Planning To Sell Your Honolulu Home? Start Here.
June 11th, 2009 categories: For Sellers
The housing turn over rate in Honolulu is much lower than other parts of the United States. I have heard that the average homeowner in California will move to a new home every three to five years. The last number I heard for Oahu is that the average house owner will sell every 18 years (this is an old number). What does this mean? Hawaii homeowners have much less experience selling a home than their counter-parts in the mainland. Here are 12 things to do before you start marketing your home.
1. Order a preliminary title report. A preliminary title report (prelim) is essentially the pink slip to your home. It shows who owns a property; mortgages; taxes; tax liens; mechanics liens and any other issue that might impair a seller’s ability to sell the home. The prelim may show that the lot was previously surveyed. If it were surveyed in the past, the land survey might be used to fulfill contract paragraphs C-42 and C-43, saving the seller $1,000 to $1,500 for the cost of new survey. By getting this in advance you and your Realtor will be able to see any title issue and take care of it before a home is put on the market.
2. Have your property surveyed by a licensed land surveyor.
3. Fill out the Seller’s Real Property Disclosure Statement.
4. Remove clutter.
5. Hire a professional cleaner.
6. Hire a window cleaner.
7. Clean up the yard. Plant some flowers. Trim the trees and shrubs.
8. Check out your neighbor’s curb appeal and attempt to do something to clean it up.
9. Ask a courageous person to visit your home and be brutally honest about the good, the bad and the ugly parts of your home.
10. For condominiums.
a. Review the house rules.
b. Try to determine if any special assessments are coming up.
c. Determine the owner occupancy ratio.
d. Determine the percentage of reserves on hand.
11. Look at the competition.
12. Determine the price that will lead to a sale within 30 days of coming on the market.
In the coming days and weeks, I will put meat on the bones of items 2 through 13. Note that if you follow this list it could take time to get a home ready to sell, be sure to start about a month before you want to go to market.
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If you would like to discuss your real estate needs, feel free to call me at 808-737-2093 or toll free at 877-737-2093. You can email me at keahi@lava.net.
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All great advise. This could change some peoples minds on selling. They might think it is tooo much work.