http://irenakohler.com/blog/categoryname_what-to-expect/sort_entrydatetime-desc/  If you have been following along on our family adventure, you already know that moving and buying our new home has faced some unique circumstances. My family and I are located in the US, the seller of our soon-to-be home is based in the United Arab Emirates. This meant that throughout the buying process our agent had to be knowledgeable on the longer than usual buying process. It meant that my family had to practice patience, because any communication with the seller resulted in a longer than usual response time. My family and I had succeeded. We had a closing date! We set up utilities, changed our mailing addresses, and contracted various businesses to begin renovations (all for a closing date start date).  We should have closed and been happily nestled into our new home within 3 weeks of close. There was a bubble of excitement bobbing over all of our heads.The night before the closing date, I carefully coordinated outfits for our family of five to pop against the purple front door of our new home. We would head from the attorney’s office and head straight to the house for a quick sweet family pic. As soon as the last sock was placed on the last set of clothing my husband and I received a text....a very disappointing text. Our agent needed to speak with us asap.BAM! The happy bubble had burst. Closing would be pushed back a week. The sellers had not properly signed the deed. We are a pretty "roll-with-it" family, so after a few muffled curse words (the kids were all in bed) we accepted that life would happen and we would go on.Cue closing date Number Two. This time I decided to save myself some laundry time and just go with our regular everyday clothes. Cue call Number Two. Again, the closing would be delayed. The deed, which we were now assured had been re-signed, had not arrived as promised. There was talk of the sellers being on holiday, taking a special trip to London because the legal process is smoother there, and long courier times. I really am not sure what the details were. All I knew was that once again I was going to have to call all of the contractors and reschedule. The I was going to have to tell three children under the age of 7 years that our day was not going to include going to the new house. I was crushed.My husband and I stayed up late that night. We went through every possible scenario, and decided that if the house did not close on the next scheduled date we would have to walk. We were both paranoid that there was something bad going wrong, despite the assurance from our agent that this was not terribly uncommon when dealing with overseas sellers. The Door looks red here, but I assure you it is a very interesting shade of purple...Closing date Three...YES! WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!! And the kicker, our awesome agent was able to negotiate our first full month of bills paid by the seller due to the long delay! Our family skipped the matching outfits. We drove to the house and played in the yard. We walked around and guessed at where Santa might leave Christmas gifts. We introduced ourselves to neighbors through the fence posts. We were a family who was finally home. Memories multiplied, and all was right with the world.Tell us about your home-buying experiences! Did all go smoothly, or were there hurdles to jump along the way? You can join the conversation on our Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/seacoastrealtyReady to jump into the home-buying adventures? You’ll need a rockstar agent, like my own, and you can find one herehttp://www.seacoastrealty.com/ http://irenakohler.com/blog/1300/what-to-expect-when-buying-a-home:-please-please-just-give-us-the-keys!/ Fri, 25 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0500  As you know from previous blog posts, my family is finally under contract. After some negotiating and lots of luck we are able to start the final jog to the closing table. There is so much that happens after your realtor exclaims,  “Congratulations! Your offer has been accepted!”  No two real estate transactions are ever the same, and our situation has to be one of the most unique I have ever been a part of. My family (“the buyers”) are located in a hot market in North Carolina. The Sellers are located overseas...with a 12-hour time difference. This resulted in every required document, every question, and every interaction taking a full day longer to complete. To say that this has been a bit nerve-wracking would be a gross understatement.As soon as we were informed that we were under contract, we began the process to secure our mortgage. Since the decline (or bust, if you will) of the Housing Market (beginning in 2007 and hitting lows in 2012), getting a loan has required more documentation, qualifications and time. We spent no less than one week just searching files, requesting documentation, and combing through bank statements to determine where every dollar had come from, and where it had gone. For the most part, I would say kids. Kids are where all the dollars go!Every time that we thought we had absolutely everything the Underwriter would come back to us, requesting yet another document. Around midnight on a random Wednesday night, we swore (for the 1,000th time) that we would never lose track of a penny again! My advice? Do a quick Google search or contact a mortgage broker before you even intend to apply for a loan, start a list of everything that you may potentially need, and start finding that stuff stat! It will save you so much time and frustration.  Our house was being sold “as is” but we still wanted to have a home inspection completed. I suggest that you ALWAYS have one. We needed to know that the bones of the house were good and that the house was safe for our family. We also didn’t want any $20,000 surprises after we move in.If at all possible, go to the inspection with your Inspector! Our guy was great, and was one of about 4 recommended by our realtor, friends, and family. We spent almost 5 hours looking into every nook and cranny of the house. After finding all of the “issues” we walked away knowing exactly what kind of renovations and repairs we were facing. This allowed for us to determine what we could afford to do before moving in. For us, new windows, kitchen floor, a small plumbing job, and a minor roof repair are the priorities. Not too bad for a home built in the 1960s. In addition to walking through explaining what the issues were, our inspector sent us an extremely detailed report (complete with pictures) of everything that he found and noted as an issue. This will come in handy as we check off the smaller issues over time. Our inspector charged us (The Buyer usually pays for the Inspection) around $1000. I think that this is the most important money that will be spent on our house. As the mortgage documents rolled through the approval process, the Lender scheduled an appraisal. Most common loans will require an appraisal to determine that the house is, in fact, worth the loan amount. Our lender scheduled the appraisal and we were not present for it. An appraiser will pull comparable homes for sale (“comps”) or recently sold homes in the area. He/She will compare all aspects from the condition, square footage, number of rooms, use of space and will adjust the home value accordingly.We were cruising right on to the closing date...until we weren’t. Remember that fun little fact from the beginning of this post that the sellers lived overseas? With flexibility and patience it mattered very little...until now.Find out how our closing has been effected by working with a seller so far away. And, find out if we even make it to the closing table. It will be a surprise for all of us, as we haven’t made it just yet!What are some of the hurdles that you have jumped when closing on a home? Have you ever passed on an inspection? Join the conversation on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/seacoastrealty http://irenakohler.com/blog/1302/what-to-expect-when-buying-a-home-:-you-are-under-contract-now-what?/ Mon, 31 Aug 2015 12:00:00 -0500  I was not as smiley as this woman on the side of our UHaulAfter packing every square inch of our home, minus the living room curtains (you can read more about this in last week’s blog) we were ready to scrub. My family and I had loved our home and we wanted the new buyers to walk in and love it too. Luckily, I had the help of my super awesome parents. Everyday for the last week in my home, my mother and I would drop my kids off at a drop-in daycare. We would clean the inside of the house while my father worked on the outside. We had so much stuff crammed into every available space that no less than 10 trips were made to local charities to make donations.The week was looooong. I had prepared myself to cry from sun up to sun down. I had previously imagined that each piece of artwork coming off the wall, and each memory inducing wall scrape touched up, and each totally empty room would result in an ocean of tears. This was not the case!  The massive amount of work that it took to get the house completely empty and clean made me ready to get out.Little things like this set the tears flowing!The tear-free me lasted until the morning of closing. I woke up early and attempted to make a video of each room so that our kids would be able to remember what the house was like when they were small. This was when the floodgates opened. I could remember memories so clearly in that empty house. I remembered every holiday photo, every scraped knee, and every birthday party. I knew that the new owners would be walking into the house, their house, in just a few short hours. With a couple of deep breaths and spoken thank-yous to the house, I slipped a bottle of champagne into the fridge, and walked out for the last time.Oftentimes (almost everytime) buyers have the chance to do one final walk-through of the home. This usually takes place on the morning of the closing. I was informed by my realtor that I could be there for the walk-through or not. I chose not to attend. I knew that I would be sad seeing someone critique or make plans of changing what had been mine for so many years. I also wanted the new buyers to be relaxed and excited. I wanted them to “bond” with their new home.Driving out of our neighborhood was rough, but somewhere between the neighborhood and the lawyer’s office I had made peace with moving out. We did not see the buyers at the closing table. It is my understanding that in some cases the buyers and sellers are at the same table and literally hand over the keys after signing all of the legal paperwork. My appointment to sign was an hour before the buyers’ appointment. The actual closing was pretty anti-climatic. My agent sat beside me and a lawyer sat in front of me. It was so nice to have the experienced eyes of my agent reviewing everything that the lawyer slid across the table. It was important too, because we found a $200 mistake! Papers were re-done, resigned, and before I knew it my house was no longer mine. The “buyers” were no longer the buyers, but were the “owners.” New beginnings, here we come!Every hardship and minute of work seemed to vanish. The memories stayed. And, in the second that I signed my name on the last of what felt like 1000 pages, my family and I became homeless! The relief of selling our home has morphed into panic again as we search for a new house to make a home. We are in a constant state of looking, number-crunching, racing to open houses! Stay tuned for the upcoming series “What to Expect When Buying a Home”.Did you feel relief, sadness, pure joy when officially selling your home? Do you have advice for me on buying? Please do-tell! https://www.facebook.com/seacoastrealtyIf you are looking for guidance in the home buying/selling process: http://www.seacoastrealty.com/ http://irenakohler.com/blog/1308/what-to-expect-when-selling-your-home:-part-six-the-closing/ Mon, 13 Jul 2015 12:00:00 -0500  As soon as our home hit the market we starting showing the house. Four days after going active in our MLS (Multiple Listing Service), our Agent hosted our first open house. Two days later, we had an offer. As soon as the text message came through that our Agent had emailed us a copy of the offer, my husband and I commented that, “This is it! We need champagne for signing!” Ahhh, how that elation quickly deflated. With shaky hands we opened the offer. It was for a whopping $25,000 less than our list price. For some houses, $25,000 isn’t a very big percentage. But for our house, listed right above $200,000, it was over 25%. There was no way that the offer could work. No matter how fast we needed to move we couldn’t come to the closing table with much cash. We could not afford to sell our house! Our Realtor's job got pretty stressful pretty quick. He was tasked with calling the Buyer’s agent to let her know that we had a counter-offer. The counter was nowhere near the Buyer’s number. It was only a couple thousand dollars less than our list price. We decided (with our Realtor) when deciding on a list price that we would price aggressively but that it would leave us with little wiggle room in negotiations. We figured that it must just be the Buyer’s negotiating tactic, start super-low and hope that we would all end up somewhere in the middle. This did not work. We came as low as we could, and they came as high as they would. The buyers ended up walking away “to look at other properties.” That deal was dead.My husband, my Realtor and I were all disappointed. We had our bottom-line number, and although our awesome Agent had gotten us very close, it just wasn’t close enough. No matter how close the number got to our bottom-line we still only had a certain amount of attainable cash to access. That would not change. I am pretty sure that we all had a sinking feeling in our stomachs that it might be a while before we got another offer. What if we could never get close enough to sell? Our family fell into a little depressive state. Luckily, this “Flat Offer Depression” didn’t last long! Six days later our Realtor hosted another open house (2 open houses and 12 showings if you are keeping track). The next day we had another offer! The offer came in around 7pm. It was even lower than the first offer from the week before.This was a huge blow. Panic set in. We would never be able to sell this house. We countered-- and then we started pricing the rental market for a 4-bedroom single family home. We were going to have to be landlords...ugh. Buzzz, a new text message. The buyers had countered our counter-offer. They came up a lot! Now the game was really heating up. We poured glasses of wine, and turned the couch into a negotiating command center. The timing of the offer meant that we could be negotiating until very late in the night. Our Realtor was the voice of calm reason. He could never (by law) give us a number or tell us exactly what to do, but he did offer advice on different scenarios and how it might all play out. This was a huge help! There were things that we hadn’t thought about. By 11:00pm we had reached our bottom-line. We countered with that number, and the notice that this was our lowest number before we would have to walk. The buyer accepted. We were officially under contract!I am not a very confrontational person, so the whole process gave my stomach the wiggles. I am grateful that I was not the one on the phone during the negotiating process. The excitement that my husband and I initially felt, quickly shifted to frenzy(how will we get all the stuff packed, where will we go?), then to nostalgia for our our home (hey, we brought three newborn babies into those doors!), and finally to conclusion. We are ready for adventure...little did we know on that night that this house held a whole lot of adventure left for us!Visit the blog next week to find out what happens after the offer is accepted! We should have saved that nice bottle of champagne for closing night! Have you ever celebrated too soon? Let us know on our Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/seacoastrealtyAre you ready to sell and learn the process for yourself? Or, make an offer and send a seller into a frenzy? Find a Realtor herehttp://www.seacoastrealty.com/ http://irenakohler.com/blog/1310/what-to-expect-when-listing-your-house:-the-offer/ Fri, 19 Jun 2015 12:00:00 -0500 The two most important decisions that we have made, thus far in our house-selling adventures, have been choosing our realtor and preparing our home for listing.  I am going to hit the three topics listed in the title above, and hopefully you will see why! Lets go in order, and if you are feeling a little lost it might be because you missed the first two blogs in this series. You can go back and read them here http://www.seacoastrealty.com/blog/.Before, during, and after listing your home for sale there is a mountain of paperwork that must be read, checked over, filled in, and signed. I love words. I love writing. I love reading. However, there is nothing I dislike more than contracts. Every contract that I have ever received or signed immediately sends me into a full-stress overdrive. I worry that I missed something, or that I didn’t read the technical or legal language correctly. I worry that I have just signed my children away on accident! Pick a good one! These people will be your new best friend.This contract/ legal-form dread has one antidote. That would be, a really great Realtor! My realtor has filled-out and read over hundreds of these contacts. He knows exactly what the form is saying in layman’s terms. I have texted, emailed, and called him so many times just to make sure that I am getting it right. To make the form-life even easier, my realtor utilizes a program that allows for me to sign all paperwork online. He can instantly see what I have done, and either congratulate me on finally understanding that “property” is referring to the house and land, or gently remind me that this is the year 2015 not 2014. DotLoop (the program that I am speaking of) also allows for my Husband and I to look back over anything that we have already signed. It lets us each sign individually, so even when we aren’t together we can sign and don’t have to meet and drive to a certain place. This is one of the major differences this time around from the last time we bought or sold a house.These are just a few of the forms, contacts, etc that we have filled out or signed thus far (3 weeks in). I am sure that there are more, but these are the ones that are living in my DotLoop “Loop”.Working With Real Estate AgentsProfessional Services DisclosureExclusive Right to ListLead Based Paint Disclosure FormMineral Oil/Gas/Rights DisclosureResidential Property DisclosureOur realtor was on-point with advertising!As soon as we crossed the mountain of paperwork, we were ready to go go go! Our agent knew the importance of a fast sell, so he immediately set up an open house within our first week on the market. This ended up being not quite as nerve wracking as I had expected. The house was already clean (due to our prepping to sell). Our only obligation was to make sure the house looked good, and to leave (yes leave, with 3 small kids and a dog) for 4 hours. The turnout was great, and he went ahead and scheduled another open house for the following weekend. What the days looked like.It was hard to get ourselves and then keep ourselves (we have a dog that gets extremely car-sick) out of the house for a good chunk of the weekend, but it was well worth it. We got great feedback from agents. Requests for showings started pouring in. This told us two things. We were priced right, and people liked the house! All of the cleaning and housework, and our realtors hard work was paying off!Because we were getting so many requests for showings, we needed to plan our “showing method”. After planning our showing method (how would we receive request, what lead time we required, what would need to be taken out of the house) life became a race. We were racing from work to home, home to the park, and back again. We really got to know our current city better, because we were forced to spend so much time out of the house. Our agent set our phones up with an app called ShowingTime. This app was incredibly helpful. My husband and I would each receive a text message alerting us that there was a request to view our home. We were able to respond with a simple “Y” or “N” or suggest a different time. We loved that we were able to find out as soon as there was interest in seeing the home, as it gave us extra time to get the house cleaned-up and plan where we will take the kids and dog during the showing.I would suggest that you speak with your realtor about how he/she plans to notify you about your showing request. No matter when the showing was requested we always made it work. This was not easy, but well worth the effort. We received an offer after only 6 days on the market! Next week’s blog will fill you in on the offer and negotiating process!As always, I love hearing your listing stories! And, can easily direct you a person that might be able to answer your real estate questions and calm your listing fears! For a great realtor(like mine) look here...http://www.seacoastrealty.com/To join in the selling conversation visit us here https://www.facebook.com/seacoastrealty http://irenakohler.com/blog/1311/what-to-expect-when-listing-your-house:-step-3-papers-open-houses-and-showings-oh-my!/ Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:00:00 -0500