My Hattiesburg

9 Steps in Selling Your Home: Steps 1-4

November 8, 2005 on 6:55 am | In Selling a Home |

Step 1: Get Pre-Approved
The first thing you need to do is to make sure you will be able to get financing for your new home after you sell your current home. You may want to refer back to the posts on buying a home.

Step 2: Check Mortgage Payoff
You can call your lender to get the payoff amount. Usually a teller can look it up on their computers but you may want to see the loan officer just to make sure you get correct information.

Step 3: How Much is Your Home Worth?
So how do you determine the market value of your home? If you have a real estate agent he or she can do a fair market analysis to determine your home’s value. However, if you don’t have a real estate agent you will need to go to your county court house and try to look up your neighborhood and see what the houses in the area that are similar to yours sold for. Based off that information you can determine about what your house is worth. It is way easier to let a agent do it.

Step 4: Estimate Your Cost in Selling
Here is a list of some of the bigger things you will need to account for when estimating the costs in selling your home:

• Real estate commission if you use a agency
• Attorney’s closing fee and other professional closing fees
• Advertising costs, signs, newspaper ads, and fliers if you sell by owner
• Any fees paid by the seller in you general area (example: surveys, inspections)
• Tax on the sale
• Your annual expenses, such as property taxes, home owner association fees, and fuel
  tank rentals.

Real estate agents deal with transactions on a daily basis and can offer a pretty close estimate on what your closing costs may be.