Dawna Davies and her assistant Jodi Blanchard did an exceptional job in helping us sell our home in San Luis Obispo. Dawna’s intelligence and knowledge of the business made the whole complex process easy for us to understand and navigate. What seemed like counter-intuitive advice at the start—that we should be extremely thorough in discovering any possible problems with the forty year old house and present them in advance—turned out to streamline the final transaction by building trust in potential buyers and removing the possibility of unpleasant surprises and uncertainty for us. Her contacts with a wide range of local business people who carried out many preparatory operations quickly and economically offered another unique benefit. Her tact and amiability made our numerous interactions pleasant rather than wary. And Jodi’s work in converting the box full of documents from our files into a coherent house-maintenance-history binder meticulous and creative. From start to finish our involvement with Davies Company was personally as well as financially rewarding.
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Make a detailed current financial statement of your assets and liabilities, income and expense. Consider all monthly expenses, income, and monetary commitments.
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Gather all documents in your possession relating to the ownership, financing, and original purchase of the home. This may include your loan documents, deeds, purchase contracts, disclosures, and condition reports. Get a box; put all of these in one place. This is a hassle, but well worth the effort.
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Meet with a real estate advisor. Get a realistic market perspective for your local area and general buyer sentiment. Get informed about the value of your property as an opportunistic buyer would see it, whether you are considering selling or not. Also learn from your advisor about what to expect from the process of selling a home, both as a distressed property and/or conventional sale, and develop a strategy for resolution. This can vary, depending on your property location, market conditions, news events, your lender, the number of loans on your property, whether you and your property can qualify for federal or lender modification programs, etc.
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Meet with tax and legal counsel regarding consequences of any action you might be considering, bring your documents listed above. This is very important; laws and precedents change frequently.
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Make a well-informed decision about your financial and real estate future given all of the information you have gathered. Questions to consider are: Under what conditions could you keep the home? Do emotional ties to your home outweigh the cost to keep it? Who is affected by a sale of your home? If you are considering a short sale or a deed in lieu, or actual foreclosure, are there moral or ethical issues you have concerning walking away from a debt or having one forgiven? Do your immediate financial needs take precedent over consequences of a distress sale?