The Last Checklist Item When Selling Your Home
This is a good reminder for home sellers - don't forget to stop any automatic bank drafts associated with the home you are selling! Of course, if do you forget, the money should rightfullyt be refunded to you, but you will more than likely have to pursue it to get it back. It's easier to just avoid the hassle from the beginning and put this on your "to do" list.
The Last Checklist Item When Selling Your Home
Got a call from a frantic lady today. Frantic because the HOA of her mother's condo is still taking money out of her deceased mother's bank account. Unfortunately, the sibling who sold the home was not the one managing the accounts. So the message to stop automatic payments to the mortgage and HOA were not received by this member of the family.
A sale of real estate, while reported to the HOA, does not mean automatic withdrawals from bank accounts stop.
A sale of real estate, while the mortgage company is made aware when they receive their full payoff, does not stop the automatic debit of the mortgage payment.
Sellers need to stop these payments on the banking end. As easily as you went into your account to start them up, you can go in and stop them. Any money mistakenly paid after the home was paid to the HOA or mortgage company will be refunded to you. Of course, it would be your own responsibility to call those entities and make sure the money paid in error, does find its way back to you.
This is often a step in a sale that gets overlooked by the Sellers. So if your home is going to settlement, you may want to stop the automatic withdrawals and pay them manually until the sale is finalized to ensure you don't pay a dime more than you have to. No one wants to run around collecting money that was automatically debited.
Chris Ann Cleland, Associate Broker- Licensed in Virginia, GRI, SFR, Northern Virginia Short Sale Specialist. Affiliated with Long & Foster, 7526 Limestone Drive, Gainesville, VA 20155. To contact Chris Ann, call 703-402-0037 or email chrisann@LNF.com. Or you can visit her website: www.nvarealestate.net.
Header photos taken by Chris Ann Cleland.
The opinions expressed in this post are those of Chris Ann Cleland, not those of Long & Foster REALTORS®.
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