Selling 101: Deciding To Sell

Deciding To Sell

Deciding to sell your home is a huge decision, but you are not alone in this decision. There are several items that you should figure out as part of the process in deciding to sell your home. Part of the decision should include the “why” of selling your home. People sell homes for many reasons, whether its to get into a larger home (move-up), or to downsize, or perhaps just needing some flexibility. Whatever your specific reason, you should gather information to help in your decision to sell your home. Below is a starting point, along with the rest of the pages on my Selling 101 topic.

Assess your financial position

Can you afford to purchase your next home before you close on the sale of your existing home? If you can, this gives you much more flexibility when it comes down to the purchase. You can purchase your next home without a contingency on the sale of your home. This gives you a much stronger hand than if your purchase is contingent. Part of buying a home non-contingent before selling your existing home is also having 2 homes at the same time. Can you afford dual monthly payments for a month or two? Do you have enough furniture to leave your existing home staged while moving into your new home? Do you have enough cash for a down payment without taking equity out of your existing home?

How much is your home worth

Knowing your home’s value is the next part of the equation. The best way to figure out how much your home is worth is to ask me for a market analysis. Call or email me and I’ll get back to you. If you want to explore your home’s market value before contacting me, here are some thoughts.
There are Automatic Valuation Models (AVMs) out there that can take a guess at values. These computer programs look at statistics in your area and make a “best guess” based on as many factors they can find. But you can do better than these AVMs. The best thing you can do is to find houses similar to yours that have sold in the past year and make comparisons to that. Make adjustments to price based on whether the similar houses have more or less features or upgrades. Also compare price per sq ft for above ground finished square footage.

Consider how much equity you have

Do you need the equity in your existing home to purchase your next home? If so, you should spend time trying to figure out how much equity you have in your existing home. Whether you have equity in your home or not is important to know for the purchase of your next home. If you need the equity of your current home to purchase your next home, you can get a bridge loan, or home equity loan, to use as the down payment. Then when you close, you can pay off the bridge loan or equity loan. If you don’t have equity in your current house, you may end up doing both closings (the sale and the purchase) on the same day, one right after the other.

How much does it cost to sell your home?

There are fixed costs as well as variable costs in selling a home. The biggest expense is the real estate sales commission. Feel free to contact me to inquire about my commission rate as I do not publish my commission rate online. Beyond commission, the main costs to selling a home can total about 1% of the sales price. On lower priced homes it can be slightly higher (up to 1.25%), and on more expensive homes, it can end up slightly lower (0.75%). These items include things such as MN State Deed Tax, Recording fees, closing fees, broker commission, DNR Conservation Fee, pro-rated county taxes, etc.

What are the local market conditions

The local market conditions affect the final sales price of your home. Here in Minnesota, our housing market is seasonal, with the strongest being Spring. The spring market is when there are the most buyers out there, and oftentimes this can result in competitive offers on a single house. But whether you receive multiple offers or not depends on where you set the list price.

Other considerations

There are many other considerations that go into whether it is time to sell your home or not. Some might be:
Is it the right time for us?
Do we need more / less space?
Do we need a specific school district?

Please feel free to contact me with any other questions, or if you want to set up a no-obligation meeting to discuss your specific situation.