SELLING

How to Sell Your Home

To sell your home, you'll need more than ads and signs. You need a proven strategy for attracting the best buyer to your home. The Hardie Group can offer you that with the exclusive Home Marketing System. This systematic approach to selling your home is designed to help you obtain….

Making it easier on Yourself

Your Hardie Group. sales associate can help you sell your home more quickly and easily by:

• Accessing an established local network
• Helping you set the right price on your home to attract the right buyers and the sales associates who work for them.
• Gathering data that will present your home and neighborhood in the best possible light.
• Targeting the market where the most likely buyers will be.
• Handling calls from people who may be more curious than serious about buying.
• Showing your home to the best prospects.
• Representing you during the offer process.
• Guiding you all the way through settlement.

  Starting with you

  Before the yard sign goes up, your sales associate and you must do some homework… and this homework makes all the difference. With the Home Marketing System, we'll combine your knowledge of your home with the expertise of your sales associate to make sure we attract the best buyer.
  

  Gather the facts

  Your Hardie Group sales associate will use the information you provide to answer questions, create an advantageous listing and create an exciting marketing campaign that targets the right kind of buyer.
  

  Setting the price

  Before you set an asking price for your home, you and your Hardie Group sales associate will complete a Home Marketing Analysis. When setting a fair market value of your home, you'll want to consider a few points:
  

• Don't base your asking price simply on what you paid for the home. You may be asking too little or too much.

• Determine how much time you have in which to sell your home.

• Ask your sales associate for information on recent sales of comparable homes in your area.

• Don't price your home too high as a means of making more profit.

• The value of your home is based on the buyer's perception of that value, rather than the amount you originally paid for the house.

  An offer to buy

• The offer is the most important document of the sale. Once you and the buyer sign it, it becomes the contract of sale.

• Ask your sales associate if you will be present when the offer is presented. In some areas this is customary; in others, your aales associate acts as your representative.

  Your Options

• Accept the terms with no changes and accept the offer.

• Make a counteroffer to the buyer.

• Reject the offer entirely.

• Once you've signed an offer, you may accept a backup offer if the buyer clearly understands the house is under contract.

  Earnest money

  An earnest deposit will be held in trust by the realtor until an agreement is reached between you and the buyer.

  Home inspection

  Buyers reserve the right to have the home inspected usually written as part of the purchase agreement.

  Property title

  As a part of the contract process, you must prove to the buyer that you have a clear title on the house, that you own the property and there are no legal claims against it.

• The insurance company may search the title through the owner's policy of title insurance. Either the buyer's insurance company or your own may conduct this, depending on the buyer's preference of company.

  Property deed

• Be prepared to convey the property with a deed… a legal document that transfers the title (or ownership rights) of the property to the new owner.

  Closing and possession

• The buyer and sales associate arrange the settlement and select the settlement agent, per your approval. The person who handles the closing may be a broker, lender, title insurance company, escrow company or attorney.

  Finishing the details

• Your sales associate or attorney can help you line up any of the paperwork that the contract has called for you to supply, such as the title insurance or a survey.

• Expect the buyer's lender to send an appraiser and a surveyor to check your home.

  Settling up

• Prior to closing, your buyer may wish to make a final inspection (or walk-through) to see that the home is still in good condition.

• Ask your settlement agent for a copy of the closing costs before closing.

  Closing activities

• Depending on your part of the country, you may attend a closing meeting. An escrow agent may complete the entire transaction. Or, you may be part of a group meeting in which you, the buyer, your sales associates, attorneys, the lender's representatives and the settlement agent meet together or separately.

• You will sign over the deed to the buyer to convey the title to the property.

  Finally…. It's the moment you've been waiting for! At the settlement meeting, or shortly thereafter, you'll be given a check you can take right to the bank.