selling your home – OC Neighborhoods

Tips to Sell Your Home in Orange County Before the New Year

As the year comes to an end, it’s time to see if you’ve achieved your goals for the year. It’s quite possible one of those goals are plans to move to a new neighborhood, city, or county that’s a better fit for you and your family in California. The following are some of the things to do before the New Year hits to sell your home and before new work goals take priority.

Make basic repairs
You want your home to be as attractive as possible to potential buyers to sell your home quickly. But not so attractive that you start second guessing the decision.

As you get further into the Fall season, it is a perfect time to landscape and snip the trees, clean out rain gutters, replace an older roof, and upgrade weatherstripping on doors and window frames. You should also fix any door repairs, update the lighting, and maybe paint a room or two to a neutral color if it’s an unusual color presently.

Make your home really appealing
A potential buyer will probably determine if they want to see the inside of your home within the first 30 seconds of viewing the front door. This means that curb appeal, how your house looks from the street, is among the most crucial steps you can do if you want to sell your home fast.

By simply planting some small plants or vibrant flowers near the front door can achieve this. Trim the tree branches and bushes. Take down any outside flags or personal decorations that could be interpreted as controversial.

Do a Comparative Market Analysis
If you want to sell your home pretty quick in a balanced buyers and sellers market, it has to be priced right. We have seen homes listed for sale for more than nine months. You don’t want to be that seller. Hire a listing agent to determine the best market price based on a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) and other factors of your home.

A CMA compares your home to similar homes in your neighborhood. if you’re pretty well versed in these reports and valuing properties,do one yourself and discuss your conclusions with the prospective agent, to be sure you are both on the same page.

Find an agent who knows your market
If you are in a rush to sell your home, don’t sign an agreement to sell with any agent. You need an agent who knows the south Orange County market, because prices can vary a lot depending on which city or school district your home is in. In a perfect world, you want your agent to have recent sales in your neighborhood, and/or adjacent areas.

Stage your home
Small maintenance projects and curb appeal are just a couple of ways to make your home look its very best. The profession of home staging is a strategy to make your home appeal to a larger variety of potential buyers. Staging will highlight the homes assets while being neutral. The ultimate goal is to get buyers to visualize the property as their own.

A few helpful hints are to replace personal effects with stylish decorative objects, improving the lighting by opening the curtains, blinds and cleaning the windows. Add medium to small-sized flowers and plants in large rooms. A professional stager with positive feedback would be a person you can trust and offer their expertise.

Be dedicated to marketing
As soon as you feel your home is in a position for it to be marketed to the public, it’s one-hundred percent go-time for marketing. Photos are going to be your best friend during the marketing period.

Therefore, a professional photographer is one use to take photos of the best features and highlights of your home. The appealing items such as a recently-upgraded kitchen or bathroom would stand out, a view of the mountains, Pacific ocean or park from the bedroom or backyard is nice.

Once you have quality photos of your home, your listing should be displayed on home for sale websites along with authoritative social media channels. A video tour of your home may help as well.

Things That Can Go Wrong When Under Contract to Sell Your Home

During a hot real estate market, homeowners feel confident about their home’s appreciation and keep an eye out for a potential new place to buy. While it is true, a majority of homes sell routinely without problems, some sales do have problems that arise.

With that being said, the following are things that can go wrong during a home purchase transaction:

Making bad decisions based on advice from friends and family members who have no experience in the real estate industry.
Seller or buyer are not willing to negotiate.
The home inspection uncovered major issues that neither the buyer or seller are willing to pay to repair.
The appraisal report comes back substantially below the contract price.
The appraiser is unable to find comparable properties for the lender so the financing falls apart.
The buyer does not want to remove loan contingency because they have not satisfied the underwriting conditions.
The buyer’s letter was a pre-qualification, not a full pre-approval which verifies credit, income, assets and job.
The buyers are unable exit their current lease without paying a large lease cancellation fee.
The buyer didn’t lock the interest rate and does not qualify at the higher interest rate.
The closing date is pushed back due to buyer or lender errors or incomplete documents.
The title search shows liens, leased land, oil rights, etc that cause a delayed closing.
The pest and termite inspection finds the home is significantly infested.
Buyer or Seller has to abruptly go out of town and did not remember to obtain a Power of Attorney.
During escrow, the Buyer or Seller encounters a life changing event.
Someone fails to disclose pertinent information relevant to the transaction.
Buyer or Seller gets cold feet and wants to back out of the deal.
The home is not insurable due to a variety of reasons, newly designated fire zone, recent land movement, etc.
The buyer makes a major purchase on credit just before closing that exceeds the loan program’s maximum debt to income ratios.
Seller decides to not sell because the job transfer is cancelled, marriage reconciliation, and so on.
Seller is unable to locate an acceptable home they want to buy.
Seller does not let the appraiser or inspector see the home’s interior.
Seller does not have sole authority to sell property due to other owners.
Seller gives knowingly false pertinent information about the home and neighborhood to the buyer.
Seller does not sign final closing documents.

Picking the wrong real estate agent! Using an experienced, well-informed licensed agent can get you to the finish line. They understand the challenges and how to solve them. It’s important to get to good real estate agent.

Are You Really Ready to Sell in OC?

Your home is about to be listed for sale in Orange County. You did your homework and picked a really knowledgeable Realtor who is very sharp. Your home has great curb appeal. As a matter a fact, it looks so good now, you think to yourself, “why am I selling?”.

You remember all the recent straightening-up and cleaning until the inside is tip-top clean that not even a white glove will get dirty if you run it along the surfaces. You feel your home can now be on the cover of magazines.

The only question is, are you truly ready to sell your home and prepared for the next steps over the next few days, weeks and months.

People sell their homes for many reasons such as relocating for a job or loss of job, home is too small for their growing family or the home may be just too big due to family or friends moving out.

You have to determine far ahead of time if listing your home for sale is the right move for you in Orange County. Does it make financial sense? Are you fine with moving away from your friends and neighbors in South County to L.A, Riverside, or North Orange County for a job? Maybe you could still commute on the 5 or 405 freeway, or the Ortega highway to Southwest Riverside for work and simply add-on to your home or keep it as a rental?

For homeowners who are on the fence about their decision, an experienced Realtor will help you decide if listing your property now is the best choice for you personally.

Your Home is Actually a Product

When you put your home on the market, it becomes just another property for sale, not the best one as so many of us think. To the average consumer, your home is just another real estate listing. During open houses, some people will be in and out in one-minute flat while others will browse and envision your home for 30 minutes or more.

Let your agent know which features of your home will have buyers excited and which areas you wish to have less emphasis on. Never try and hide any known issues. If there are issues you know about it needs to be disclosed on a real estate legal form. Your agent will give you advice regarding this.

What to expect before you accept an offer

You should have plenty of interested buyers who want to view your home if you and your agent did a good job. You need to be ready for several home showing each day, during the day or night after work hours. This can complicate things if you have kids and pets. Don’t worry, this won’t go on for a long time.

If you are able to do this, get out of the home for that first week or two. Your Realtor should be able to take care of everything while you are away.

Once your home sells, where are you going to move to?

This is becoming a growing concern among many since there is low housing inventory in Southern California. You have to plan for your next home before you sell yours.

If you have the financial means to buy your next home before your sell your current home is always an ideal way to go. But If prior to buying you need to use the sales proceeds from your current home, you will have to either buy a home contingent on the sale of your current home or wait for your existing home to close prior to making an offer on a new home.

What do you do when selling your current home before buying a new home? A common solution is to request the buyers of your home to lease it back to you for 30 to 60 days. In a high demand market, where the sellers are in control, it can be pretty easy to get a seller leaseback when buyers are determined to win the bidding war. It can work but if the buyers are obtaining financing, the lender may have a condition they move in within 30 days of closing.

If the seller leaseback is not an option, a short term rental at weekly hotels may work as well. This type of housing situation change may motivate you buy a home you normally would not due to being in a noisy weekly hotel.

What do you do if your home is not selling?

Are you able to rent out your home, and in doing so, do you have the required down payment to buy your next home. Will the rent of your home cover all your housing costs such as principal, interest, taxes, insurance and HOA costs? Will you have property management company handle it?

Everyone’s situation is unique so having a backup plan is a good idea.