Should You Sell Before Buying a New Home?

Five methods you can use to sell your home before buying a new one.

A topic that comes up often is when someone is looking to buy their next home and they’re fairly sure they need to sell their current one first. There are two main reasons you might need to sell your current home. First, you need the down payment money from the equity in the home. Second, you don't want to or can't carry two mortgages at once. Here are five ways you could handle this kind of transaction:

1. The traditional way. We list the home on the market and pray we find that next home while it’s under contract or during a leaseback.

2. You have a home in mind. You found your next home, and we can help you get it. However, that would require us potentially making a contingent offer on that property. If they accept it, then we can figure out how to sell your home.

   “To find your best-case scenario, call your trusted real estate advisor.”

3. Utilize a home-buying service or bridge loan service. There are a lot of these out there. I can walk you through the different programs to see if they are a good fit for you.

4. iBuyers. iBuyers make you a quick cash offer that’s smooth and seamless, so you don't have to think about selling at all. They just close whenever you're ready, but the downside is that you’ll likely end up giving away a lot of your equity. Please call me first if you’re considering this option. I don’t want you to leave money on the table.

5. HELOC. A home equity line of credit lets you take out a loan on your current property, and then you use that down payment for the next home. Once you close, then you can pay off that HELOC.

To find your best-case scenario, call your trusted real estate advisor. We’ll review your situation and see which option is the best fit. I also highly recommend talking with a lender right away. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me by phone or email. I look forward to hearing from you.

Buying a Home With Parent's Help? Here’s How

Are you purchasing a home with your parents’ help? See this first.

Is it a good idea for parents to help their kids buy a home? It’s a big financial decision, but these two questions will help you make the right choice for you: What’s the best way for parents to help their kids purchase a house, and what are the benefits that come with it? 

The Austin housing market is competitive and relatively expensive. For first-time homebuyers, it may be harder to purchase a property. Having your parents’ help to get into our market would be a huge advantage. After all, the sooner you can own a home, the faster you can build wealth.

“Having your parents join you on the home buying journey will strengthen your relationship with them.”

I’m not a CPA, a mortgage lender, nor an attorney, but I know a few creative ways for parents to do this. First is by giving a “gift” of up to 20% of the down payment on the home. It’s not a loan, but the lender will require a gift letter for it. This helps you get into the home easier and will remove the private mortgage insurance (PMI) from your purchasing costs. The second way is having your parents loan you some money so you can become a cash buyer. This method essentially makes your parents your lender. Last, the parents can co-sign on the mortgage. I recommend your refinance the home and remove your parents from the cosign at some point. 

Purchasing a house is a milestone and one of the entry points to becoming an adult. Having your parents join you on the home-buying journey will strengthen your relationship with them and help you build long-term wealth

If you have more questions about this topic or have any real estate questions, don’t hesitate to call or email me. I’d love to connect with you.

3 Factors To Consider When Selling Your Home

Is your home not selling in today’s market? Here are the reasons why.

As the market shifts, some homeowners find that their homes aren't selling as fast as they had hoped. Why is this happening? I'll be discussing a few reasons why your home isn't attracting buyers in today's market.

There are three main things that will determine your success when selling your home: price, condition, and marketing. Recently, we sold a home by focusing on these factors. Before we took over the selling process, the house was already on the market but wasn't selling due to the property's condition.

“By improving the curb appeal, buyers can emotionally connect better with the house.”

At 1:38 in the video, you can see how we transformed the home's landscape to make it stand out. By improving the curb appeal, buyers emotionally connected better with the house. We removed the furniture, replaced the carpet, and professionally staged the home. We took beautiful photos of the different spaces and even got a drone to take pictures of the lot. This is an important part of the marketing process, which was lacking when they first listed the property. 

To strengthen our marketing efforts, we also promoted the property during the pre-marketing process. Through this, a buyer reached out to us and offered over our asking price. The seller accepted the offer and closed the deal. It was a successful transaction for both sides!

If you want to sell your home fast and for top dollar in today's shifting market or have real estate questions in general, call or email me. Let's connect—I want to be your real estate consultant for life. 

How To Score a YETI With Our Annual Giveaway

Three easy ways to enter our YETI cooler giveaway this year.

It’s that time of year again—time for our annual BIRDHOME YETI giveaway! Our business is growing so we decided to give away two YETI coolers this year, one to each lucky winner! We have personal connections with YETI and are big fans, so we chose two coolers we own and love. One is the Hopper Soft Cooler, and the other is the Tundra Haul.

There are three ways to enter this awesome giveaway. The first is to provide a referral, which will count as five entries. The second is to write reviews on Zillow, Google, and/or Facebook, which would give you three entries. The third is to post on Instagram wearing BIRDHOME Realty swag and tag us. If you don’t have any merchandise, let us know, and we will happily hook you up. 

This contest will run until September 15, and we’ll give the coolers away right after. If you have questions about the contest or anything else real estate related, feel free to call or email us. Thank you for all the support this past year!

BUY an OpenDoor Home - they are on sale!!

OpenDoor has been splashed across the news due to their misleading of sellers which in turn has forced them to pay a $62M fine. Find The Article Here

Their business model is not new, just highly refined. They buy homes directly from sellers at a low cost (in theory) , do some minor updates and put the home back on the market to make a profit. Their implementation of this business model does have some major holes in it. It doesn't seem like they saw this slow down in the market coming since several of their listings recently have been marked lower than what they initially paid for it.. 

Currently, OpenDoor has 496 active listings for sale ranging from $288,000 to $948,000 with an average asking price of $498,000 and an average days on market of 64.

As of now, OpenDoor has 13 homes under contract. And in the last 3 months, they've only sold 89 homes--about 29-30 per month. The most telling number is that in the last month they've only sold 11 homes. Of the 11 homes that did sell, before they sold, OpenDoor had to drop the asking price by an average of $24.5k and they ended up selling for an average of 92.83% of the original asking price. 

Month's supply of homes is where they are really exposed. With around 30 homes selling per month and almost 500 homes available for sale, they have nearly 17 months of housing supply. 

For perspective, Austin's overall market had 2,850 homes sell in the last 30 days and with 8,000 homes on the market we have about 2.8 months of housing supply. 

See statistics below on how OpenDoor is performing against the overall market averages for sales in the last 30 days. 

While analyzing the data, all we are really seeing is Opportunities for Buyers. These homes are prime for negotiations and from our experience, OpenDoor is ready to cut deals to clear out some of this housing inventory. 

All data provided by the Austin Board of Realtors and is deemed reliable as of August 1st, 2022.

Please reach out if you would like us to email you a list of all OpenDoor homes available on the market. Lastly, if you would like to discuss buying, selling, or investing in the Austin real estate market, feel free to fill out our questionnaire with the link below and we will reach out. 

Contact us!