Selling a new home?

evcase · August 9, 2006

If I knew then what I know now.....

We put our house on the market April. Got a buyer (or so we thought) and was to close at end of June. On June 20th our realtor (very inexperienced but we didn't know that at the time) told us the buyers wanted to close on June 23rd. We asked him if we could "rent" for another month since we were not ready to move out. He said the new buyers wanted to move in the day of closing. So we finished packing and was prepared to leave on the 23rd. We had recently purchased land in SC and were going to purchase a double-wide to live in while we built our home. OF course, all was contingent on the sell of our home. Anyway, title company told us that buyers were not qualifed after all. Something our realtor did not check into because he was too green! After 3 extensions we have cancelled contract. We borrowed a camper to live in on our land in SC because couldn't afford anything until sell of house. We just now got running Water, sewer and electricity.

House is back on market and will sell, I am sure of it. But this waiting game is a killer. Penniless and no health insurance...but by the grace of God we are happy. We have our health, I have this website for support that I just found.

My experience: we put everything "personal" in storage while showing the house. Our rooms were small too so we took most all furniture out so rooms would look larger. Also, opened most windows for daylight.

my home, and virtual tour:

http://keyes.com/search/properties/residential/results.aspx?sCode=SzAW97tkmH&waited=1&currentPage=1&sortBy=11&Size=10

We made sure yard was very clean and always put out fresh flowers on showings. Also, I made Cookies before showing so house smelled, "homey"

When showing was scheduled, I put air condition down so house was cool and turned on ALL lights and opened blinds, curtains in ALL rooms. Just make sure all storage items, personal belongs, etc are gone from house. You will see in this virtual tour we had most all items removed.

AND...one more thing, my husband slipped and fell and tiles came up (you don't see new tiles in this picture) so we had to put all new tiles in house, of course this was done after the price of the house was advertiseed!!!

Good luck, I could write a book on what not to do. Also, if we sell before 2/07 (God willing) we will have to pay a penalty on our refinanced loan becuase it will have been less than 3 years since loan begin date.

Hope some of this helped.

Taterbugs!

Stitchy · August 9, 2006

Taterbugs did it right. Be sure to watch the virtual tour/slide show. Some personal items, but not much. Uncluttered - unlived in. Clean. And needs to be that way all of the time. Difficult, but doable.

House and yard look good.

K@t · August 10, 2006

We are going to be selling our house with in the next year as well and we are doing the same thing. We have a spare room that is empty so we are putting all our stuff in it, boxing up all our decorations, pictures fancy dishes in the buffett and that sort of thing to make the house look cleaner and neater.

All our walls are painted the same color a pale yellow with the trim done in white. we are going to try to sell it with out an agent first, but we will see how that goes. Also we have a specific time that we have to be out because we are moving to the US so we are going to have to negotiate a closing for the month that we are leaving.

I have a similar horror story about my mom, she had a contract to sell her home as well and was already ready to do the closing on her new home. At the last min she found out her buyers wern't approved and she was missing her $20,000 downpayment for the closing of her new house. She ended up taking a cash advance on her credit card to make her downpayment. In experienced relators should be shot. They made what is already a stressful situation way worse.