The Return of the Real Estate Auction

With the housing market starting to slow up a bit in some areas of the country, sellers are using more tools at their disposal than ever to get a house sold in a timely fashion. While these methods vary greatly by region, nationally there has been a rise in the amount of real estate auctions seen. Naturally, auctions are not a new phenomenon, but to see them increasingly used as a primary tool in selling real estate is.

The potential pitfalls are many in the auction business and while it is certainly one of the quickest ways to liquidate a home, it is often wrought with a great deal of uncertainty. What if your home doesn’t sell for the price you were looking for? What if the auction fees take out such a hunk of the selling price that you see little profit? These are key questions to not only ask yourself but to brace for if you pursue the auction as a real estate selling method…[more Real Estate Auction]

Related articles to home selling: Simple Words To Sell Your Home | More Eyeballs, More Money | Setting The Perfect Price | Parting With A Home | Selling Help Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Importance of Being Earnest (Money)

Every real estate transaction has a series of steps along the process to get buyer and seller together for a successful purchase. Articles have and will be written about each of these little steps along the way and earnest money is one of those steps that can seem like a strange practice to go through but makes sense when explained.

Made as a kind of good faith payment made by an interested buyer, earnest money is another of the small steps along the real estate process that deserves to be explored. While no real estate transaction is exactly like another, generally earnest money comes in as part of the process when an interested buyer signs over an amount of money (often in the neighborhood of $500 or $1000) to more or less express that they are serious about buying the home…[more Real Estate Earnest Money]

Related resources for purchase offer fundamentals: Deal in Details | Home Buying Process | Home Buying Cycle | Home Buying Considerations | Purchase Offer Basics | Offer Price Influences | The Agent Derivative