3 minute read
It’s Holiday Season, Let’s Celebrate and Look Forward to 2020
www.DanvilleLivingCA.com @DanvilleLivingCA #DanvilleLivingCA
By Janice Jordan, Compass, Resident since 1998
It’s the crazy hustle-bustle season. We’ve been planning parties, shopping for friends and family, going on vacation during the school break and barely finding time to fit in our workouts.
Once the holidays are over, we promise ourselves that next year we will be better prepared and have more self control when we are offered another luscious holiday dessert.
During this retrospective period we might also have noticed that our home isn’t quite big enough for our growing family or that there wasn’t enough room in your kitchen when the in-laws were helping prepare meals with you.
This is the perfect time to think about the possibilities of buying a new home. It’s not as daunting a task as you might think. But, it does take some planning.
1. Start with an end game.
What kind of home do you want? Start looking at homes with the amenities and locations that are appealing to you. Ask your Realtor to show these homes to you or visit them at the weekend open houses. Very quickly you will get an idea if these homes are within reach financially.
2. Assess your home’s value.
Call your Realtor and ask them to prepare a market evaluation of your home. Don’t rely on Zillow or other pricing websites. They are not always accurate. It is better to really know your home’s value; the $50,000 to $100,000 swing in value could make the difference between being able to make a move or not.
3. Prepare your home for sale.
Once you have completed the first 2 steps, you will be ready with the help of your Realtor to prepare your home for sale. That’s where a great Realtor with a strong brokerage backing will really give you the advantage. Your realtor should be your “one stop shop” for all vendor referrals and services and giving you the best marketing and sales advice.
A. Compass offers Concierge Services; we front the costs to prepare your home for sale and then after your house sells, we will collect these costs from your proceeds with zero interest or fees.
B. Compass offers Bridge loans; many homeowners feel stuck. How can we stage our home to look picture perfect and still live in the home with our kids and pets? Should we move out and rent? Also, it is challenging to make offers on your future home with a contingency of selling your home. In a competitive market, the contingent offer rarely gets accepted. The bridge loan takes care of these conundrums. Bridge loans offer you the financing to purchase your next home before your home sells and covers the potential double payments and costs of the loan for up to 6 month. Again, at the close of escrow on your home, we reimburse ourselves for these costs with no extra fees.
C. “Coming Soon” pre-marketing: Exposing your home prior to actually putting it on the market will increase interest with those buyers out there just waiting for the right home or the right neighborhood. Statistics have shown that our Coming Soon marketing doubles your first Open House traffic. It also doubles your market exposure and lets you test the market to make sure the price is within market norms
4. Simultaneously, choose a Realtor with experience.
Demand market statistics, trends and neighborhood information from them. They should be your single resource for everything about selling and buying. Request consults from stagers, color/paint consults from experts, contractors, handyman services down to what color mulch should you put in your garden. Ask for ‘coming soon’ listings to get a head start on what homes are coming on the market that you might like. Ask for neighborhood information; schools, crime statistics, demographics and park and local church information. This is one of your largest financial decisions, make sure you have a top professional representing you.
Take a look at the current market trends for our area. I’m available any time for advice or consultation.
