Time for an equity checkup?
Smart Selling Starts with an Equity Checkup
Updated: 01/04/2025
As we roll out of 2024 and into 2025, it has been a qualified Buyer’s market with high mortgage rates stifling demand and keeping both buyers and sellers on the sidelines. So you may be wondering if it is a good time to put your home on the market. Or not!
However, knowing the current value of your home is always a good idea. Now is an excellent time to do an equity checkup by asking for a complimentary market value analysis and then looking at your options.
One of the big questions has to be “if I do sell, where will I go?” The catch-22 is that if your market is a Seller’s market, then finding your next home will be more expensive and harder to find. A Seller’s market generally means over-asking selling prices, multiple offers and other buyers who may be in a better position to compete to win the home.
If it is a Buyer’s market, then you can expect to receive lower than asking offers and longer days on market to sell your home.
Of course, one strategy is to find the home you want to buy and write the Purchase and Sale Agreement (PSA) to cover the sale of your home contingency. Unfortunately, while this works in a Buyer’s market, in a Seller’s market, this type of offer puts you at the bottom of the pile.
In a Seller’s market, cash wins the day and the fewer contingencies the better.
Should you do an inspection before putting your home on the market?
Updated: 01/04/2025
You’ve just accepted an offer on your home. Hurray! You are excited and the buyers are also on a high. However, that euphoria quickly disappears as you realize that the inspection is the next big hurdle on the transaction process.
Inspections are super important as a buyer’s first real opportunity to truly understand what they are purchasing. However, home inspections are the number one reason a transaction fails - so they are not going away. At the very least, a buyer’s home inspection provides an opportunity to reopen price negotiations so don’t be counting your proceeds quite yet.
So the question becomes “Should I do a pre-listing inspection before I go to market?”
I believe that a Seller’s Inspection is the best way to market a home and avoid the renegotiation of the price. We make the inspection available to buyers and while it isn’t intended to remove the right of a buyer to do an inspection (and nor should it as a buyer’s inspection is the BEST protection for the Seller, it does help reduce the risk that the Buyer walks away and the property comes back on market. While there may be other reasons that a buyer walks away , often the seller takes a financial hit as both the market and agents believe that the transaction failed due to an inspection issue.