Selling a San Carlos CA Home
So, you’re looking at selling a San Carlos CA Home? Hopefully, it’s for a great new opportunity in your life! So maybe it’s been a while since you’ve sold a home, or this is the first time selling one? Let’s go over somethings to consider when Selling that San Carlos CA Home.
Inspections & Disclosures
Bare minimum, get a home and pest inspection before going to market. These two inspections will cost you about $1,000 but may save you thousands later. If you wait for the buyers to get inspections later, then that’s when problems with your home might be discovered, and the buyers will try to renegotiate the purchase price and you’ll bicker about the amount of the discount. This renegotiation can become contentious, and I’ve seen deals fall apart because of it. Much better for the buyers to make their offer knowing all the home’s flaws upfront!
Having upfront inspections will also allow you to make any repairs you may deem worth doing because sometimes trivial things can scare buyers off, so it’s better to just repair some of them upfront.
House Prep
Let’s talk about curb appeal that continuous into the home’s interior! When selling a San Carlos CA home, it might be worthwhile to perform some upgrades to make both the interior and exterior look its best. It’s great if you can get a realtor that is also a general contractor to do work for you because they can better control the schedule and costs.
Anyway, house prep is all about return on investment. The big question is whether spending the money to perform upgrades is going to give you back a multiple of the money spent? This is where a real estate agent that understands what it costs to perform certain upgrades and how much more the house might sell for is critical.
Part of the prepping process is staging. In an ideal world, you’d move out of the house and allow it to be fully staged. This will make it more convenient for buyers to visit the property plus it will result in a greater emotional experience for buyers.
Marketing
It’s critical to properly market when selling a San Carlos CA home! Select a realtor that uses the best professional photographers, videographers, and drone operators. Quality photos and video are what will motivate buyers to get off the couch and into their car to drive over to view your home. It’s also important to have open houses, they make it easy for buyers to see your home. In a slow market every showing counts. So, make it easy for buyers to see your home and keep it very tidy – no frying fish! It’s also important to show off the house on different social media platforms; select a realtor that understands social media.
Finally, when selling a San Carlos CA home, it must be placed on the Multiple Listing Service, the backbone of selling homes. The MLS informs agents and feeds data to sites like Zillow and Redfin.
Pricing/Selling
Pricing is critical whether the market is slow or hot when selling a San Carlos CA home! A hot seller’s market might be more forgiving with pricing, but way overpriced properties can still be ignored by buyers. In a slow market, buyers are even more unforgiving and sensitive to pricing. So, price properly for your property and market or else you lose momentum, and your home might linger on the market for a long time and become ‘stale.’
Escrow
Once you accept an offer on your home, escrow will be opened. Escrow is a neutral third party that basically makes sure everything is ok with title (that you in fact own the home), they accept the buyer’s lender money, they pay off your mortgage with that money, and then at the end they give you the net proceeds and the buyer title to your home. They will also sell the buyer some title insurance which protects the buyer from future claims against the house.
Now once you’re in escrow it does not mean that you’re locked in. Even if the offer you accepted had zero contingencies, buyers do still sometimes back out. So, it’s never over until it’s over! San Carlos is in San Mateo County and custom here is for the buyer to pay for escrow and title fees, but these fees are negotiable and in a slow market a buyer might ask the seller to pay them in full or split the costs with the seller.
With a little luck and a good agent, your first escrow will be successful, and your San Carlos CA home will be sold without any incidents!
More Info
To find some of the best realtors in San Carlos CA visit https://www.vabrato.com/about-us/
To learn about the Tax consequences of selling a home visit https://sancarloslife.com/tax-exemptions-when-selling-your-home/
To learn about tricks to avoid capital gains visit https://sancarloslife.com/preventing-capital-gain-taxes/
To learn how to transfer your property taxes if you’re 55+ visit https://sancarloslife.com/keeping-low-property-taxes/
