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Selling a home in Plainfield or Naperville?  Here’s are some of the things that Plainfield and Naperville sellers can expect when selling a home in this market.

Choosing the right Painfield or Naperville Realtor to represent you in the sale of your home is critical to getting an offer. Interview your agent and ask questions like: What will you do to market my home?  How many open houses will you do?  What kind of advertising will you do?  Do you attend your closings?  Do you follow up with other Realtors who have shown our home?  It’s your agents job to get the word out that your property is available and to market it aggressively in a positive light.

After choosing your Plainfield or Naperville Realtor, you need to decide on an asking price for your Plainfield or Naperville home.  Utilize your Realtors knowledge of the market, and access to closed comps to help make this decision.  Closed comps will be the first thing a buyer references when making an offer, so keep that in mind when deciding what price to market your home at. Pricing your house correctly is the KEY to getting an offer quickly!  Most homes in this market are closing at 96-97% of their asking price right now.

Showings on your Plainfield or Naperville home are opportunities for buyers to preview your home.  Don’t be too restrictive with requests from agents to bring buyers to your home, (because of a Realtors cooperative agreement with each other) they will probably be the one who actually sells your house to their buyer.  Before a showing make sure the house is tidy and clean and put away any valuables or personal items you might have laying out.

Negotiating an offer can be a knuckle biting experience.  Buyers want to get a deal on their new Plainfield or Naperville home, but they will see the value in a properly priced property.  Depending on how anxious you are to sell your property will determine how you negotiate the offer.  Your Plainfield or Naperville Realtor can help you determine if the offer is fair, and how you should counter the offer.

Accepting an offer on your home is a matter of coming to an agreement with the buyer on the price and conditions of the sale, and then signing the papers.  Earnest money will be held in an escrow account, usually by the listing agents office.

Depending on the terms of your sales contract, the closing on your Plainfield or Naperville closing may be contingent on the following:

• mortgage approval contingency
• home sale contingency
  
• attorney review
• home inspection
• loan commitment date

Most of the contingencies are checked off along the way, but if they are included in your contract, they could be potential deal breakers.  Ask your Plainfield or Naperville Realtor about the potential impact of each of these contingencies before you sign a sales contract with a buyer.

The final walk-through takes place the day before or the day of the closing. This is the buyers final opportunity to inspect the property and ensure that it’s in the same condition it was in when the contract was written.  It’s also the buyers last chance to see the property in the condition it will be in when the move into their new Plainfield or Naperville home.

Before the closing you will want to make sure to stop or transfer services to any utility companies associated with the property such as electric, gas, phone, water, cable, internet and alarm systems.  Call them a few days before the closing and let them know the date you are scheduled to close.  If for any reason the closing is postponed or cancelled make sure to keep their numbers handy.

At the closing you will have a stack of documents to sign that will be explained to you by your real estate attorney.  Most likely there will be a waiting period as the title company waits for the buyers funds to arrive from their lender.  A closing usually takes anywhere from 1 to 3 hours, but in my experience the average time is about 2 hours.

When the buyers funds arrive at the title company, the checks are issued to the attorneys, Realtors… and most importantly YOU!  You are free to hand over the keys to the buyers for their new home.

Basically that’s the process for selling a house in Plainfield, Naperville, or anywhere in Illinois for that matter.  If you are looking for an Realtor who can make all of this happen with the least amount of stress for you and your family, call me at 630-673-6233.