Selling Tutorial

Documents: Hunting and Gathering

The sale of your property will move at a quicker and smoother pace if you take the time to pull together all your documents regarding your property. Most of them you probably haven't seen since you originally closed on the property.

Nonetheless, now is the time to dig through the depths of your files and find them. The more organized you can be, the better off you will be when it comes time to sell. Now, this doesn't mean go crazy and create some color coded filing scheme for all the files - a couple of manilla folders, maybe one for each of the categories below should be sufficient.

The following is a brief description of some of the documents you may need to gather, for a more comprehensive listing and explanation of each document, be sure to read How to Sell Your Home Without a Broker. If available, we have included links to various sample documents we have found on the Web.

Helpful when Determining Your Sales Price

Ok, you should have plenty of wonderful paperwork that you have collected over the years of home ownership. Well, some of these will help you when creating your profitability analysis and sales price (fair market value). The more of these you can find the more accurate you will be when figuring out what you are going to need to profit from the sale.

Basically, when determining what your going to need to at least break even on the sale, there are three main groups of documents that are going to aid you in your calculations. We've broken these out in the following table:

What Buyers Need to Know

As you already know, owning property is more than just paying monthly mortgage payments. There's utility bills, insurance, and taxes. Oh boy, it seems like they don't stop. These payments will be crucial in helping the buyer's decision. Yeah, they maybe able to purchase the property, but "Can they afford to live here?" becomes the secondary issue. Most real estate agents will usually help their clients compile these give-away reports or include them in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) information. Remember, you know your ownership costs better than an agent, so here's what you need to collect:

You'll want to get all your bills for the past year, start with this month's and go back 12 months. Essentially you're trying to calculate an average monthly Cost of Ownership. You can do this by either creating a spreadsheet or using one of the many great worksheets provided in How to Sell Your Home Without a Broker. Having this information readily available will help buyers when looking at your property.

Closing: Settlement Day

Just as you received all these records during your last closing, you'll need them again at this closing, when the sale is final. Collectively, these documents, which may be required at closing, show that you actually own the property and that you complied with certain real estate laws. You would be wise to copy these documents so that you have them on hand after the sale of your property. Keep them in a safe place. Here's a short list of those you may need:

You may also need to show proof that you have the standard insurance coverage on your property which may include homeowners and mortgage insurance. Also, if you hired a contractor to do major improvements, it is quite possible they took a lien on your property. Make sure you have the Lien Releases - this indicates that they no longer have a lien on your property, since you paid in full.

You're Doing Great!

If you are thinking this is too much and you're unsure if you can pull it all together, we're here to say "Yes you can!" You're most likely not going to need all of these records, but some of them are musts. Carefully go through your files and records, pulling together what you have. By organizing all this information now, you will be prepared for all the steps in the process and you won't need to worry when a buyer or escrow officer starts asking questions - you'll have the answers.

If you find this a bit overwhelming and think that you may be better off hiring a real estate agent, it's time for a reality check. Only you know where all these records are located. They're your personal records, not the agent's. An agent is going to basically give you a list that looks very similar to this page, and say something like "I'm going to need you to pull together all of these records for me before we get started."

So now that you know the truth, keep the faith, and remember this is easy stuff, just simple book keeping.

Let's go figure out your profits -->