You Sold Your Home – Now What?

Congratulations! You have sold your property and now you can enjoy finding or moving into a new home. Emotions may be running high at this point from successfully selling your home, but in order for the sale to be completed there are still a few things you’ll need to do.

Contract of Sale

When drawing up the contract of sale for your property, you and the buyer may have agreed upon some specific conditions.

Usually, these conditions are there for the buyer’s purpose and may include a sale of their previous home, final inspection, or the acquisition of finance.

Sometimes there will be special conditions that the vendor will need to fulfil, too. This might be repairs, the completion of renovations, or other vendor responsibilities that were agreed to. Home Buyers in Ames

From Exchange to Settlement

During the time that occurs between the contract exchange to settlement, you’ll need to fulfil any special conditions that were outlined in your contract of sale. This means you’ll need to be in contact with your real estate agent to ensure these tasks are carried out before settlement day rolls around.

Finance

If you chose to buy a new home before you sold your old one, then you may have used bridging finance to pay for your purchase.

Bridging finance works by ‘bridging the gap’ between your purchases. Essentially, this type of loan provides finance for both your old and new home for a short period of time, usually around three to six months.

Once the sale of your home is finalised, you can organise to complete your bridging loan with your lender. As these types of loans are usually interest-only, it’s best to organise the completion of the loan as soon as possible.

On Settlement Day

As settlement day approaches, both the buyer and seller solicitors will contact each other to ensure conditions have been fulfilled and to organise finance.

You won’t need to actually be present for settlement to go ahead, as the solicitors can do this without you.

Settlement day is when the buyer’s lender authorises the payment for the balance of the home. This means you can expect to receive payment for the property on this date.

It may not just be the balance of the property’s price that will be paid at this time. You may also receive payment for utility bills and tax calculations outlined by your solicitor.

The buyer and their solicitor will also organise the deposit to be transferred to you. This deposit is usually held in a trust account by your real estate agency until settlement day.

On this day, you’ll also need to organise the handover of the keys to the new owner. Usually, you’ll need to give your keys to your solicitor, who will then pass them onto the buyer’s solicitor.

This means you’ll need to be fully moved out before settlement day to ensure the home is ready for the new owners.

Handover

At the time of the settlement, you’ll need to make sure the title of the home and land has been transferred to the new owner. Utilities, such as gas, electricity and water, will also need to be transferred, so you should organise a final reading for these services.

If your property has body corporate then you’ll need to organise the Body Corporate Information Certificate for the new owner.

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Extra Charges

When you sell your home, you might have to pay some extra charges for GST and capital gains tax, depending on where your property is located.

Generally, your property won’t be liable for GST unless it has a commercial use (such as a home and office).

If your home was purchased after 1985 then you might need to pay capital gains tax (CGT). This incurs for investment properties, not for the sale of your own home for residential purposes.

Winter Wonderland: 3 Tips for a Successful Open For Inspection

It might sound like a challenge to host successful residential property open inspections during winter, but it could be easier than you think. If you can create the right kind of environment when selling your property, you may attract a good number of potential offers by private treaty, or bids at auction.

Winter Wonderland: 3 Tips for a Successful Open For Inspection

Appeal to as many buyers as possible

Create the Right Feel in Your Home

It might sound like a challenge to host successful residential property open inspections during winter, but it could be easier than you think.

If you can create the right kind of environment when selling your property, you may attract a good number of potential offers by private treaty, or bids at auction.

When hosting inspections during the year’s cooler months, it pays to get a few things right in order to maximise interest in your property. Selling a house doesn’t have to be difficult, provided you put the groundwork in to make it as appealing as possible to potential buyers.

Pump up the Temperature

This tip is useful: To a degree.

While it’s essential to switch that heat pump on to make your home comfortably warm, you should exercise some restraint.

After all, you don’t want to make a space so hot that buyers get overheated. It’s important to strike a balance between too cold and too hot. Ideally, you’ll find a temperature somewhere in the middle that ensures potential buyers are perfectly comfortable.

An ideal temperature range is typically between 18 and 22 degrees celsius during a cool day. If it’s a particularly cold day, go for the upper end of this range. However, avoid blasting the heat pump at an exceedingly hot temperature – it’s not efficient and will make the space feel stuffy.

Get a Good Agent

If you present your home perfectly, ensure it’s warm and give buyers the opportunity to imagine themselves living in it, this could all go to waste without the right marketing strategy behind you.

Getting a good agent on board is a must if you want to host a successful open inspect. Not only can they explain what steps you need to take to present your home in the best manner possible, but they also have the right contacts and understanding of how to promote a property.

This is essential, as there’s no point setting the stage for a great performance if there’s no audience to enjoy the show!

A good agent can help drive interest in your property, so you get a favourable turn out at open inspections.

Lighten Up Honey

It’s a good idea to maximise natural light as much as possible and use artificial light as a secondary source of light, to accentuate the warmth and livability of your home.

Of course, there are fewer daylight hours during winter, which can make it difficult to schedule open inspections to embrace natural light. For this reason, consider hosting open inspections during weekends. Whether your property looks better in the morning or afternoon, you’ll be able to make the most of the natural light.