Selling your home is harder than it sounds. Beyond listing it, you’ll need to get your house ready, set the right price, and negotiate with buyers. Here’s everything you need to know about the process and navigating the market.
When trying to decide whether to sell your house, it's essential to consider two main factors, the current state of the housing market and your individual circumstances. While understanding the market is beneficial, sometimes selling a home becomes necessary regardless of favorable conditions, like if you have to relocate for work or other personal reasons.
Selling a house isn’t free and comes with its own set of costs, like real estate agent fees, appraisal and home inspection fees, and your mortgage balance. There are also tax implications, like capital gains — but also ways to avoid them. In order to make a profit when you sell you need to account for all this. To get started, try a home sale proceeds calculator to estimate your home-selling costs, and how much money you’d actually make.
Use our home sale calculator to estimate your net proceeds.
Here’s an overview of how it all works.
There are three main ways to sell a home and each one has its own pros and cons.
Hire a real estate agent: The traditional approach involves engaging a listing agent for selling your home.
Sell on your own: You can choose to sell without an agent, but it’s usually more stressful than you’d think — and you may not get the best price for your home.
Sell to a homebuying company or work with an iBuyer: This option offers benefits, like instant cash offers and faster closing, but also drawbacks depending on the company.
You can lose a lot of money selling your house as-is, so it’s important to declutter your home, enhance your curb appeal, and assess the property condition to make necessary fixes. On the other hand, there are certain home improvements that won’t increase your home value so you’ll want to skip the repairs that aren’t worth your time.
On the other hand, there are certain repairs you can skip, since they’ll eat up too much time or won’t increase the value when you’re getting ready to sell your home.
When you list with Orchard, we’ll get your home show-ready and make repairs to increase your home’s value at no upfront cost.
Choosing the right listing price is crucial for a successful sale — and it’s harder than it sounds. You need to properly gauge your home’s features against neighboring houses and the market in order to set a competitive listing price that attracts potential buyers. A listing agent will be key here, and they’ll also put it on the MLS and take charge of showing and marketing your home.
You should also consider staging your home, which is a professional way of decorating and arranging your furniture to make the property look more attractive to buyers.
When offers start coming in for your house, it's time to navigate the negotiation process. Keep in mind that the first or highest offer may not always be the best one. You’ll need to consider other factors, like the buyer's financial readiness, their proposed contingencies, and flexibility with closing dates.
After you’ve accepted an offer on your home, the buyer will request an inspection and appraisal as part of their mortgage application. An appraisal is an unbiased measure of the value of your home to make sure it lines up with the asking price. The inspection, on the other hand, is a thorough examination of the property's condition, identifying any potential issues or repairs needed.
Failing either of these, will put you back to the drawing board and put the breaks on your home sale.
Get ahead of these factors to ensure your home appraises for the highest value.
A low appraisal can make it hard to sell your home, but it’s not impossible. Here’s how.
A low appraisal can make it hard to sell your home, but it’s not impossible. Here’s how.
Here's what selling your house looks like:
