Before You List Your House - Be Sure to Qualify For the Next Home

Can be tricky, both selling and buying. And yet, it happens everyday. The key is to be preapproved, ready for the next house. In my market, selling the house is the easy part, finding the replacement home is the challenge! Good post!

Getting approved is important  if the buyer does this before calling an agent. This will avoid  all the pressure to get it done quickly. The lenders ability to completely understand the borrower and to uncover all questions with documention etc. is huge, but we know that don't we?

I wish more sellers would take this important first step. Some act like it's a real bother 'oh, we will have no problem qualifying'. That may be true, but there is more to financing that next purchase than just knowing you can make the payments!

Kind of a no brain-er but I'm sure many people skip it. Case in point: A seller/buyer went to ask her financial adviser if she should pay cash for a new home or take out a loan. The financial adviser pulled her credit score only to find out according to the credit bureau, she was dead. Now that's a problem. You just don't know until you check. 

I was out of town for 3 weeks. During that time I spoke with my brother's neighbor. They had their home on market for 6 months. Got a good offer but failed to check if they could purchase their next home. They terminated the contract due to their credit not being where they thought it would be. They believed they could take the profit from the sale but forgot in the past 2 years threat of foreclosure 3 times. They also believed while on market they didn't have to keep up 100% of their mortgage payments. They thought I din't know what I was talking about being from a different state. These people (I thought) were old enough to know better. Late 50s.

Great point that a seller should know if they qualify to be a buyer.

In my listing presentation we start off with why they want to sell and what are their plans after the sale.

I hate helping people become homeless.

Joan

Your post is HOT . . . . HOT . . . . HOT . . . .Congratulations on the feature for an outstanding post.

Good luck and success.

Lou Ludwig

Dear Joan,

Nowadays, more than half of my clients have something on their credit report, that is wrong altogether or not even their item. Takes a little minute to straighten things out, so the earlier you get to it, the better.

Joan Cox - in this market, the first task for the sellers should be to identify the place where they want to be - and if that does not happen, plan B!

(Of course, get pre-approved for the new home, too.)