Are you considering selling your home but you’re not 100% sure what to expect in the process?
Especially if you’ve never done it before, selling your home can be a long and stressful process if you don’t know what you need to look out for, and if you want to avoid making mistakes that can shoot you in the foot.
Stay calm! I’m here to help. This is going to be the first article in a series of articles about selling your home.
In today’s post, I’m going to take you through 5 key things you might not have known about selling your home in Singapore so that you will be better equipped to make confident decisions when it’s time for you to take that step.
1: Is Your Home Ready To Be Sold?
The first thing you might not be sure about at the start is whether you’re ready to sell in the first place! By this I don’t just mean whether you are ready. More importantly – is your home ready to be sold.
I’m assuming here that we are talking about a private property like a condo or a landed home. HDB properties have a whole set of different rules and I’m happy for you to get in touch with me separately about those.
So here’s the thing, you may not actually want to consider selling your condo or house before you’ve owned it for at least 3 years. Why? Because any private home that sells before it’s been owned for 3 years will be subject to something called seller stamp duty, which you will have to pay when you sell. So most people will not choose to sell before the first three years are up – unless they really have to!
2: What Is My Home Worth?
The second thing you want to determine before you even consider selling your home is what it’s worth in the market right now. You have probably already made a mental note of how much proceeds you would like to make before you even consider selling. Or you might have a new home in mind that you’d like to buy next, for which you will need a certain amount in cash from the proceeds of your sale.
While we won’t cover in this video exactly how you can get to find out what your home is worth, this is definitely something you would want to discuss with your realtor before you embark on next steps to sell your home! It will help you determine if you home is WORTH selling right NOW
3: What Costs are Involved in selling a home?
Speaking of home value and what you’ll take home from the sale, you might also be curious about what you need to pay out – that is: your home selling costs. So what are all the costs involved in selling your home?
Firstly, valuation fees for private properties can range between $200-$500, or even higher for landed properties. Then you have legal fees – which are usually in the vicinity of about $2,500, so you’ll want to budget for that. Agent commissions are also a selling-cost that you will want to account for, and yes, we do highly recommend using an agent to sell your home.
Other than these, there are some other costs that may or may not apply to every home sale, such as the seller stamp duties that we talked about earlier, bank fees and prorated property tax owing on your current property.
Be sure to work closely with your realtor who can help you to calculate all the costs involved in selling your home.
4: Should I Sell First or Buy First?
Okay, the next question you might want to know is the order of doing things. Meaning: What should you do first? Sell your home first, or buy a new home first?
Let’s put it this way: If you buy another property before selling your current home first, it will be considered your second property – and this means your borrowing limit with the bank gets significantly reduced, plus you will be subject to additional buyer stamp duty.
For these reasons, most people opt to first sell the property they have at hand, before buying their next home.
5: Where To Stay If I Sell Before Buying?
So then we come to the final point: If I’ve sold my home first, and I haven’t bought a new home yet, where will I stay, right?
There are a couple of options for you here. You could, if you wanted to take your time to find a new home for yourself, start looking for some temporary accommodation. Staying with parents or in-laws temporarily tends to be the go-to solution for most people. But some choose to do a short-term rental instead between homes.
Alternatively, you could also negotiate with your buyer for an extension on the sale completion period, which will give you some extra time to find a new home before the new owners officially move in.
Finally, you could also stick to the standard completion period, but ask if the buyer is willing to let you stay there for a few more months in exchange for rental income! If the buyer doesn’t urgently need to move in, you might just have a deal.
Make sure you have your realtor advise you on all these options and also shortlist buyers carefully on their willingness to accomodate one or any of the above options before you actually transact. Especially if you need to stay in the house longer past standard completion period.
How long will it take to sell my home, though?
Alright! Now that you are aware of all the key things you need to note before you even consider selling your home for the first time, you might also be curious about how long it actually takes to get your home sold.
In my next article, I’m going to speak about the home-selling timeline and all the steps involved from the moment you even think about selling till when you hand your keys over to the new owners.
Click here to read it now: How Long Will It Take To Sell My Home?
If you have any questions for me, let’s talk!
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- Or send me an email at properties.nadia@gmail.com
Talk to you soon!