How to Avoid Costly Mistakes When Negotiating

I’ll help you buy or sell your home in Louisville, KY. If you’re looking to buy a home, I’ll help you pick the right home. If you’re thinking about selling, call me and I’ll tell you what price your home is most likely to sell for. Click here to search all available homes on my website.

When a buyer is searching for a home and they find one they like, they'll submit an offer to the seller. From there, the negotiating begins. Today, we want to walk you through the steps of this process.

Price and conditions: The first things that will be discussed are the price and conditions of the property. Essentially, the offer includes what the buyer intends to buy the home for IF a few things are done beforehand. The buyer may ask for the appliances to be included in the sale or for the sellers to help cover part of the closing costs of the sale. 

Inspections and repairs: During this phase of negotiations, the buyer will come in and have inspections done on the property. It may be a full home inspection or various other inspections to look at particular parts of the house. The buyer has the option to inspect whatever they want to, in order to ensure they know what they're paying for. If there is anything that comes up that needs to be addressed, the buyer will put it on paper and let the seller know. As a seller, you can take care of all the repairs, split the repairs with the buyer, lower the price of your home, or do nothing at all. 

Survey: As a buyer, you have the option to do a survey on the property. This ensures the property lines and boundaries are where they are supposed to be and you don't have any encroachments. If a problem is found, make sure it's taken care of prior to closing.

Appraisal: Finally, the bank is going to do an appraisal once the property is purchased. Once the appraisal comes back, there will be no problems if it is at the contract price. If the appraisal is below the contract price, another negotiation will need to take place during the contract phase.

Hopefully this short explanation of negotiations during the contract phase will help you get the most out of your real estate transaction. If you need assistance, or have any questions about real estate, don't hesitate to give us a call or shoot us an email. We would be please to help!

The Benefits of a Comparable Market Analysis

I’ll help you buy or sell your home in Louisville, KY. If you’re looking to buy a home, I’ll help you pick the right home for you. If you’re thinking about selling, call me and I’ll tell you what price your home is most likely to sell for. Click here to search all available homes on my website.

No two homes are alike, which is why pricing a home for sale can be so challenging.

You may have an idea of what your home is worth on the open market, but in order to sell it, you’ll have to support your price to buyers with comparable homes – other similar nearby homes that have sold recently or are currently for sale.

To help determine the right asking price for your home, your real estate professional should prepare a comparative or comparable market analysis, or CMA.

The CMA is a professional report that real estate agents give to their clients. CMAs are generated by a computer program from your agent’s multiple listing service, (MLS). 

The MLS is available to members only, and they pay a fee to get access to the service’s public and proprietary data, including tax information, sold transactions, and listings input by all cooperating MLS members

Your agent puts search perimeters into the CMA program for homes for sale or those that have recently sold that are most similar to your home. This information is sorted according to fields of information such as neighborhood or zip code, number of bedrooms, number of baths, age of the home, square footage, price range, sold dates within 3-6 months, and other data.

The program then creates a report that tells the agent which homes most similar to yours have sold recently and which homes are for sale.

Having a CMA report done for your home is key to pricing it well and making sure you have a smooth transaction. If you have any question about CMA's or anything else real estate related, please give us a call or send us an email. We'd love to help out.