The contract

Someone came through your house and they loved it and want to make an offer!! Yippee!! First we want to be sure they have the money ready to make that offer--we need a letter from their bank saying they are prequalified or better yet preapproved!! Hopefully those are the only buyers coming through your house. I will receive an offer from their agent and we will sit down and go through it piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph, and make sure of the terms and other provisions are acceptable to you. We will probably negotitate the price and we can change any provisions that need to be changed. This contract is an agreement between the minds of both the buyer and the seller and needs to be a win win for all parties. That is our goal. I will lead you thorough the maze of real estate 101 and will take care to get you the best deal with the least amount of problems I can. It is a case of give and take on both sides. No one gets is all their way but together everyone wins!!

Showings

There will be showings on your home. We are a partnership and we will schedule the showings through our office. Someone from my office will call you and tell you who will be there to show your home and when they will be there. Usually they will give us a time, in about 1 hour increments, say from 1-2 on Tuesday. They will then come by between 1-2 and show your home and leave a business card. That is in a perfect world. You will have cleaned or at least straightened up and if you have just left the lights will be on throughout the house. (The house looks bigger when the lights are on and that means more money.) There can be problems with this system. My office and staff do their best to get a hold of you so if there is one main person we can call to set up the showings that is best. If we have to call Harry at the office and then Jane on the cell she never uses and then Mark because sometimes he stays there.... well you can see how it could be a hit and miss situation. And the Realtors get delayed. If a buyer wants to stay in a house we will let them because they will need to really look over the ones they want so we may be late when we show them your house. Please accept my apology now--we will try to be in that time frame but might not be--you do not have to be out of your home till we get there--and then please try to leave for a walk or ride to get ice cream! We may be in your home for 10 minutes and we might be there for an hour. The longer we are there the better chance of an offer. They may use your bathroom, that is ok--they will stay longer. We try to have all the kids in tow but sometimes that is hard depending on the number of kids they have and how well behaved they are. The agents may not show up sometimes because they ran out of time, the buyers found another house they loved before seeing yours or they just didn't want to see your house when they drove by. Please understand we do the best we can to get them in with a scheduled showing but sometimes it just doesn't work. And you have cleaned and nothing happens--that is the nature of this business--it is not a perfect world--be ready for it.

Packing continued--

There are 3 questions you need to ask about the stuff you are going to pack. 1. Do I love it and want to take it with me? 2. Can I afford to move it? 3. Would someone else appreciate it or do they need it more than I do? (Then I should give it away to them!!) Moving is expensive and tiring so think about that when you start--everything you pack you need to unpack and put away in the new place. I suggest you get a bunch of paper towels and zip lock bags and use them when packing. I found the paper towels to be great to pack glassware in since newspaper will get them black and the paper towels won't. The zip lock bags will consolidate stuff like rubber bands and q-tips and things that go together and make it easier to transport and put away at the other end. Trust me on this one--you have lots more stuff than you think and it will take you longer to pack and move than you think. (You will also have less people help you than you think) I have seen people pull all nighters because someone did not show up to help them. Also, be sure you have all the boxes you need to finish packing since Walmart may not be open at 3 AM when you need extra boxes to pack before the truck arrives in the morning. Be sure you have planned for meals for the people who help you move and if someone wants to help by keeping your kids let them do that. It will be a bigger help than you know!!

Whats next?

You've taken care of the cleaning and made sure that all the toys are put away. Next I suggest you start packing up your stuff. You are moving so lets get started so you don't have so much to do when you get a contract and have a short time frame to move. I suggest you go to Walmart or Target and get some plastic bins. We will start filling those along with some cardboard boxes for garage sale or give away stuff so the amount of stuff to finish packing and move will be less. We will need a staging area--a place in the basement (or a spare room) to start stacking the boxes we have ready to move and another place to stack the garage sale boxes until we have enough for the garage sale. The boxes we are going to move need to be labeled
what is in them and where they came from and where they will go in the new house if you know. (ie: towels and grandmas china from the hall closet--to the new hall closet) I took the movering guys by the hand and showed them which room was which when we moved and said if it says living room, that is here, and if it says Robs room, that is in here. Then each box was in the room it was to be unloaded in and it made it so much easier for me to find the stuff I needed when I was ready to unpack that particular room. Buyers understand you are moving and will overlook a neat stack of bins. Our goal here is to make your closets and bookshelves neat and clean and not like there is a lack of space. It also makes your home easier to keep clean and neat. When my dad moved I would clean out a cupboard and then he had a bin where we packed the stuff that went to his new place and the rest went in a box to get ready for the tag sale he had to get rid of the rest of the items he no longer needed.

5 reasons a house doesn't sell

There are basically 5 reasons a house doesn't sell: Price, Condition, Location, Terms and Marketing. We will buy bad bananas to make bread if the price is right. So Price is the main one. If the price is to high the buyers will compare your home to the others in the price range it is in and will purchase the best value for their dollars. An overpriced home helps the others in that price range sell, and sits on the market and becomes "market stale", a term meaning it has been on for a long number of days and something is probably wrong with it. Condition is next and that is how clean and pristine it is. How does it show? Cluttered and dirty costs you money and it can cost you a buyer. Location is the third one and there is not a lot you can do about the location, except reflect it in the price. Good location means a higher price. A location is good depending on what the buyer wants--close to the University so they can walk to their office or far from the University so they don't have to be around the students in their free time. Terms are what the market interest rate is. The rates are good or they are not so good. (Compared to what they were when we bought our first house they are fabulous!!) The lower the rate the more home the buyer can get for their money. And then there is marketing and that is my job. I market in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as well as local homes magazines. My office is in the local paper with the listings on a weekly basis. We both make sure your home is seen by upwards of 50,000 people a day