Selling Your Home

What to Expect When Selling Your Home

Moving forward in life often involves letting go of the past, and this is easier to accomplish with some aspects than with others. Selling your home is a particularly tricky matter, as you must take a three-pronged approach to this challenge: you must find a new place to live, convince the owners of that home to sell it at a discount, and persuade another party to buy your own home so that you make a profit. Depending on factors such as the economy, which can dictate whether there is currently a buyer’s or a seller’s market in your neighborhood or hometown, some phases of selling your home may be easier than others. Nevertheless, even if you have found a new residence and a buyer for your old one, the process can take far longer than you may have anticipated, requiring prompt and consistent action on your part over a period of weeks or even months. Whether you have inherited a house, you need to move work vocational purposes, or you merely want to take advantage of a real estate boom, here are five features of the buying and selling process that you can anticipate. When you are ready, give one of our real estate lawyers in Buffalo a call for guidance you can count on.

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1. There Will Be a Constant Juggling Act.

There Will Be a Constant Juggling ActSelling your home and buying another creates a set of complexities that goes beyond those of a regular real estate transaction. Because the sale and the purchase must take place concurrently, the buyer and the seller must follow mirrored paths that allow the sale and the purchase to close on the same day. Your attorney will have to coordinate with the attorneys of your old home’s buyer and your new home’s seller as well as with all the other individuals involved in both transactions. If this coordination is not possible, you may have to consider either obtaining early entry into the home that you are purchasing and completing that transaction on a separate day or delaying your purchaser’s occupancy of the home that you are selling so that you can move out a day or two after closing. Early entry and post-closing occupancy can be tricky because everyone involved must agree.

2. When Selling Your Home, Timing Is Everything, And You Will Inevitably Cut It Close.

Timing Is Everything, And You Will Inevitably Cut It CloseIn a sale contingency, a person seeking to buy a new home is relying on money from the sale of the current home to complete the purchase of the new one. This person’s attorney can execute a rider setting a specific number of days within which the buyer must enter a bona fide sale contract for his or her residence to keep the purchase contract alive. A bona fide contract requires the buyer not only to enter a contract for sale of the home, but also to overcome the attorney approval and home inspection contingencies. If both of those items are accomplished within the requisite time, the sale and purchase will proceed—presumably with simultaneous closings. As the buyer, you will complete your sale first, and then immediately take the money from that sale to the closing of your purchase to complete that transaction.

3. Closing

 ClosingThe length of a typical close understandably requires dedication and perseverance. A traditional real estate closing in Western New York takes approximately eight weeks, and it may extend to ten weeks. Completion of your transaction can extend even further if a complex title issue arises requiring someone to take remedial action or gather documents from third-party sources, such as another bank or law office.

4. The Bank Will Be Your Ally in the Closing Process.

The Bank Will Be Your Ally in the Closing ProcessIf you are the buyer, your first part is a meeting with a bank attorney during which you will sign a note, which is the bank’s promise to lend you money at a certain interest rate for a certain term. You will also sign a mortgage document that protects the bank’s security interest in the property. The third document is a closing disclosure that gives a complete financial snapshot of the transaction.

5. Flexibility Is Essential to Make Everything Work.

Flexibility Is Essential to Make Everything WorkThe date shown in a contract is a target date rather than a firm deadline. Few contracts actually close on the exact date listed in the contract. Banks traditionally begin with the projected date and work backward toward the goal of closing on or around that date, but a host of variables can affect the completion of a real estate transaction. Flexibility is an important element of working through a real estate transaction because you will not be sure of your actual closing date until days before the closing takes place. You should not schedule movers until you receive an official closing date from the bank, the seller, and the buyer. Only at that point should you take care of such items as utilities, final walkthroughs, movers, and insurance.

Our real estate lawyers in Buffalo have helped individuals catch up in the tangled web of real estate transactions to navigate the purchase of their homes for the past 45 years. During that time, we have witnessed economic booms and busts, but we have never varied in our dedication to aiding our clients secure new homes and manage the sale of their former residences. If you have any questions about the purchase of your house or what to expect when selling your home, contact our real estate lawyers in Buffalo.

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