For many of our clients selling their home comes with the added stress of having to find the next home they are going to live in. Most of the time, that involves using the equity from the home they are selling as their downpayment (or part of their downpayment) for the next home they will own. Their biggest question is usually not, "How much money will I make on the sale of my home?"; instead, their biggest question is, "How will I sell this home and buy a new one, seamlessly, and not be without a home sometime in between?"
The process of selling and buying back-to-back, especially in a market in which inventory is low and where you may get an offer very quickly on your current home, can be stressful. Rest assured, we help clients through this very scenario all the time and we have a number of strategies for helping you through.
Steps to Selling and Buying, Back-To-Back
It's really not as difficult as it sounds. While it may seem stressful while you're in it, to us, with our meticulous checklists and sales strategies, and our hands-on approach to working with our clients, there will be very few (if any!) times that you feel like you are in the dark. In fact, our goal is to anticipate your needs and provide you with detailed information, every step of the way.
Before our initial appointment with you, we will ask you to do two things. First, we will ask you to fill out our Buyer Questionnaire and our Seller Questionnaire -- these will help us to begin to get to know You-the-Seller (i.e., you and the home that you're selling) as well as You-the-Buyer (i.e., you and your homebuying needs and wants). Second, we will strongly recommend that you review, at your convenience, our Steps to Selling a Home, as well as Steps to Buying a Home. There is a lot of valuable information contained in those pages, and while we won't expect you to remember it all (don't worry, there won't be a quiz!), it will give you a good overview of what to expect. Our job is to remind you, step-by-step, and keep you on track.
During our initial appointment, we will discuss your desired timeline, which can help us not only decide when to do our pre-listing work on your home (staging, photos, video shoot, etc.) and when to list your home, but we will also discuss logistics and options that we may have to help alleviate some of your stress once you do get an offer on your home and then have to go out and find your next one.
Using your answers to our Buyer Questionnaire and the details we discuss, we will go ahead and set up your home search for the purchase of your next home. We might even go out and look at a few properties before you're ready to make an offer, just to give you confidence that, even with a low inventory of homes on the market, there will be homes for you to choose from.
We will also have you get pre-qualified for your mortgage during this time as well. The more you can do to prepare for your purchase, while also preparing to sell, the better off (and the less stressed) you'll be! Your mortgage lender will be able to discuss your purchase with you and pre-qualify you, contingent upon your current home selling. We will even prepare an Estimated Net To Seller sheet for your lender, so that you can have an educated conversation with him or her about how much of your proceeds you think you'll be using toward your downpayment.
The good news is that we have a lot of experience juggling multiple transactions, and it's our job to keep you on track and informed throughout the process. And we're very good at our job! The even better news is that you definitely won't be homeless. The majority of the time, closings line up seamlessly, and our clients enjoy the deep breath of relief they can take when they have back-to-back closings and they walk away with keys to their new home.
If you're thinking of making a door-to-door move -- selling your current home and buying a new one -- please call us today at 404-994-2181 to discus, or email Maura(at)BuySellLiveAtlanta(dot)com.
