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Choosing Whether to Rent vs Buy Your Home

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A foundational aspect of the American Dream is homeownership. Contrary to popular belief however, it’s not always better to buy a home than to rent a home. Like most things, there are several factors to consider when choosing to rent vs buy.

Primary factors that should affect your decision are:

  • Are you financially prepared to purchase a home?
  • Do you see yourself staying in the area for at least 5-10 years?
  • Can you afford a home of the desired size in your preferred area?
  • What does the local housing market look like historically?

Let’s go through each of these four elements as they relate to choosing should rent vs buy a home.

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Move Out Date Considerations

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Part of preparing for the close of escrow is making sure you’re fully moved out by the closing date. While there aren’t many set-in-stone rules about how to handle the move out, a little effort can go a long way with buyers.

You’ll likely be exhausted after finalizing everything and preparing all your furniture for the move. Remember, your buyers will be equally tired and will appreciate it if you’ve nicely prepared the home for the transition. Here are some things you can do during your move out to help both your buyers and yourself.

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Closing Escrow and Transferring Home Ownership

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Ah, closing escrow, nothing else feels quite like it! If you’ve made it this far, congratulations are in order. After preparing your home, pricing and listing it effectively, you’ve gone through the endless showings and gathered offers. You’ve gone through initial negotiations and selected the best offer, followed by more negotiations and the opening of escrow.

Then you successfully navigated the inspection and appraisal process, provided the necessary documentation to the title company and weathered the waiting period. Finally, the time has come to transfer ownership, and most importantly, to get paid!

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How to Prepare for a Home Appraisal and Buyer Inspection

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Part of the escrow process is the ordering of an appraisal by the buyer’s lender. Another major aspect is the ordering of a home inspection by the buyer themselves. It’s important to understand the goal and function of each of these. It’s also important to know what to expect as the home seller from each of these buyer-side actions. 

Keep in mind, even if selling to an all-cash buyer, they’ll likely still require a home inspection prior to closing. They may request a home appraisal too, even though there’s no lender involved in the sale. While you can potentially negotiate for no contingencies, it’s rare that buyers will move forward without at least an inspection.

Thus, it’s important to be prepared for both a home appraisal and buyer inspection, regardless of the circumstances of the sale.

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Required Documentation and Funds for Escrow

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Although escrow is an inevitable part of any financed home sale, most people are unfamiliar with the process prior to going through it for the first time. Obviously, it behooves you to fully understand all portions of the sales process prior to jumping in with both feet. Let’s start by summarizing what escrow is.

An escrow is a neutral location in which to store documentation and funds related to the purchase/sale of real estate. The escrow officer—which in California is the title company—acts as the arbiter of this account. They serve as both an unbiased third party enforcing the rules of the process, and to coordinate the mountain of documentation and actions needed to close out the sale.

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Employing Strategic Negotiation Practices

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For most sellers, it’s important to define what strategic negotiation looks like during the offer response phase. Without employing effective negotiation strategies, sellers end up selling their homes for lower prices and/or with more contingencies in place. This obviously means lower profits and a higher chance of headaches, which is the opposite of what we’re going for.

While it’s definitely possible to get a great offer off the bat, it’s not usually the case. However, it is more likely to occur in a seller’s market. Buyers are less confident that they’ll be able to bring the price down lower than asking when there’s a multiple offer situation. In a very hot seller’s market, multiple offers become the norm. Thus, the impetus for better initial offers increases.

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How to Navigate Multiple Offers and Bidding Wars

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You’ve properly prepared your home for sale, and you’ve listed it at a fair market price. Showings are well underway, with a successful open house and several private showings. At this point, you should start receiving offers from prospective buyers.

Market conditions and the specific circumstances of your own listing will dictate how you proceed. This includes the optimal method of collecting such offers and subsequent negotiation strategy. Understanding these variables and how they should impact your approach is quite important.

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Scheduling Appointments for Individual Home Showings

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As we’ve discussed previously, open houses are a crucial element to any home selling strategy. This is because they’re the most efficient way to get as many buyers through your home as possible. However, it’s often private home showings that result in the serious offers. Therefore, it’s important to plan for incorporating both approaches into your home sale process.

It’s not unheard of for sellers to receive offers directly from open houses. Still, it’s reasonable to expect that a serious buyer will want to schedule a second showing first.

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Why You Should Perform a Home Pre-listing Audit

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A home pre-listing audit is an important part of preparing for a smooth real estate sales process. With any planned transaction, the more details you’re clear on before you begin, the better position you’ll start in. Of course, the better your starting position, the better your ending position. Thus, it behooves sellers and their agents to collect as much data as possible prior to listing a home for sale.

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6 Common Real Estate Home Selling Myths Set Straight

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For such a massive industry, real estate still suffers from rampant misconceptions and misinformation. It can be difficult for home sellers to discern between truth and falsehood. The real tragedy occurs when these falsehoods cause a seller to make a bad decision that costs them money. Have no fear though, because we’re going to help make sure you aren’t one of those sellers. Below we’ve outlined the 6 top real estate home selling myths we’ve encountered, and the truth behind the myths.

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Buying and selling, simplified.

We believe real estate transactions are about more than just completing the sale at all costs. A great experience leaves both the seller and the buyer feeling confident that they made the right choice. For sellers, it's all about providing pre, during and post-sale support to help close sales quickly and for the desired sales price. For buyers, we look at the unique needs and desires of our clients to find the best properties available, and to help them close within the desired price range.

Our Approach

We imagine the above sounds like it can probably get complicated, and it most certainly can! However, we take care of all of the details involved and guide our clients through the entire process, so that they can sit back and enjoy a simple experience from start to finish.

It's what we call our hoLISTic approach to real estate, and it's what separates us from the rest of the crowd.