Five Tips for Buying and Selling a Home

My hubby and I were fairly content in our adorable 3 bedroom house and weren’t really considering moving for a while. We LOVE our subdivision and the elementary school that the kids go to. However, our girls are getting bigger and want their own space. (Currently two of them share a room!)

Over Christmas break, a friend told me about house on her street (half a mile from mine) that was on the market. I thought it was silly but after all it WAS a 4 bedroom house, which was bigger and still in the same subdivision…and actually closer to the girls school. So we booked an appointment to go look at it.

Love at first site! Not just because the layout was great or because it had a room for everyone, but because I could see tons of memories to be made in this house. I could envision our girls having friends over and chatting for hours in the living room, or the kids sitting at the bar doing homework as I prepared dinner, or us enjoying a movie in the media room. So many memories to make in that house! So we put an offer on the house and held our breathe for the next few hours!

The call eventually came in and they accepted our offer! YES YES YES! Wait, what? This was all VERY unplanned! Now we had to sale our house! We weren’t ready to go on the market…we hadn’t even talked about going on the market. Within a few days our house was on the market and we had an offer! Woah, that went WAY too smoothly!

However, the buyer ended up backing out, which left me feeling a LOT of stress! I was so worried about how we would make it all work… buying a house and still owning one, two mortgage payments…oh the stress. A few short days later, we had another offer and all looks to be going well with those buyers.

Here are 5 tips that I have learned and wanted to pass on to those who are looking to buy or sell a house:

1.) Keep your paperwork super organized. (This includes tax documents for the past three years, bank statements, insurance paperwork and more.)

2.) Hire a trusted agent. We went with a close friend’s parents. We know them and know that they are going to do their best for the best outcome for us. (We have several friends who are agents, and choosing one is tough!)

3.) Save your money! We have had several big expenses this year, including two kids in braces, new HVAC, and paying off our van early. Never were we thinking about buying a house. We had to scrap together and SAVE every penny to have what we needed for closing costs. This means NOT buying things for your new house, even though you want to. Wait until you are IN it before you purchase!

4.) Start a “house” folder in your email inbox. You will send/receive a ton and it’s an easy way to stay organized. It has seriously saved me a lot of stress!

5.) Between packing for your move, start a list of places that you need to notify of your change of address. Some that I hadn’t thought of but am glad I remembered include: Doctors, CPA, Insurance agents, kids school, and of course friends and family! I bought 50 “we’ve moved” cards from Vistaprint for less then $15 shipped.