SELL YOUR HOME IN CANADA
Geraldine Santiago
Self-Counsel Press
(a division of)
International Self-Counsel Press Ltd.
USA Canada
Copyright © 2012
International Self-Counsel Press
All rights reserved.
Introduction
If you are thinking of selling your home, there are many things you need to do before a “For Sale” sign goes up. Whether you are planning to sell your home on your own or with an agent, it will take a lot of co-ordination, organization, and work. Part 1 of this book covers the first things you need to do:
• Determine what kind of market you will be selling in: Is it a buyer’s or seller’s market or is it balanced? (See Chapter 1.)
• Decide who your target market is: Is your house suitable for first-time buyers, empty nesters, investors, or other types of buyers? (See Chapter 2.)
• Know your product: Find out details about your home that buyers will want to know. (See Chapter 3.)
• Gather the paperwork you’ll need for selling your home: This includes legal material such as a title search, financial material such as tax records and mortgage information, and by-laws and financial reports for a strata title property. (See Chapter 4.)
• Determine a fair market price for your property: You can do this yourself or have a real estate agent or appraiser help. (See Chapter 5.)
Part 2 helps you with the decision of whether you should sell your home yourself, or if you should engage a partial-service or full-service realty company. Part 2 discusses the following factors that will help you with your decision:
• Costs of selling your property
• Requirements for marketing your property
• Personality and ability needed to sell the property yourself
• Pitfalls of selling without a real estate agent
• Services offered by a real estate agent
Part 3 includes information on marketing and completion, covering the following important topics:
• Advertising
• Showing your property
• Understanding what to do when an offer is made
• Completing the sale
Selling your home can be an empowering experience, but it is important to understand how to do it properly to gain the best value for your home. Gaining knowledge about selling your home can help you make the right decisions and reduce the stress that may come with selling your home. Visit real estate websites, read books about selling a home, and attend seminars; get as much information as you can about the processes and costs of selling your home before you get into the real estate market.
This book is intended to help home sellers become familiar with the many processes involved in selling a home. I hope this book will give you confidence in your own choices and decisions and make your selling experience a pleasant one!
1
What Type of Market Is It?
Before you put your home up for sale, it is important to look at the larger market conditions, such as local and national housing prices, mortgage rate movements, and new home construction. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) helps people selling their homes understand how the housing market is evolving. The CMHC’s regional offices and Market Analysis Centre are great sources for finding out about the current housing market. The CMHC regularly publishes local market analysis reports and provides information on recent trends in housing market conditions across the country.
Your regional CMHC market analyst can tell you if it’s a buyer’s, seller’s, or balanced housing market. Contact information for market analysts is available on the CMHC website at www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca.
Buyer’s Market
In a buyer’s market, the number of homes available for sale exceeds the demand, so prices will either stabilize or drop. With fewer buyers and more homes, buyers have greater negotiating leverage, so sellers should price their homes competitively if they want to sell.
Seller’s Market
In a seller’s market, relatively few homes are on the market, so the number of buyers exceeds the number of sellers and the seller dictates the price. In this situation of low inventory, sellers often get their price (sometimes more than the asking price) because of a bidding war, in which there are many competing offers.
Balanced Market
In a balanced market, there is an equal number of buyers and sellers. If you are a seller in this market, you will probably not experience a bidding war because there are enough properties listed on the market.
When Is the Best Time to Sell?
The busiest times in the real estate industry are usually the spring and summer. This is when many companies relocate their employees, and as a result there are more properties to choose from. Because of this availability, many buyers tend to do their home shopping at this time, so there is the most competition among buyers. A recent poll showed that Canadians feel that April, May, and June are the best times to sell a home and December and January are the best times to buy a home.
A recent poll showed that Canadians feel that April, May, and June are the best times to sell a home.
If you are selling your home in order to move up to a new house, another major influence on deciding when to sell is the mortgage interest rate. What rates are available now? Will they fall or will they rise in the near future? If they rise, how much will they go up? It can be hard to answer these questions, but CMHC’s Market Analysis Centre can help by providing you with both an analysis of the current mortgage market and an outlook for future mortgage rates.
2
Who Will Buy Your Home?
It is important, when selling any product, to determine who your target market is so that you can attract the right buyer. For example, if your home is ideal for first-time home-buyers, you would market it differently than you would if you were trying to attract empty nesters. If you were selling to first-time buyers, you would use key words and phrases such as “room to grow,” “great den for your family,” or “ample backyard space.” Table 1 lists the types of buyers, what they might be looking for, and how to let them know about your property.
Knowing the demographic you are trying to attract will also help when you are deciding where to advertise your home. If a newspaper magazine is targeted to first-time home-buyers, for example, and you’ve got a great starter home, you may want to include an advertisement in that magazine. If you are selling an investment property, you would think about advertising in an investment-related trade magazine, using phrases such as “great for first-time investor” and “positive cash flow.” For the empty