About Your Future: Are you a contender?

As you make the decision to sell your home, you should evaluate what is happening in your life. Is this the right time, or are you over-reacting to a situation. Are you relocating? Are you down-sizing? Perhaps your life situation (newly married, newly single) has changed. Whatever your reasons are for selling, putting them into perspective will help. Right now I recommend selling in only two situations:

1. You Have to Sell
If your job is taking you out of the area, your financial situation will no longer permit you owning your home, or you can no longer maintain the property, take a deep breath and go for it! Realize home values are for the most part not where they were even several months back. Follow guidelines in this website and give it your best and complete shot.

2. You are Trading Up
Think about it...if your home was worth $300,000, but the market value is off 10%, you are only going to receive $270,000 for your house, a 'loss' of $30,000. However, if you are trading up to a home that was worth $500,000, that home has probably depreciated about the same 10%, or $50,000. You may have to take a $30,000 hit on your price, but if you can get the home you want for $450,000, you've just made $20,000 of equity by making your move now rather than when the market rebounds.

Buying another property - With or without a realtor
If you are going to move from 'Seller' to 'Buyer', you will probably want to consider all homes on the market, not just For Sale By Owner properties. In the vast number of sales of listed properties, the seller handles all the expense of the real estate agent that represents the Buyer. It is already built into the negotiated price, so strongly consider using representation, and you'll probably have ten times the number of available homes to choose from.

Even using an agent, having sold your own home as a FSBO will have given you some additional skills in your house hunting endeavor. You will know what affected you positively and negatively as a seller and can adapt accordingly to have the best opportunity to drive the best deal as a Buyer!

Relocating and Transferring Possession
Moving isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time, I’m sure. But to ease the process, I’ve provided a checklist for moving that should help make it a whole lot easier.

For a week-by-week checklist, click here.

What if your property doesn’t sell?
As I mentioned in the Flag on the Play section, what if your home doesn’t sell? Well, you have a few options. You can:

• Stay where you are
• Tweak your marketing/house/price
• List with an agent