Selling Your House in a Hot Market

Hey everyone, it's David Xie again. And I'm here to tell you about a topic that I think it's really important that we talk about, and it's something that's not talked about enough. We've all heard about first-time home buyers, but what about a first-time home seller? So 2021 and 2022 have been very challenging in many ways.

However, one of the ways that it hasn't challenged us is all of our property values have increased, right? With that being said, one topic that I think is really important is what do first-time home sellers need to do? What do they need to look out for? So you bought your house a couple of years ago, and now you've seen in a significant amount of equity buildup, whether it be 10%, 30%, 40%, and even in really extreme a hundred percent equity build up in the last couple of years.

You should evaluate a couple of things. Number one, I would definitely reach out to multiple agents and find out what their thoughts are on the area, the condition of your house, and what you can do to get the most return on investment.

So to elaborate on this, the things that are going to affect you the most when it comes to first-time home selling and buying simultaneous, especially in a market like we have right now, the ROI and the COI. So ROI is your return on investment, okay. What you've put in and how much you stand to gain. The cost of indecision, which is the COI, is also a big deal.

So being fast to make decisions and just let the process playing out with home inspections, with appraisals and things like that, that's really crucial. So if you find something that you really like, I always talk about this with all of my clients, when you find something that you love and you lose out on that property, guess what?

You're always going to go back and you're always going to compare it to the property that you lost. So don't let that COI affect you in any way. So as a first time home seller, you want to get comparables. You want to see what the other houses are selling for. You also want to check what your financing terms would look like.

So if you're currently in an FHA loan, you may be used to paying private mortgage insurance. If you go with a conventional loan with 20% down, you may be able to get no mortgage insurance or maybe even 10% down, and just pay for upfront mortgage insurance and eliminate the monthly mortgage insurance.

The second step that I think is really important when you're selling your first home is to get really good pictures. Having a rockstar photographer makes all of the difference in the world. I can't talk highly enough about my photographer that I have. He takes drone pictures, it could be staged, it could be not staged, and the pictures just turn out really well. He's helped me sell things that are not houses and I've gotten top dollar for it.

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So getting a good photographer is really good. Another thing that would be really important is what do you like when you walk into a place, right? You got to put yourself in the buyer's shoes. So like when I walk into a hotel, the first thing I look at is I look at the carpet. I look at the beds, I want to see if everything's clean and tidy. And that's what people are looking at when they're walking into your house.

They want to make sure that the maintenance, the deferred maintenance, like even if you spend a couple of hundred dollars on a handyman it's not the worst thing in the world to make sure that everything's touched up.

So when people have that first impression on your home, they already know, Hey, this person has taken care of their home. And I'll tell you a couple of resources that I've used recently to find a really affordable handyman are Homeadvisor, Angie and Taskrabbit. Okay. Those are three apps that I use on a regular basis to find laborers or handymen.

Another thing that's really important to me that I also practice is in a really hot market, don't fall for the sentimental letters or even the first offer, okay. This is a business. And it's a business and you're running your own business. So when you get that offer, take a little bit of time to evaluate every single offer.

Look at what the offer price is, look at the type of financing, look and see if there's an appraisal guarantee. If there's a appraisal gap, if it's a first time home buyer or grant programs, all of these factors have something to do with how successful you are at closing on the home. I've seen it from really hot markets to really slow markets, but those are my tips for a first-time home seller.

If you have any questions, my name is David Xie with the Xie Mortgage Team, and feel free to click on the calendar link below to schedule a time to talk to me. Or if you would like to apply for that home as a first-time home seller, I would love to help you out. And that application link will be below as well. So, I look forward to talking to you, and this is David Xie with the Xie Mortgage Team.