Process of selling a house in Queens, by George Herrera, Realtor & Co-Owner of the Queens Home Team at Keller Williams Realty Landmark II. Need help? Contact Us anytime.
The process of selling a house in Queens can be a bit different than that of other parts of the country. The most important thing you need to be aware of is the timeline of selling, and which steps are involved so that you know what to expect. With that said, below is a list of all the steps involved in selling a home from the decision to sell all the way until your closing date.
1. Set your Price
Pricing is vital when it comes to the process of Selling a House in Queens. I’m sure you already knew this, but did you know how easy it is to get this wrong? We can’t tell you how many owners we meet with who were either overpriced and didn’t sell, or have an inaccurate perception of their home’s value. Sometime’s sellers think that there house is worth more than it is, and sometimes they underestimate how much they can get for the property. It takes a comprehensive market analysis by a local real estate expert to understand the true market value of the house. Ultimately, you just need to know that pricing is a science and if you get it wrong, it can cost you thousands of dollars down the road. Once you have the right price set, you are ready to move on to step 2.
2. Market your House
This one probably seems like an easy task, but truth is that this is also a science. First of all, you need to understand where buyers are coming from before you can devise a successful marketing plan for your property. If you’ve had recent sales in your neighborhood, find out where the new neighbors moved from. You can also ask a local real estate agent who sells a lot of properties in the neighborhood, they can tell you where buyers are coming from. In addition to this, it’s important to think about who the ideal buyer will be for your property. Once you have this information, you can start implementing a marketing plan to make sure you get maximum exposure. For your reference, most buyers have recently been coming from Brooklyn, Manhattan, and other more expensive areas in the borough. In addition, most properties we sell end up being sold by agents outside the borough so make sure you get exposure to agents and buyers in the outer boroughs.
3. Negotiate Offers
Once you set the price and start marketing your house, the next step is to field and negotiate offers. Negotiating is a make or break stage in the process of selling a house in Queens because if both sides are not committed to a win-win, the deal will likely not happen. Now, ideally you will have mutliple offers after your first two weeks of showings and if that is the case, our preferred strategy is to have everyone submit their highest and best offer by a certain deadline. This way noone knows what the highest offer is, and being that there will be no counter offers, they will need to submit the highest price that they’re willing to pay. This usually helps drive the price over asking. Now, if you only have one offer on the table, then you will need to negotiate directly and try to find a win win. The important thing to keep in mind when this happens is the fact that you are looking for the most money, and the buyer is looking to pay a fair price. Buyers are very well informed nowadays so if you are unrealistic in terms of your desired price, you will kost likely win your house back. The key here is win-win so just keep in mind why you are selling and make sure that you will have enough net profit to achieve your next goals.
4. Accept an Offer
Once you have fielded offers, you will hopefully have come to an agreement with a buyer and formally accepted an offer. One of the most vital things to consider at this point is the fact that in New York, an accepted offer is not legally binding until contracts are signed. In other words, if you accept an offer, that doesn’t mean that you (or the buyer) are legally obligated to go through with the deal yet. You can back out if you get a higher offer and the buyer can back out if they find something else or change their mind. This is very unique to the process of selling a House in Queens versus selling a house in another’s state. Therefore, once you accept an offer, you should let the buyer know that you will continue to show the house until contracts are signed. You can let them know that you will move quickly on your end but in order to protect your interests you will keep showing for back ups, this way you don’t lose any valuable market time.
5. Buyer Due Diligence Period
At this stage in the process of selling a house in Queens, you have an accepted offer and everyone should be excited to get the deal done. Unfortunately you’re not in the clear though, because now is when the buyer will conduct their home inspection. In other words, here in Queens, home inspections are conducted before contracts are signed, and as a best practice, you should not even have contracts sent our until the buyer does their inspection and goves you the go-ahead. We’ve had issues in the past because the buyer wants to go into contract asap so we get a contract out immediately, then they do their inspection and bring up a bunch of issues with the house. The problem with that is that then you have the attorneys involved, and in our experience, attorneys can be the biggest deal killers if they get incolved in negotiations. Your best bet is to have the buyer conduct their inspection, then bring up any issues with your agent prior to getting attorneys involved. If they bring anything up, then your accepted offer is void and you are back to negotiating. Once you work everything out and everyone is in agreement, then you can move on to the next step in the process. If for some reason you aren’t able to come to an agreement, or if the buyer backs out after inspection, then you will be back at square one.
6. Contract drafted and sent to Buyer Attorney
Now we’re getting closer. At this point the buyer has conducted their inspection, you’re all in agreement, and they gave you the go-ahead to send out the contract. In this phase of the process of selling a house in Queens, what you need to do is make sure you have their real estate attorney info as well as your own because what will need to be done next is contact both attorneys. The way this works is that your agent will typically create something called a deal sheet and this form includes all price, terms, and conditions of the transaction. Using the deal sheet, your attorney will draft a contract of sale and send it over to the buyers’ attorney. A good real eatate attorney can have a deal sheet out within 24 hours. If it takes more than two days for a contract to go out, that is usually a bad sign. It eother means that your attorney is either too busy, or doesn’t specialize in real estate. Either way, it is a cause for concern because a good seller will always get a contract out quickly.
7. Attorney Due Diligence Period
Okay now we’re back to due diligence, but this time it is the buyer’s real estate attorney who will be doing due diligence on behalf of their client. What happens here is that the buyers’ attorney and your attorney will go back and forth for a while until they are all in agreement with the terms of the contract. Most of the time they just go back and forth on specific wording and language in the contract, but sometimes these negotiations can become problematic. For example, if you have a very dilgent attorney on the buyer side, they may ask for too many changes that are not common practice and your attorney will most likely not agree to them. Every once in a while deals can die here because seller attorney and buyer attorney can not come to an agreement on the contract. Typically however, they work everything out and get on the same page by the end of this period.
8. Contract signed by Buyer and sent to Seller Attorney
Okay so the contract is good to go, attorneys are happy with the language & terms, and the buyers are ready to sign. What happens now is that the buyer’s attorney will call the buyers in to review and sign the contract. Usually buyers go in, sign the contract, and cut a check for the initial contract deposit (10% of sale price). Once contract is signed, the half signed contract along with 10% deposit is sent over to the seller’s attorney.
9. Contract signed by Seller
So at this point, the buyer signed contract has arrived at the seller attorney’s office along with the initial 10% down payment. What happens now is that the seller’s Attorney will call the seller in to review and sign the contract. There is rarely any issues at this point because all terms and conditions have negotiated prior to buyer signing. A quick side note, if the seller lives out of state, their attorney will most likely fedex or overnight the contract for them to read and sign. Once the contract is signed by the seller, we have what is called a fully executed contract of sale. At this point in the game, both parties are locked in and there are legal implications if either party changes their mind, backs out of the deal, breaches the contract, etc.
10. Contract-to-Close
The contract to close period is arguably the most challenging part in the process of selling a house in Queens. During this time you will have several things take place, and most of the time, you will experience delays for one reason or another. This is why we always tell people to build a really good team of professionals when you sell, because when you have a good team (Realtor, Attorney, Lender, Title Company, Expediter, etc) you will have a much quicker and smoother transaction. Just as a rule of thumb, if you are selling a residential house to a buyer who is obtaining a mortgage, you can expect the process to take about 2-3 months from contract to close. If you’re selling a Coop to a buyer who is taking a loan, you can expect the process to take between 3-5 months from contract to close. The length here really depends on the board application process and review. If you are selling to am all cash buyer, you shave off about a month, not ,ugh more than that in our experience.
Below is a list of the major milestone you will encounter as you move from fully executed contract to the closing table.
- Appraisal – Typically scheduled within first 30 Days
- Commitment – Typically issued within the first 30 – 60 days
- Board Application (Coops only) – Board applications cannot be submitted until commitment is issued so this typically happens within the first 45 – 90 days
- Title Search – Typically ordered after commitment is issued. This is where a lot of issues can come up. As one of our attorneys likes to say, “9 out of 10 deals has title issues.”
- Board Interview (Coops only) – This one is hard to say, always varies depending on the building or development
- Clearance to a Close – Typically received once all conditions of the commitment have been fulfilled or once the buyer has been approved by the board. It usually takes about two weeks to get from clearance to the closing table. Reason why is because at this point there are a lot of schedules that need to accomadated and the hardest part is getting everyone on the same page at a convenient time for all.
Well, I hope you found this helpful. This should give you an idea of what to expect during the process of selling a house in Queens. If you’re thinking of selling and would like some advice, feel free to reach out to us anytime.