Getting Ready to Sell Your House

When you list your home, the first things that come to mind are touching up the paint, cleaning up the landscaping and staging the home.  However, here are a few steps you can take before listing your home to ensure a smooth transaction once you find your buyer.

1.  Locate important documents such as your survey and title policy.  Having these documents ready to go facilitates your title review and ultimately results in a faster transaction.

2.  Freeze any home lines of credit.  The title company will want assurances that no more funds can be drawn against outstanding lines of credit.  Sellers should call their lender and ask them to freeze the line so that no more funds can be drawn and provide proof that they did so to their attorney.  Absent proof that home lines of credit were frozen, title companies often require 120% of the credit line to be held in escrow until the line of credit is resolved.  For example, if you have a $50,000 line of credit, the title company would require $60,000 to be held in escrow until proof that the line of credit is properly paid off.  This unnecessarily ties up your money for a period of time.

3.  Resolve any open building permits.  Did you take out a building permit during your ownership?  If you did, make sure that you or your contractor obtained the necessary certificate of occupancy or certificate of compliance to close out the permit.  Any open building permits will be raised as violations during the title review process delaying your closing.

4.  Prepare a list of improvements that you have made to the home together with the amount you spent.  This list will assist an appraiser as well as assist you in preparing capital gains paperwork.

5.  Make realistic plans to move.  In New York, we do not have rigid closing dates.  Typically contracts provide for an "on or about" closing date which means the closing could occur up to 30 days of that date.  Unless you have sufficient assets to buy your new home prior to closing on your old home, you should plan on having a few days to a few weeks where you are "homeless."  Although this period of time can be stressful, proper planning can ease that stress. 

With a little bit of preparation, you can drastically diminish the stress and hassle of moving.