Home Selling Process

Two of those nine steps are where sellers actually gain or lose money, and neither is the negotiation everyone expects. Setting the price and assembling the disclosure packet both happen before the home is ever shown, and both are finished by the time the first offer arrives.

The rest of the sale is largely a schedule. Once you accept, the day counts written into the contract take over, and your job shifts from decisions to deadlines.

Three things make a listing agreement stick: it is in writing and signed, it names a definite end date rather than running indefinitely, and it carries a notice about commission in bold type immediately above the compensation clause. That notice reads: "The amount or rate of real estate commissions is not fixed by law. They are set by each broker individually and may be negotiable between the seller and broker." The rate cannot be preprinted on the form, which is exactly why the number on your listing is written in after a conversation.

What you are granting is specific: a sign on the property, entry into the multiple listing service, cooperation with buyer agents, and authority to accept a buyer's good faith deposit on your behalf. The standard form also gives you five days to approve or reject how the brokerage plans to manage the listing, so read that part rather than initialling past it.

The buyer gets the same form on their side, before they sign with their own agent and before they write an offer. If an agent brings you an offer they did not prepare, the form follows no later than the next business day.

Then it gets confirmed a second time, inside the purchase agreement itself, where the buyer's agent states whether they represent the buyer alone or both sides. Where one brokerage ends up holding offers from two different buyers on your home, both parties have to give clear and informed consent before it goes any further. If that situation arises, it is worth a direct conversation about what it means for you.

The hazard statement covers six mapped zones: a federal flood area of the Zone A or Zone V type, land below a dam, a very high fire severity zone, an earthquake fault zone, a seismic hazard zone, and a state wildland fire responsibility area. Much of coastal and canyon Orange County falls inside at least one, so on a local sale that statement is rarely blank.

The special tax notices are the ones sellers underestimate. Where the home carries Mello-Roos, a bond assessment collected on the tax bill, or a contractual assessment, you have to request the notice from each agency that levies it and pass it to the buyer. Newer parts of the county are full of them, and the annual figure is exactly what a buyer prices in.

The window opens on delivery rather than on acceptance, and amending a disclosure opens it again. The buyer cancels by writing to you or your agent inside those three or five days. So a late disclosure hands back an exit the buyer had already spent, and an amended one deep into escrow can reopen it at the worst possible moment.

The fix costs nothing and takes one afternoon: assemble the packet before the home goes on the market. Missing one does not undo a completed sale, but it can leave you owing the buyer for what it cost them, which is the part worth avoiding. If a disclosure question on your home is genuinely unclear, that is a question for your attorney and not one to guess at.

Every number in that table is negotiated, not fixed. A counter offer can change any of them, which means the periods in the offer sitting in front of you are a term to read rather than a schedule to accept. Shortening the inspection window is one of the quieter ways a competing buyer makes an offer stronger without raising the price.

Removing a contingency has to be in writing. If the other side stalls, they can be served a notice giving them a short period to perform, typically 24 hours, after which the sale can be cancelled , though actually releasing the deposited money still takes signatures from both of you.

That single sentence explains everything an escrow officer does and every delay you will experience. Nothing moves early, because the whole point of the arrangement is that nothing moves until the last condition is satisfied. Then it all moves together: the deed records, the loan funds, your old mortgage is paid off and the balance is wired to you.

A copy of the agreement reaches the escrow holder within three business days of acceptance, and the acknowledgment attached to it shows the escrow number and the escrow holder's licence status, which you are entitled to ask about. At the end you get a settlement statement itemising every credit and charge on both sides , read it against the figures you were quoted, because that is the document where a surprise shows up.

Transfer tax runs at 55 cents per $500 of the price, calculated after deducting any loan the buyer takes over. On a $1,000,000 Orange County sale with nothing assumed, that is $1,100, a figure worth knowing before you see it on the settlement statement rather than after.

The rest are small and predictable. The one that catches people is the $20 charged when a change of ownership records without the Preliminary Change of Ownership Report attached, which is avoidable simply by filing the form with the deed.

A recorded deed puts every later buyer and lender on notice from the moment it is filed; an unsigned drawer copy binds only the people who signed it. The escrow holder times the release of funds to that recording, so the money and the title move in the same instant. Transfer tax has to be paid before the recorder will take the document, and the Preliminary Change of Ownership Report is best filed alongside the deed. The assessor and recorder both provide it free, and filing it avoids the $20 charge.

One thing to check afterwards. Your old loan does not vanish from title at closing; the lender releases it, and that release has its own timetable of about a month and a half in total. If the old deed of trust is still showing against your property a couple of months after you closed, that is not normal and there are deadlines to point at.

The federal exclusion on a main home is $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 on a joint return, and it turns on time rather than intent: you owned the home at least 24 months out of the five years ending on the sale date, and lived in it at least 24 months of those five. The two periods need not be the same months. It is generally unavailable if you already used it on another home within the previous two years, and if you receive a Form 1099-S you report the sale even when the entire gain is excluded.

Separately, escrow withholds 3 1/3 percent of the sale price for the state unless you certify a smaller amount, with nothing withheld at all on a sale of $100,000 or less. That withholding is a prepayment against what you owe, not an extra tax, and if you qualify for an exemption the paperwork has to reach escrow before closing rather than after. This is the part of a sale where the numbers turn on your own return, so take it to your CPA.

Put a specific date in the offer rather than a number of days, because a date cannot be counted two different ways by two different people. Shorten any of the negotiated periods in a counter and the escrow shortens with it.

What you actually control sits before the contract, not inside it. Disclosures assembled, special assessment notices requested and compliance items handled before the home is shown is the difference between a clean 30 days and a sale that keeps reopening.