Selling your home can be a stressful process. You have to worry about pricing your home, staging your home, finding a real estate agent who can market your home effectively… and you may even be searching for a new home at the same time.
When a buyer submits a great offer on your home, you want to do everything possible to make sure the process goes smoothly so the transaction doesn’t fall through. Read below about the most common issues that kill a deal, and what you can do to help prevent them.
Your house could look great at first sight, especially if it’s been updated to reflect modern trends and finishes. But the aesthetics of a home are just one part of the equation. A buyer will order a home inspection before purchasing your home — and if the report turns up some serious issues, you could watch your buyer walk away from the deal.
Termite damage, mold, and other common issues are usually well-hidden in the bones of your house and can be very expensive to repair. Your buyer is unlikely to purchase your home knowing there is a termite infestation compromising the structural stability of the house, and you’ll have to foot the bill for the repair. In the meantime, your buyer is likely to find another home that they can move into more quickly.
What you can do: Wherever possible, address home repairs and issues before putting your home up for sale. You can even choose to issue a home inspection ahead of time to uncover any potential deal killers before they get in the way of a transaction. This will cost you a few hundred dollars, but could help you avoid major headaches when it really counts.
Before a buyer even starts looking for a home, there are steps they need to take to prepare — this includes getting pre-approved for a mortgage. While this is an important preliminary step to help screen out unqualified applicants, a pre-approval is not a guarantee of a buyer’s ability to take out a mortgage.
Once an offer is submitted and you start working through the details of the transaction, the lender will take a deep dive into the buyer’s financial history. This thorough search could turn up previously undiscovered issues that disqualify a buyer from taking out a mortgage. For example, if an account went to collections ten years ago and was never settled, the buyer may have forgotten about it — but it will turn up in the records and will present a major hurdle to moving forward with the transaction.
What you can do: Work with a real estate agent who will take the extra steps to help prevent this kind of situation. A good agent will get in touch with the lender when an offer is submitted to determine just how qualified the buyer is. Though it’s impossible to know whether ancient history will get in the way, a lender should have a good idea of which prospective buyers have a solid financial history.
