So Your Home’s Gone Under Contract—Now What?

Here’s what you must do after your home goes under contract.

So you received and accepted a wonderful offer for your home. Congratulations! What happens now?

First, if you have your owner's title insurance, it’s a good idea to present that to the title company so the buyer can benefit from the reissue of their own title insurance. This is a good way to establish rapport between you and your buyer.

Second, make sure you have your mortgage information available—specifically, your bank name and mortgage number. The title company will ask for these things because they have to order the mortgage payoff.

Next, prepare for your inspection. If your offer is contingent on an inspection, it’s important to take care of certain maintenance tasks inside your home. For example, switch out your HVAC filter. A lot of us forget about this type of thing, but it’s exactly what inspectors look for. Also, look around the house and see if there are any missing outlet covers. Lastly, make sure the house looks the same as when the buyer first looked at it. Buyers sometimes freak out if it doesn’t look the same.

"If your offer is contingent on an inspection, it’s important to take care of certain maintenance tasks inside your home."  

After that, for appraisal purposes, make a list of all of the upgrades you’ve made to the home, including the dates the upgrades were done. It’s important to give this list to the appraiser so they can take it into account while appraising the home. Also, again, make sure the home looks the same as it did when it was on the market.

Once all contingencies are eliminated and it’s time to move, the final step is to make sure you’re actually ready to move out the day before closing. Have you spoken to a moving company? Did you get an estimate for the moving costs? Additionally, remember to switch out your utilities and transfer them to your next home, and verify that your mailing address is changed with your bank or financial institution. On top of that, you can set up a mail forwarding service with USPS to ensure all of your bills go to your new home.

If you have questions about today’s topic, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to hear from you!