Selling your home - was it stressful?

EmoCourt

We have just bought a house from a seller - took four months and a lot of stress to get all paperwork completed and submitted on time. Lots of hoops to jump through and lots of parties involved.

Now we have to sell the old house. Was your experience of selling your home stressful? We'll have moved out by the time it goes on the market, so we won't have to get out of the place for viewings.


Any other stressful things to expect?

dennyk

Well, you've already seen how it looks from the other side, at least, so you've that experience to draw on. Before selling, you may want to make repairs or some light renovations, so that'll take some arranging. Having the home vacant will make viewings easier, at least, but you'll also want to keep checking up on the property regularly to make sure the heat's running, nothing's broken or leaking or molding, and no one's squatting in it or ripping the pipes out of the walls or anything; that might be a bit of a pain if your new place isn't nearby.

You'll then have to find an interested buyer, negotiate, decide whether to accept their offer or try to hold out for more, then once you do accept, hope the valuation for the mortgage is sufficient and that there aren't any other issues with the buyer's financing. They'll be plenty of paperwork yet again, as with any real estate transaction. It's a reasonable amount of effort, but not too bad.

If you're in a rush to sell (e.g. trying to get out from under a second mortgage payment you can't afford for long), that can definitely add some stress, but if you own outright, there's no hurry; even if a sale falls through, all it will likely cost you is some time and whatever you're paying to keep the heat on and electricity connected.

ThisRegard

Ridiculously so. Didn't help that we were the middle link of a chain and had already found the house we wanted to buy so the fear was always there that our buyer would pull out or have issues with their bank.

Ghekko

Sold a house recently. Was pretty straightforward from our point of view as regards paperwork. Purchaser did delay things a bit. All water charges had to be paid, lpt up to date, ber Cert done etc. Costs between estate agent and solicitor was just over 5k. Given ye will have moved out your belongings you won't have the stress of rushing to clear the house. Our buyer wasn't in a chain which was good. I daresay if dealing with a chain it could become hassle if other sales fall through within the chain. Shop around for estate agent, checking out their fees and reputation. Ours wasn't the best in putting pressure on the buyer to move things along!