I Want to Sell My House, How do I Start?

I will not talk about curb appeal, paint, staging, etc..because that is given that you have to keep your house in tip-top shape to sell, there is a very important critical point that hold your house from selling.

DO NOT OVERPRICE YOUR HOUSE!!
DO NOT OVERPRICE YOUR HOUSE!!
DO NOT OVERPRICE  YOUR HOUSE!!

You can paint the whole house with beautiful neutral color, upgrade the kitchen's counter tops, cabinets, new carpet or hardwood floors and spend a lot of money, BUT if the price is too high, it will not sell. Would you pay $40,000 for a car that is selling everywhere for $25,000?

I will share with you just one example from real life, not just bunch of yada yada :)

A seller had his house in a great shape, regular maintenance, has upgrades which is perfect and was listed for $205,000. Similar homes in the same subdivision were listed in the 180s. Can you look at it from the buyer's point of view just by looking at the houses info on the MLS. Oh! both are 3 bedrooms 2 baths, hmmm same square footage and all of them been more than 5 months on the market. Buyers will pass on your house and will not see it. That is reason ONE not to overprice.

Reason TWO, still about the same house in the example above, the last house sold in the neighborhood for the same size was appraised for $172,000 (No wonder all of them been on the market for more than 5 months). Do you know what does that mean that it's been appraised for that amount??

Let's look at the buyer' side again and his mortgage:

Assuming the buyer will pay 10% down payment.
The Bank will lend him 90% of the lesser of the appraised price or the contract price: which means in this case that the bank will lend the buyer 90% of the $172,000 not the $205,000 because the bank said that is the real value of the house. Do you think the buyer will pay an extra $30,000?

After they had their house listed for 7 months with very few showings and no offers, they listed the house with me, we got offers in less than 2 months and it was sold in 70 days!! Yay :) 

We can't blame the market being bad or that there are no buyers in this economy or the realtor didn't market the house right. There was more than 53000 single family homes (not including townhomes & condos) sold in the Houston Area in 2011 and around 46000 sold in the first 9 months of 2012. These are big strong numbers!!

Feel free to contact me any time for your home market analysis or any other questions you have

Jimmy Farag, REALTOR Realm Real Estate Professionals Phone: (832) 303-5000 Cell: (832) 744-7424 Fax: (281) 598-5402 Homes for Sale in Sugarland TX and Missouri City Homes for sale in Katy TX See All Foreclosure Homes

What is the home buying process? Where do we start?

That’s always the question I hear on the first conversation with my clients, specially first time home buyers.

Step 1: To make sure that you can qualify for a loan which is the mortgage.

This step is very important for couple of reasons;
First, you will know if you can get a loan (pre-qualify or pre-approval) and for how much and if not qualified, at least you will know what you need to work on to be qualified in a few months.
The second reason, that most of home sellers including banks for foreclosure properties, requires that the buyer sends the pre-approval letter with the offer, otherwise, they are not going to consider the offer.
Third reason, that you can have some expectations on how much downpayment you will need to pay and closing costs, so you can plan accordingly.

I can’t tell you how many times people went out for months looking for a house and then they found out that they are not qualified when they wanted to submit an offer; also can’t tell you how many times people lost a great deal because their offer was not considered without the pre-approval letter and other buyers got the house.

You can contact mortgage lender for pre-approval or contact me for a list of lenders in the Houston Area. I don’t recommend at all working with any of the big banks for many reasons.

Step 2: At this point, we can start looking for houses. I will set up a page based on what you are looking for as of how many bedrooms, bathrooms, price range, location, size, school district, etc and will email you all the houses that meet your searching criteria and then we can go view the houses you like of the list.

I will not talk in details here about the remaining steps as I will be working with you and guiding you through the whole process step by step

Step 3: Making an offer
Step 4: Have inspection
Step 5: Remove contingencies, if any
Step 6: The loan process
Step 7: Closing & Key for your new house

 

Jimmy Farag, REALTOR Realm Real Estate Professionals Phone: (832) 303-5000 Cell: (832) 744-7424 Fax: (281) 598-5402 Homes for Sale in Sugarland TX Homes for sale in Katy TX See All Foreclosure Homes

Home Market Analysis for Missouri City & Brightwater neighborhood

MISSOURI CITY MARKET ANALYSIS
This is the market activity in Brightwater Subdivision and Missouri City TX in 2012 as of 10/8/2012
There are six subdivisions in Brightwater, built in the 90s, with an average of 3800 square ft and average price range around $280,000.
	Brightwater	Missouri City TX
Homes for Sale	5	456
List Price	$245,000 - 350,000	$20,000 - 1,480,000
Foreclosures or Short Sales	2	66
% of Foreclosure of Homes for Sale	40%	14%
Houses SOLD Year to date	23	946
Sale Price	$198,000 - $415,000	$21,000 - $1,250,000
Average Days on Market	83 days	86 days
Average Price per Sq. Ft.	$86.34	$68.67
This information is about the Homes in Brightwater and Missouri City TX, the analysis can vary from one neighborhood to another. For more information about the market analysis in your neighborhood, please feel free to contact me any time for FREE consultation.
For more information, contact Jimmy   Jimmy Farag, REALTOR Realm Real Estate Professionals Phone: (832) 303-5000 Cell: (832) 744-7424 Fax: (281) 598-5402 Homes for Sale in Sugarland TX www.SellMyHouseJimmy.com www.HoustonHomesforSale-Here.com www.HoustonForeclosureHomesFree.com