$100,000 reasons to buy and sell this spring

By Matt Trudel

There are a lot of reasons why people decide to buy or sell a home. Sellers may want to upgrade to a larger house or perhaps downsize to a smaller one, depending on if the family is expanding or shrinking in size.

There are the financial reasons for wanting or needing to sell. Those can vary from getting a large promotion at work to losing one’s job.  It’s probably one of the top five questions buyers always tend to ask, “Do you know why they are selling their home?”  Sometimes we may know or can speculate given our experience and local knowledge. 

A client of mine purchased a house through me a couple years ago. It needed a lot of work and was a total dump in my opinion. (Hopefully he won’t be mad that I said that if he reads this) He has done a lot of work to the house, fixed many things and made a lot of improvements. We talked about a month ago and he asked what I thought about him selling his house. I told him it was a great idea if he was okay with moving, and of course it might be hard to find a good deal in this market. 

The upside is he is selling in what’s probably close to the peak of the market, and he had owned his house over two years, so he wouldn’t have any capital gains on the nearly $100,000 he would make in selling. 

“Find me another house” he said, “and let’s do this.”  So that is what we did, we found another house that needs a little work, and he is on his way to solidifying that financial move. Pretty good reason for selling.

Some buyers would hesitate at purchasing his home, stating he is going to make $100,000.  He can obviously accept less; he doesn’t need to make that kind of money. It would amaze you how often it happens that the amount a seller is going to make would affect a person’s decision on purchasing or not purchasing a home. The value of the home is what the home is worth and keeping that in my buyer client’s mind is always a priority. Let’s not worry about the reason that someone is selling or how much they are making.

Some good reasons that buyers may want to know why they are selling is if the neighborhood is dangerous, there are issues with association and a large assessment is looming in the future, and the list goes on for miles. These are all things that a good buyer’s agent will research for you so that you can make an informed decision based on facts. My point is that there are multiple reasons sellers want to sell. You are better off making your decision to purchase a home based on solid research, assistance from an experienced broker, and your own personal desires for a new home. 

If you are thinking about purchasing a home this spring or summer, one of the first steps is finding an experienced broker that you are comfortable working with to help you through this process. 

This article written by Matthew Trudel- Broker/Owner Five Star Realty, Windham 207-939-6971