We were looking forward to moving from a site built home in Florida to our new manufactured home in California. No matter how anxious we were to make the move, there were a few important jobs to do first. One of them was to sell our existing home. Not a fun prospect after two decades in the same location. But once we started the process it was easier than we thought it would be.
Obviously the most important thing on our minds was “how much money can we get for this house?” The first step was to drive around our neighborhood and make a list of the addresses and phone numbers of homes for sale. I called, then visited each one and made a written list of the home’s total square feet, the basic floor plan, special features (such as a pool) and the asking price. That done we had a pretty good idea of what our home would sell for.
Next we set up appointments with three realtors that specialize in selling homes in our area. Each realtor gave us a written estimate of what we could expect to receive from the sale. Don and I threw out the low and high estimates then decided our asking price would be right in the middle.
We also wanted to eliminate the 6% or 7% real estate commission if possible. So, we thought we would try selling the house “by owner” for a month. If there were no results we would hire a realtor to get the job done. I should mention here that we weren’t in a huge hurry to sell because our new manufactured home wouldn’t be built and placed on the home site for a while. We had about four months before it was necessary to “close” on both the existing home in Florida and our new manufactured home in California.
Since we haven’t sold a house in over 20 years we had to do some serious homework. Using GOOGLE and other Internet search engines we discovered loads of information on how to sell a home. I also relied on Foremost’s My Great Home Web site as a valuable planning and preparation resource. For even more technical and legal information we bought a home selling kit for $19.95 from an office supply store.
There is a great deal more home selling information available today than in previous years. I suspect the real estate industry must be gearing up to do business with the 60 million American “Baby Boomers” who may soon be selling their large family homes and looking for a home with more convenience and less work.
Once our home selling research was complete, Don and I decided to accept an option that one realtor suggested. We agreed to pay him 1% of the selling price to administer the sale if we sold the home ourselves. This meant that we had to advertise and show the home to prospective buyers, but the professional realtor would assume responsibility for the sales contract, escrow, closing and other legal matters.
Now the real fun began. In order to make a good impression on prospective buyers we began to clear the clutter and give every room a good cleaning. It’s amazing how much “stuff” we acquired over the years. Going through each room we selected the items we wanted and those we didn’t want or need.
Two garage sales, several trips to Goodwill and shipping some family heirlooms and photos to our kids and grandkids took care of our cluttered closets and garage. Not as easy as it sounds, some of that “stuff” was hard to part with!
Taking a critical view we even decided to paint a few rooms to brighten them. Clean, airy rooms, sparkling windows, spacious closets and clean carpets gave our home a competitive edge over other homes selling in the neighborhood. Going one step further we cleaned and spruced up landscaping, patio and pool.
Now we were ready to place the first ad in the newspaper. As it turns out, a single ad is all we needed. One ad, carefully written, placed in the “St. Petersburg Times” to run on Friday, Saturday and Sunday reaped a bounty of lookers. Don and I could hardly keep up with the people calling and making appointments. I must say it was a bit tiring, but the bottom line is we sold our home in just 11 days.
The next step was to meet with the real estate agent to sign a mutually agreed upon sales contract with the buyers. The written contract included the price, timing for the move, escrow deposit, title insurance, title search and a few other provisions. Our contract is a legal document that binds both seller and buyer to the agreed terms.
Hiring a professional real estate agent for 1% of the sales price of our Florida home turned out to be a good decision for us. We were comfortable with showing and selling the home, but a little out of our comfort zone with the legal arrangements. The realtor accepted responsibility for preparing the contract, checking out the buyer’s credit, arranging an equity down payment and handling the closing.
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