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How To Buy A Home When You Already Own

The Studio discusses some techniques on how to buy a home when you already own a home.

How to Buy a Home When you Already Own

Can you buy a home when you already own one? The studio discusses!

Transcription:

So you, like many homeowners in the United States, would like to sell your home and move into something different. Whether it’s bigger or smaller that can be a tricky thing to do. So in this short series we want to talk about some techniques that you can do to move from your current home into another one. There are some technical aspects, there are different techniques for every situation. For whether you are buying first, selling first, third options… There’s something out there for everyone. You’re going to need to talk to an agent, talk to a lender, see what makes sense for you. and what’s financially viable. but hopefully we can shed some light on that for you.

Purchase, then List

 One option to consider as a buyer is to actually purchase your home before listing your current home. This may be especially easy for those with a little more financial bandwidth. When you’re working with your agent you go out to find that first home, get it under contract, you should be ready at that point to get your current house on the market. You want to time this somewhere around those critical milestones in your new purchase. Inspection, appraisal, or otherwise. To minimize the impact of having dual mortgages you want a time the closing of those two properties as close together as possible. This is a topic you should consider talking about with your lender.

Contingencies

 Another option that you have is to make your offer on the new house contingent on selling the house that you live in. Now this is a little easier financially, but much more stressful when it comes to timing. It is doable, we’ve done it, even in this market. But there are a lot of details and very careful contingency timing steps that we have to take. Here’s roughly what that will look like. You get your current home ready for sale and we identify a property that you want to purchase, get that property under contract, making it contingent on selling the home you live in. Then we immediately list that house, hopefully get that under contract right away, and we line up all the contingency dates so that they follow one right after the other. So in the end the closing on the old house happens just before the closing on a new house. Now the hardest part about this is what property you’re going to buy. I tell my clients it really depends how long that house has been on the market, how likely is the seller going to be to take an offer contingent on selling your house. It’s doable, we have done it. A little harder in this market, but with the right agent and the right timing you can do that.

Home Equity

 You also have alternative options when it comes to executing this buy and sell when you already own a home. So, you own a home, you have the option of talking with a lender and going after what is called a home equity line of credit. This is where a bank would assess the value of your property, give you a loan in the amount of maybe 80% of whatever your equity is in the property at that point in time, and now you got that equity in your back pocket that you can use to help purchase your next property. You can use that as your down payment, and if it’s a really tight sellers market, you could potentially now make offers that are not contingent on the sale of your home. A little bit of stress there potentially if you’re unsure of the value of your property or if you think the market might be descending at the time. Maybe a little bit riskier.

Alternative Option

There’s also another option that is relatively new to the real estate space. There are some companies out there, there is a company specifically called Easy Knock that will buy your house and give you 80% of the value of your home. Then with that 80% value you pay off your mortgage, you pay the bills that come with the sale of that particular property. And now you have the ability to rent your home back for market value until you are able to find and close on your new home. Then once you move into that new home, the company puts your old home on the market, and any increase in profit that happens as the result of the last sale to this final sale, you share in the profit with that company.

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How to Make Your Offer More Competitive

Studio Four8 discusses some of the techniques we use on how to make your offers more competitive in this hot real estate market.

Ep 1 | Initial Offer Price

Sara Maddock discusses initial price expectations

Transcription:

Hi I’m Sara Maddock with the Studio Four8 partnership of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors and I’m here to talk about how to make your offer more competitive in a hot real estate market. The most obvious thing to do is to offer more than list price on the property. Buyers always ask how much more should I offer? What is typical? And the answer can be hard to get to, but basically it depends. It depends on the house, it depends on how many other offers there are, it depends on how long it’s been on the market, and it depends on how much you love that house and likely it is that another house that meets your needs is going to come up soon. A skilled buyer’s agent is going to work to create a professional market analysis and share that with you, so that you have a good understanding of what the value range for the property is. So that’s step one. One of the concerns that people have is how much more it’s going to cost and you should keep in mind that a $10,000 price increase might only equate to $50 or less in your monthly payment. So don’t lose that house over a few thousand dollars if it’s going to make a difference in you getting the property. Now the only concern might be will the house appraise for that much?

Ep 2 | Appraisal Guarantee

Dan Kurylo on Appraisal Guarantees

Transcription:

Hi I’m Dan Kurylo with the Studio Four8 partnership of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors. WIth part two of our series on how to make your offer more competitive. If you’re dealing with a mortgage you’re going to have an appraisal to deal with. Something that can give you that extra edge is guaranteeing the difference between a low appraisal and the sales price in cash. Now that often ends up as a secondary negotiation between yourself and the seller, but you could be on the line for several thousand dollars on the lease. That being said, that might be the difference you need to get your offer accepted in a competitive market. 

Ep 3 | Escalation Clause

Jeffrey Post on Escalation Clauses

Hi this is Jeffery with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors. With part 3 of our panel on how to write a more competitive offer. An escalation clause in a contract means you’re willing to pay above and beyond your offer price. There are two different kinds of escalation clauses, escalation clauses with a cap meaning you won’t go above a certain price or an uncapped escalation which means the sky’s the limit. This is saying if any competitive offers come in you’re willing to pay 1,000, 2,000,  2,500 over that competitive offer up to your cap or the sky’s the limit. This can make your offer very, very, competitive. You will have to initial any escalated offer that becomes first position. This is a great way to make your offer more competitive.

Ep 4 | Other Terms and Conditions

Todd Waller on Other Terms and Conditions

Transcription:

This is Todd Waller with Studio Four8 at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder and Company Realtors, with the fourth in our series of how to make your offer more competitive in today’s market. So the final video we have here is all of those other terms and conditions. When we talk about all those other terms and conditions we are talking about things that are sort of intangible. Number one: work with your agent. Your agent can talk with the seller’s agent to figure out what’s really important to the seller and advise you on what is the best way to roll there. One of the things that may come up that we see frequently is post close occupancy. Maybe the seller needs to stay after closing for moving concerns or something like that. If you have the ability to offer that and that’s important to the seller that might just work. Another thing we’ve seen that works very well is maybe it’s worth your time to pick up some of the traditional sellers’ costs, like transfer taxes and things like that. Sometimes increasing that bottom net line for the seller is also the winner in a multiple bid scenario. And Finally one thing you may hear from some agents is to eliminate your inspection. We do not recommend that you eliminate your inspection contingency. You need to know what you are walking into. So still reserve yourself the time to go ahead and have that home inspected.

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Should You Sell Your Home in the Winter?

Is it a good idea to sell your home in the winter months? Studio Four8 comes together to discuss the pro’s and con’s of selling your home in the winter time.

Should you Sell Your Ann Arbor Area Home in the Winter?

The studio talks about selling in the snow

Transcription:

One of the questions we get this time of year is: should I really be selling my house in the winter? We got together to answer that question for you.

Bigger Audience

 Despite winter traditionally being a slow season in real estate there are some advantages. People are at home especially between that Christmas and New Years break. People are spending more time online, they’re scrolling online, they’re scrolling in Zillow or realtor.com. So digital marketing, especially social media marketing, can have a really big impact and a larger audience than other times in the year. If you list in the winter, those homes you are seeing could be yours.

Less Competition

As seller’s you have less competition. So when you bring a home to the market in the winter time, many of the other homes that might have come on Market, just flat-out are not there. The buyers that are walking through the marketplace looking at homes in the winter time, those are some of the most serious purchasers of the entire 12 months of the year.

Losing Daylight

 Some obvious challenges to showing houses this time of year. For example, we are often battling bad weather and snow. It gets dark at 5 o’clock which could be hard for some buyers who have to wait till after work to see the home. So there are some challenges but we definitely have tips and can help you work through and mitigate some of that.

Clearing Clutter

While most all of you probably have a great number of holiday decorations still in your house right after the holidays, and you’re going to find yourself boxing those up. What a great time to talk to us and find out how to properly stage your house and get it ready to go on the market. As long as those decorations are going away there might be a few more books or furniture that you also want to put away.

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Tips for Smooth Home Tours

The Studio discusses what you can do to make your home tours smooth and stress free.

Tips For Smooth Home Tours

The Studio talks about how to make your home tours smooth and easy

Transcription:

Leave the Kids At Home

Probably your kids are better behaved than those. Nevertheless, it’s not a good idea to bring kids when you’re touring a house. You don’t want to be responsible for anything that gets damaged. Besides it’ll be a lot easier for you to concentrate on things like room sizes or condition of the property if you’re not distracted by the little ones. I know that’s not always possible and we have to make accommodations for families obviously and I happen to love kids. But if you can find someone to take care of them while you’re looking at houses, that’s the best plan.

Dress Appropriately

 You know there are all  kinds of properties to go visit at a showing. Rule number one, dress appropriately for the property.

Why would you want to be out in the middle of vacant land with mud, dust, and all that fun stuff, in a great sport coat or a three-piece suit and loafers? It just doesn’t fit very well, it doesn’t work. Conversely, as well as these boots may do out in vacant land, as you can see from the mess they’re not that great  inside a house.

So as you’re preparing to go out and look at home this season, make sure you got a great pair of slip-ons. Slip-on shoes that is. They slide on and off nice and easily. When you walk into homes anymore many sellers are asking that shoes be removed. Either that or have some booties on hand. but I tell you what, it’s really simple to have a great pair of slip ons. You’re rolling, kick your shoes off as you wander around. Putting them back on is a breeze, right? Just like that. 

Be Mindful of What you Say

Hey folks, back here again. I want to quickly tell you about what to do during showings and more specifically: what not to do. The trick is you want to pretend, and sometimes because that’s the case, that everything you say and everything that you do is being monitored. Now that could either be by the sellers themselves or maybe they just have friendly neighbors that want to say: “hey that group before was really complementary and a house I think you can gouge them on that price.” But why do we need to be cautious inside the home? After all, you’re the only ones there.

Microphones

Well, the fact of the matter is microphones, cameras, can look like a whole lot of different things and they’re not that hard to come by. The microphone this is being recorded on looks a lot like this. Microphones can look like a lot less than microphone-y things too. This is a TV controller, it has a microphone. If you know what you’re doing it can be used just as a recording device if you want to set that up. Maybe more easily: an old phone, If you have an old phone you want to start a voice memo, or you just left it on her phone call. Now the seller hears exactly what you said.

Even speakers. Now it’s true that any speaker can be reversed and in and out of itself in a microphone, but that takes some technical knowledge to accomplish. but they also just have microphones built in a lot of the time.  Especially one of the newer smart speakers like your Alexa,  Google homes, home pods, the nest series by google, all those things have microphones. Even less-smart speakers still have microphones in them. So the easiest way to get around this and not act completely paranoid just imagine that you’re always being watched and listened to when you’re in and around a home that you are viewing.

So watch what you are saying, talk to your agent about the language that you want to use. Maybe talk on the phone on the way to the next listing. What’s what I do for my clients and it’s what I recommend that you do as well to keep yourself safe and competitive.

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Preparing to Show Your Home

Studio Four8 discusses some of the Do’s and Don’t’s when it comes to preparing your home for showing.

Preparing to Show Your Home

Studio Four8 talks about what to do before you show your home

Transcription:

Welcome back folks were talking today about some key points to remember when you are preparing your home for show.

Who Enters?

Now first and foremost, don’t let people in who don’t have an appointment or aren’t accompanied by an agent. It sounds like one of those obvious things. But when you’re outside doing some lawn work, trimming your hedges, and somebody walks up, sees the sign, and says “hey, this is exactly the home we’ve been looking for, do you mind if we come in and take a look”? You want to say yes, you can come in and do that. But don’t. Just don’t do it. You’re exposing yourself to risk, you’re potentially not perfect and if the buyers are serious, it’s not that much of an ask to say “hey, not ready at this point in time. Have your agent get in touch.” If they’re serious about your home they’re going to come back to look at it. If they’re not doing that, they weren’t going to purchase your home in the first place. So at the end of the day, not that big of a concern.

Don’t Be Present

To kind of go further along with that thought process, when you’re preparing your home for sale one of the things to keep in mind is to not be present when there are showings. If somebody comes up to your door, knocks on your door, says hey I’d like to see this, this is exactly what we’re looking for. If there’s no agent visible or accompanying them, you are now potentially allowing a member of the public through your house and now you’re with them. Now if there’s an appointment that an agent has made and they’re bringing buyers through your home, its still a good recommendation to not be present during the showing. You want to give the buyers agent and the buyers as much space as possible to experience your home, and to talk about your home. There may be things that you don’t like to hear, but they are looking for their next place to live, an extension of their lifestyle and who they are. So at the end of the day, any showings, do not be present. It’s as simple as sitting on the back deck, that’s a good move. Better yet, grab the dog, jump in the car, roll over to Starbucks and get a coffee to go. Sit on the patio there, something along those lines.

On Pets

Another thing to not be present, is your dog or the cat, or the parakeet,  or the iguana. As much as we love our pets to death and we think nothing could be more charming and maybe even you’re thinking it might help sell the house because they are so adorable, it is just not a good idea. Now you cant always do that. It’s the most convenient thing to do. But when and where you can, when possible, or at the very least if you have to leave them at home and you have a cage down in the lower level and some toys to keep them happy, that’s if you need to leave them there. 

Funky Smells

The other thing that appears with pets can be odor. Yes I’m using my candle prop. I’m going to talk to you briefly about odors. That is if you think the vanilla candle smells are just going to enhance a showing, they’re not. The first thing that people think when they smell a candle or a glade plugin is that you’re covering something. Pet odors, mold, anything like that. So at least 24 to 48 hours before a showing if you have that notice, don’t light any candles. Don’t light any incense. Just let the natural smell, the spring air outside, open the windows if you want. That’s the best plan.

Securing Your Home

Another thing we like to have a serious conversation with our sellers about is to just have a security minded feeling. We have so many steps and procedures in place to keep your home safe during a showing. But we still need your cooperation and just for you to walk through and think about when you’re leaving your home for a showing what not to leave behind. You want to be careful not to leave your checkbooks, your credit cards, your bills that you are paying, do not leave those out on the kitchen table, put them away. Any medications that you may have in your medicine cabinet that people would be tempted to take, put those away. Fire arms: we’ve all had the experience of walking into a home and having firearms just present. That’s very dangerous if your buyers have children, so put those things away. So you just want to think about that when preparing to show your home. Walk through and think what should we be leaving out and what should we not be leaving out.

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Is there a Housing Crisis in Ann Arbor?

Studio Four8 explains why we think the current market that we face is not a housing crisis in Ann Arbor.

Ep 1 | Appreciation Rates in Ann Arbor

Dan Kurylo jumps into the appreciation rates in Ann Arbor

Transcription:

Hi there, it’s Dan Kurylo Studio Four8 at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors, Now I’d like to talk to you about one of the reasons that what were facing right now is not necessarily a housing crisis.

Housing Crisis of 2008

Now if we look at the 2008 housing crisis, that was an issue of affordability. People had become priced out of their homes and appreciation before the 2008 crisis was very high. The 6 years preceding the average appreciation was anywhere between 6.5% and 12.4%. Whereas if we look at this 6 years preceding where we are now in 2020, well, the highest rate of appreciation for 6.4% and the lowest was 4.4%. So much more modest appreciation, meaning people are able to afford their homes. Housing hasn’t become priced out for people and what we’re looking at is not necessarily a housing crisis. Once again I am Dan Kurylo for Studio Four8 at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors and be sure to check out some of our other videos.

Ep 2 | Harder to Get a Mortgage in Ann Arbor

Sara Maddock explains the differences in the ease of obtaining a mortgage across the years

Transcription:

Hi I’m Sara Maddock with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder and Company Studio Four8. I wanted to tell you about one of the indicators that lets us know that the covid-19 impact on real estate is not the housing crisis that we saw back during the Great Recession.

Harder to Get a Mortgage

One of the biggest differences is in how easy or un-easy it is to get a loan these days. In fact, by some estimates, it’s 6 times harder to get a mortgage loan than it was back then. Frankly, we think this is a good thing. There was an old saying that at that time during the Great Recession and prior to the great recession leading up to it, all you had to do to get a mortgage was pass the mirror test. So in other words if you could fog a mirror held under your nose then you could qualify for a loan. Well banks realized that it is a good idea to only give large mortgages to people who can actually afford them. Right? Earth Shattering. So nowadays we haven’t seen the no-doc loans, the hundred percent loans that we were seeing back then and that’s a good thing. Because again that means that today’s home owners are far less likely to default on their loans if there’s a little bit of a dip in the market.

Ep 3 | Low Inventory Levels in Ann Arbor

Jeffrey Post talks about Inventory levels in Ann Arbor

Transcription:

Hi this is Jeffrey Post with Studio Four8 Partners, part of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors. I want to talk to you today a little bit about home Inventory. I want to talk to you in respect to the Covid pandemic that was coming out of and the housing crisis of 2008. Inventory is a deciding factor in whether it is a buyer’s market or seller’s market. A seller’s market, typically, is when inventory is less than six months worth. A buyer’s market tends to be when inventory is greater than that.

Lower Inventory

Statistically, if you go back and look at the levels of inventory that existed in 2008/2009 and in 2010 up somewhere close to 2 to 11 months of inventory. At the present time, right now, we’re closer to 2 and 1/2 months inventory. So it’s particularly strong if you are a seller looking to list your property. I might add as a little caveat to that, that interest rates are particularly low right now. So there is a good advantage for buyers as well to be out there looking. I’m Jeffrey Post, hope that’s helpful.

Ep 4 | Unused Equity in Ann Arbor

Todd Waller explains the differences in the use of equity

Transcription:

Hey Folks, Todd Waller here with Studio Four8 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Continuing our little series here on this is not a housing crisis in Ann Arbor that we are currently experiencing. If you’ve been following along we’ve been comparing our current state of the real estate market to what happened prior to and during the crunch back in 2008 and forward. So this little clip is about home equity that has been pulled out homes prior to the Crunch and prior to the pandemic here now.

Home Equity

Prior to the crunch in 2008 the years 2005 to 2007 saw 824 billion dollars pulled out of home’s equity. Again that is 824 billion, with a B, pulled out of home equity at that point in time. Here in 2020, let’s go back 3 years, 2017, 2018, 2019, only a total of 232 billion dollars have been pulled out of homes equity. That’s almost a swing of about 600 billion dollars worth of equity. So the point here is that we’re not as leveraged right now as a market as we were back in 2008. This is a good, good, sign. That means people are keeping their money in their pockets, in their saving accounts, and in their homes which is a great place to be. Again Todd Waller here with Studio Four8 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company realtors in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Thanks so much!

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Curb Appeal | Selling Ann Arbor Homes

Studio Four8 discusses a few overlooked things you can do to give your home greater curb appeal.

Curb Appeal | What Can You Do to Make Your Home Stand Out

The studio discusses ways to increase the curb appeal of your home

Transcription:

Hey folks, it’s Studio Four8 with a video about: curb appeal. It’s that time of year some sellers are getting ready to come to the market and we want to get across to you just a few items that we think a lot of folks overlook when they get their homes ready to bring to the market. Curb appeal is a huge factor, you can never make another first impression. Right, Jeffrey? Right, were my props a give away, Todd? Well they help. No it’s too true, we all know from having buyer’s in our cars when you pull up to the house the buyers are already starting to assess things. 

Gardening

So we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things that are maybe obvious to everyone, maybe not so obvious to everyone. I’m going to talk a quick minute about the gardening part. We all know that mulch sets a really nice table, it’s a beautiful blanket to put out. So you’re going to want to do that. You want the grass cut, you want the edges also done after you cut the grass. Bright flowers when you’re in a spring climate, that’s great, it really pops. One of the things I find that people don’t routinely recognize: our hedge rows. Hedge rows in front of the house, they kind of stick up and oftentimes they come up halfway up the window. This is not what you want, what you want to do is you want to trim those back to just below the lower sill of the window. Why this is especially important is the higher your house sits up, the shorter it looks, because the hedges will start to creep up in front of the window. It’s also not the best thing to look out at from the vantage point of the inside. So get your hedge trimmer, get your pruners, and get those hedge rows down. 

The Importance of Lighting

Those hedges cut down light coming into your home, which not only doesn’t look good from the inside but it’s not going to help you for photos. What also can help, our screens. Window screens cut down on the amount of light coming into your home. From the outside, your shiny windows can look kind of matte and dingy, even if they are perfectly new and clean. Get rid of the window screens, clean up the windows, everything is going to look a lot brighter from the inside. From the outside it’s going to help your home look a little bit more attractive. Same thing goes for any outside type lighting features that you have. If you’ve got sconces or anything else out in front of the garage, next to the front door, make sure they’re clean. Make sure you’ve got new matching light bulbs.

New Perspective

Sometimes we overlook these as homeowners who stop seeing your house the way a buyer might see it. So a piece of advice has to drive up to your home, try to see it from a new perspective or the perspective of a purchaser. Walk around the outside. Walk up to the front door, does your front door need paint? So you need to replace some hardware that maybe doesn’t open very easily or is flaking or peeling? Do you need a new door mat? Just his little details, get the cobwebs out, get the bird’s nest down, walk around to the back of the house. What is the buyer going to see when they get out there? Are they going to see toys scattered all over the place? Are they going to see garden tools rotting under your deck? Old piles of wood? Again, see that fresh perspective. You want to stage the exterior of your home no less than you were the interior of your home.

Gross Gutters

When folks are approaching that front door and they’re coming from the street to the driveway up to the front door, let’s take a look at those gutters. Like gutter gardens- they’re not in vogue. I don’t know if they ever have been. So let’s make sure that in the spring time and in the fall the trees are giving off a whole bunch of stuff like seedlings, flower petals, stuff like that. Let’s make sure our gutters don’t hold on to those items. Get someone up there either with a powerhouse or someone with a ladder to scoop all of that stuff out and just get it out of there. Again, the idea here is that that first impression is gorgeous, it’s beautiful, its a reflection of what folks will experience when they come inside your home.

Well this is Studio Four8 just with a few reminders to folks who are thinking about getting their homes ready for sale. Curb appeal is a huge point, we wanted to highlight some of the topics folks might overlook because we live in our homes and we don’t necessarily see these items.

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The Average Cost to Sell Your Ann Arbor Home

Studio Four8 dives into what the average cost to sell your Ann Arbor home.

The Average Cost to Sell Your Ann Arbor Home

Studio Four8’s Insight into lesser known fees associated with selling your home

Transcription:

Hi, I am Jeffrey Post, Sara Maddock, and Todd Waller and we are Studio Four8  partners with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company in beautiful Ann Arbor Michigan. Today we wanted to talk about what it costs to sell your home, what are the seller costs? 

You are probably aware there’s usually commission involved with selling your home, but what are the other fees that you may not be aware of that are unavoidable, like taxes, when you’re getting ready to sell your house. Definitely, and so as Sara pointed out, setting commission aside, there are unavoidable costs associated with the sale of your property.

2% On Top

 What we’ve found over time is that the costs associated run to the average of about 2%. So putting aside the commission that you’re paying the Realtors, add about 2% to that total cost and it’s roughly about what the cost of sale will be.

 Now some of those costs. . . What do we have guys? We’ve got transfer fees, title insurance, recording fees, there’s also revenue stamps that the county has there as well. Could be HOA fees, a lot of companies charge to transfer their paperwork from one home  to the next. 

Proration Of Taxes

One of the things that you may not be familiar with but is a standard practice here in Southeast Michigan specifically, is the proration of taxes. So the owner of the property, that would be you, presumably, if you own the house, you’ve already paid your taxes for the year and you’ve got two different payment periods, right? There’s one in December and then there’s one in July. So if you sell your home at any point during the year you will be refunded the money that you already paid for those taxes because those taxes run a full 12 months. So your December payment goes from December to the next December and your July payment goes from July to the next July. If you sell anywhere in between there, you were refunded the amount that you pay for but haven’t utilized. 

Occupancy

On rare occasions there might be an instance where your closing time and the buyer’s closing time might not line up perfectly, and there might be a rent back situation. In that case there could be an additional cost of the buyer renting back to stay there, or you renting back to stay there longer than the closing time they were expecting.

Liens

 Also if you have any liens on your property, perhaps unpaid taxes, perhaps work that was performed on the house that you haven’t paid off yet, all of those liens are going to come up during the title search process and you’ll be expected to pay off those fees at closing. There could be road assessments, again HOA fees, and so on. 

One of the tools that we use is a calculator, an online calculator. One that I like is actually produced by Liberty title company. We will put the link for that down in the body of this content. Basically you can get on that, plug in what your remaining mortgage balance is and mostly it’s self populates and you can kind of get an idea of what your total closing costs will be. 

Liberty Mortgage Rate Calculator

But really we would be happy to come out, evaluate your situation, and give you a really good idea and a sense based on what are the taxes, what are the HOA fees, what are the assessments- all those things, so that you can have a really good idea of what it’s actually going to cost you to sell your house. 

Because at the end of the day, what’s more important isn’t just selling your house, it’s the net proceeds of the house that you’re selling when you walk away. Bottom line baby. This is Studio Four8 with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder & Company here in beautiful Ann Arbor. Thank you so much and if we can ever be of assistance to you know how to reach us. See Ya!

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How Long to Sell My Ann Arbor Home

Studio Four8 dives into how long you should expect it to take to sell your Ann Arbor Home.

How Long to Sell your Ann Arbor Home

Studio Four8 Talks about how long it will take to sell your Ann Arbor home

Transcription:

Hey Folks this is the Studio Four8 partnership, this is Todd Waller, Sara Maddock, and Jeffrey Post. Today,

 we’ve got a question for you that we think you might want answered, at least it’s a question we frequently get or at least walk through frequently with sellers. That question is: How long is it going to take to sell the house, from the time that I sit down with a realtor, to the time I’m walking away from the closing, how long is this process going to take?

Urgency

 One of the first things that we do is sit down, actually kind of with a process map, because the first question you want to ask is: Is there an urgency to sell the house? Maybe somebody’s being relocated very quickly and the timeline needs to be shortened up.

Condition of your Home

 So once we understand that, we can set in motion certain things that we need to look at when we tour the  house. Are there updates that need to happen, is there painting that needs to happen? Some people think staging a house is actually bringing furniture in, I always say staging a house is oftentimes putting things away. We all have things to put away, right? So there’s an initial consultation that takes place. Sometimes I’ll go back to a house once or twice to follow up and be like: you’ve gotten this far let’s do this, let’s do that. So that part of this process can vary a lot depending on if your house is already show perfect, it’s ready to go from day one, or there is a lot of work that we need to do.

Marketing

 So that’s kind of a variable there, but from that point we would get ready to take professional photography, professional videography. Now we can just walk into the home with an iPhone camera and snap some pictures, and do it. We see this all the time- unfortunately. Our process as a studio is to hire a professional photographer, professional videography, whatever the property demands as far as our marketing goes. That does take a couple of days. We want to be ready to go, to coordinate everybody’s schedules, and then it takes a photographer a couple, 2 to 3 days to process the photos, to edit them, and to upload them to the website.

While that’s happening we’re behind the scenes working on ad copy, social media platforms, all the other marketing materials and portfolio that we’re going to use to market the home once we get those photos back. Then once we have all of that, it’s time for- We call it the MLS launch. 

MLS Launch

So, the fun part in our day is when we’ve got a home coming to the market- is launch day. So now we’ve got all of the digital marketing materials together, we’ve got the photos, we’ve got the virtual tour, we’ve got the video, we’ve put it all together. We enter that profile sheet into the multiple listing system. You may have heard it as the MLS, called the real estate database, whichever you call it- it’s the database which feeds all of those websites out there. Zillow, Trulia, realtor.com, homes.com, we’re entering your information and the digital marketing into that particular platform to launch. 

So now we have the consultation, we’ve had the digital photos and videos squared away. Now we’ve had the MLS launch, how long are we going to be on the market at that point in time?  If we’re selling it, it takes a day. but it’s really important, as Todd says, when we hit go- everything hits go. Our printed media, our online media, we set it all up so there’s nothing missed, it’s all going out at the same time.

Cash or Finance?

 From there it really depends on whether their cash offers or Finance offers. Cash offers, because there’s not an appraisal process or an underwriting process can take a shorter amount of time. Generally within that time frame you’re going to have things like attorneys review of title, an inspection, so you’re going to be sitting outside of probably 21 days at a minimum with a cash offer, If somebody’s really urgent. but otherwise with a typical lender it’s going to be 30 days to maybe 45 days. 

60 Days

So how long it takes to get the offer, we’re in a seller’s market in the Ann Arbor area that could be one day it could be about 2 weeks. Obviously when we do that initial consultation will talk to you about your house, your price point, your location, all of which impact what we expect the timeline for getting the offer is. but that’s basically, we’ve got the initial consultation, prepping the house for sale, getting the marketing materials ready, MLS launch day, showing the home, and obtaining the offer. So from start to finish in a typical transaction, if you counted, 60 days from the time that we first came to your property to the time that you are walking away from the closing table. If you think about 60 days, probably give or take a couple of weeks.

Anyways thank you so much for listening, this is Studio Four8 partners and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Snyder and Company realtors and we would love to talk to you about your home, your timeline, and your home selling goals this year.

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