Setting Expectations - How to Understand How Long It Will Take to Sell Your Home Des Moines IA

Whether you have sold a home before or not, the idea of stretching out the process is not a favorable idea for anyone. You want to sell your home and move on to a bigger and better house. But realizing that this process is not a quick one (nor should it be) will help you manage your selling expectations, especially in today's market.

What's Involved in Selling a Home

You may not realize how many steps there are in the selling process. Here are a few:

Finding a realtor - The first thing you need to do is find a realtor to help you sell your home. They will show the home to people they are working with or you can also choose to act as your own realtor.

Listing the home - When you are ready to sell, you will want to list your home in a number of real estate publications and online listings. This will help you reach as many prospective buyers as possible.

Waiting for responses - Of course, since the property is new, you may get more responses early on. The responses may become less frequent as time moves on.

Showing the home - Once you start to get responses to your advertisement, have showings of your home to these prospective buyers. These can take a few hours each and can be repeated as needed.

Open houses - Some realtors opt to have the homes open for a few hours on the weekends in order to allow more people to look at the home in a shorter amount of time.

Looking at bids - Once you start to get responses, you should receive bids for the home. Look over these bid applications with care.

Accepting the bids - If you see a bid that you want to accept, you will need to notify the bidders or notify the bidders when their bid was not accepted.

Home inspections - Once you have accepted a bid, you will need to begin the home inspection process. If anything turns up during this step, you will need to make repairs (that can take more time) or you will need to get an estimate on the repairs and give the new buyer the money to make the repairs on their own.

Closing process - The actual legal portion of selling a home can take weeks, depending on whether you are in the home or not and how long of an escrow you decide to have.

Overall, the process of selling a home can take up to a few years from start to finish, depending on the market and the steps involved.

Why You Need to Understand This

If you are looking to sell as quickly as possible, this buyer's market will require that you start to make some concessions. For example, you might be able to sell your home more quickly if you list the price lower than others in the local market. Or you might want to move from the house earlier in the process so that it is empty and ready to be moved into.

Of course, there are a lot of different things that can slow the buyer's part in the process. They might need to sell their home, which can take a few months to a year as well.

Copyright: Copyright c 2007-2008 Grant Eckert

About the Author:

Grant Eckert is a writer for Absolute Mortgage Company. Absolute Mortgage Company is a leading Mortgage ompany: http://www.absoluterates.com

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Jason Reynolds RE/MAX Real Estate Group

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Des Moines, IA