Selling Your Home

You have two options when you sell your home, you can hire an estate agent to sell it for you or you can sell the property yourself. If you choose to sell the property by yourself its called a FSBO – For Sale By Owner.

If you choose the FSBO option it will take up a lot more of your personal time, you will need to be the person that shows viewers around the property and do all of the sale process, but there are more things to consider when taking this option.

• An appraisal will need to be carried out to find out the value of your property
• Circulate an ad flyer with a photo and description of your home's attributes, address and phone number.
• Putting an advertisement in your local paper. By cutting out the estate agents commission, you will attract more people to look at you’re house, viewers will hope to get a lower sale price as this commission has been taken away.

It takes a lot of hard work to sell your house by yourself so we wouldn't recommend it if it's your first sale, we are not saying that it will not pay off but its good to have some experience when carrying this out

A real estate agent will do most things for you, they will list your property in many different locations, be it the web or in the local papers.This puts your home in front of a lot of buyers, there is even the chance that your home will be found by the right buyer by word of mouth.

A real estate agent provides many services, including:

• Recommends a sale price that is based on comparable sales. Comparable-sales data are published in the newspaper and elsewhere, but a real estate agent is generally able to compile it quicker.
• Locates and pre-qualifies potential borrowers and introduces them to mortgage brokers and lenders.
• Handles all stages of negotiations between buyer and seller.
• Introduces you to appraisers or inspectors.
• Steers you through the loan-closing process

The best way to find a good agent is to ask friends and family who have worked with them before. The agent will have good knowledge of the local area and the current marke,t you will just need to make sure that they have a good portfolio.

When you have selected an estate agent you should ask them to prepare a listing agreement. A listing agreement normally lasts for 3 to 6 months and can be cancelled at any time if you feel that the agent isn't doing enough work to sell your property or if you change your mind about selling your home.

There is a good chance that the agent will ask you if they can have an exclusive listing of your property, but you should read the request and check it all very closely. An exclusive listing will give the agent an added advantage to sell but this does stop other agents from placing your home on the market with their shops.

If you let many different estate agents market your property, it's called an open listin. You may have more luck selling your home this way due to many more people working with it. You should ask the agents what they will do that the others won't.
In some cases buyers will only shop with the agent that they feel safe using.

When a buyer comes forward to you and puts in an offer for your property, a sales contract will be drawn up. The estate agent should help you through the whole selling process.

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