but how it sits in the room. You want to accentuate the room so the buyers can see themselves living there.
If you have any questions about this topic or anything else real estate related, give us a call or send us an email today. We would love to hear from you!
