First, understand the financial situation surrounding your home

Getting a grasp on your remaining mortgage amount, the closing costs, and the cost of any repairs, will help determine how much you can safely sell your home for.

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- FINANCIALS -

HOW MUCH IS OWED ON YOUR MORTGAGE?

You'll need to know how much remains on your mortgage, since this will tell how much money you’ll have when you sell. Knowing this number will help you budget for home improvements or to plan for your future home purchase.

CLOSING COSTS

The average seller has closing costs of 8-12% of the home's sale price.

YELLOW removes 6% of those fees by eliminating agent commissions (3% goes to the listing agent, 3% to the buyer's agent), but that still leaves 2-6% going to closing costs.

These costs are usually paid by the money from the sale and not out of the sellers pocket (meaning, you don't need to take money out of your bank account to pay it). However, that means the sale price must be above the amount due on your mortgage or that money WILL come out of your pocket.

CALCULATE YOUR PROFIT/LOSS

It's easy to estimate the amount of cash you’ll walk away with when the transaction is complete.

We've created an Excel spreadsheet to help sellers calculate their profit or loss while offline:

SALE PRICE
CALCULATOR

A thorough online calculator can be found here:

• Anytime Estimate Florida seller closing costs

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- OTHER SELLING CONSIDERATIONS -

After the financials, below are a few other things for sellers to consider.

GET PAPERWORK TOGETHER

Here’s a list of documents you are likely to need:

• Mortgage documents, with a payoff estimate from your lender
• Documents related to title and ownership
• Property surveys
• Receipts for improvements or repairs that you’ll need to disclose
• Permits, certificates of occupancy or other documents from renovations
• Copies of any pre-sale inspection reports
• Monthly dues and the covenants, conditions, and restrictions of applicable homeowners associations
• Manuals and warranty information for appliances to be sold with the home

TITLE

As a condition of the sale, the title must be good, insurable, and marketable. This means that you have the right to sell the home and no one else has a claim on the property.

Think of anything that occurred over the course of your ownership that may have impacted your title (like any liens) and make sure that the title search will come back clean.

TIME YOUR MOVE

Maybe you don't need to move immediately. If this is the case, consider timing the sale of your home to maximize the sale price and minimize its time on the market.

According to Zillow research, the best time of year to sell your home is the first half of May. Homes listed for sale in this window sold almost two weeks faster than average and for $2,500 more.

Consider putting your home on the market at this time of year.

DETERMINE DEAL BREAKERS

Think about the conditions you will not accept.

What’s the absolute minimum sale price? What’s your time frame to move? What other conditions are you unwilling to budge on?

It's a good idea to set these now so you will not break them later.

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