It's best to sell a home when there are more buyers than houses available. This encourages bidding wars on houses, and can substantially increase the selling price for your home. Some of the best indicators of a good time to sell a home include:
Absolutely. Before you sell a home, you should probably hire a professional home inspector because eventual buyers certainly will, and it pays to know what they will find first. A professional home inspection can:
The easiest way to determine the value of your house is to get a professional appraisal. A professional appraisal will compare your house to similar houses in your area (called a "comp") and give you a good idea of how much you should sell your house for. When evaluating a "comp", it is important not only to find similar houses in the area, but also to look at how recently those homes were sold. Sales closer in time are a more accurate guideline when setting the price on your home.
Real estate agents will have local sales figures and can give you a good estimate on your house's worth. Be aware, however, that many real estate agents may overvalue your house slightly in the hope that you will list your house with them. If you have a real estate agent determine a value for your home, ask to see the data on similar houses and see for yourself whether or not it makes sense.
Finally, many internet sites will allow you to see what houses in your neighborhood have sold for lately. This can help you determine a value on your own, but you should be careful when looking at this data since it doesn't take into account any special features of your home, such as a unique location or recent remodeling efforts.
Be careful in setting your price. If you overprice your house, most buyers will simply ignore you and your house could sit on the market for a very long time. The longer a house sits on the market, the more likely other buyers are to think there's something wrong with the house and avoid it.
The sale of your house generates "capital gains" as defined by the IRS which is normally taxable. However, since the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, individuals can exclude up to $250,000 in capital gains for individuals, and married couples can exclude up to $500,000 in capital gains.
To see how this works in practice, imagine you bought your house for $100,000, and then sold it for $300,000. That sale would generate $200,000 in capital gains, all of which could be excluded since individuals can exclude up to $250,000 and married couples could exclude up to $500,000. Accordingly, you wouldn't owe any taxes on the capital gains from the sale of your home.
For more information, see FindLaw's article on the tax exemption for the sale of your home.
Only a few states require you to hire a real estate agent or attorney, but it may often be worth it. Selling a house, even with an agent, is an exhausting process. If you are the one stuck doing all of the paper work and showing the house, it can be like taking on a second job. Alternatively, you may consider hiring a real estate agent to only help with portions of the process, and take on other portions of the process yourself.
There are two common ways outside of a common mortgage scenario to finance the sale of a house. The first method is to loan money to the buyer and take back a mortgage on the home when you sell it. The buyer would sign a promissory note (to repay the loan) and either a mortgage or a deed of trust (both of which would allow you to foreclose on the house if the buyer failed to pay). In return, the seller would sign a deed transferring title of the house to the buyer (which allows the buyer to sell or refinance the house).
The second method is to create what is commonly referred to as a "contract for deed", "contract of sale", "land sale contract" or "installment sales contract". This document will allow the seller to keep the title to the property until the buyer pays off the loan. Unlike this first method, this means that the buyer is unable to sell or refinance the house. Once all payments have been made, the seller would sign a deed transferring title to the buyer.
