How Much Will I Really Make When Selling My Home?
Have you been thinking about selling your home but you're not really sure how much money you're actually going to make from the sale? I'm not talking about just the price point that you're going to list your home for I mean how much of the proceeds from that sale will actually go into your bank account. In this short video, I'm going to outline the fees that you incur as a seller in the state of Maine so you can do some figuring to determine if selling your home right now is the right move for you.
In this real estate market it can be really alluring to sell your property when you're hearing all these high price points that homes are selling for especially if it's happening right in your neighborhood you may start wondering does it make sense for me to sell right now? There are some costs that come along with selling your home so even though you may get that great offer it's good to know what would my net proceeds really be from a sale so you can determine does selling make sense for me to get to my next step.
In a real estate transaction, there is a settlement statement that comes at the end of the transaction and that outlines the credits and debits of that whole entire real estate transaction. In this video I'm going to outline what those credits and debits look like for a seller the first credit that a seller gets will be the purchase price of the property. This is the price that the buyer offers to the seller to buy the house. Next, there will be a debit for the seller that debit is going to be for mortgage payoff if you have a mortgage on the property that will be paid off once you sell your home. Sometimes there are some wiring fees associated with that or a discharge fee. Those are typically a little less than a hundred dollars each so there may be some fees along with that. Next, there is also the Real Estate Commission so the seller and their listing agent will determine a percentage of the sale price that will be paid to the real estate agents who help facilitate the transaction. Then there is the transfer tax in the state of Maine the seller and buyer split that fee evenly and it's two dollars and 20 cents per five hundred dollars of the purchase price. The next fee or debit for a seller is to get the deed prepared for the sale. It depends on where you're closing so every title company and attorney charges a different fee for this but you can kind of use the baseline of between 150 to 300 for that particular fee. The next fees are going to vary depending on when in the month you close. They'll be either credits or debits and those are going to be prorations so prorations for things like fuel, property taxes, if you're on city water or sewer so if you've already paid these in advance the buyer will give you a credit for anything that you've paid in advance from the day of closing and if you are owing anything like if you have a water bill that you still owe some money on that will be a debit for you on the settlement statement.
Aside from that there will there may be some miscellaneous costs such as if you said that you would pay some of the buyers closing costs at closing there may be a fee for you or if you'd said that you would do some repairs to the house and you're going to pay that out of your proceeds those can also affect what your final bottom line is but once all these credits and debits are calculated the bottom line is your net proceeds which is the amount the check will be that you get at closing and you get to go put into your bank account.
I hope you found this video helpful to see what you would actually get as a proceed from the sale of your property. If you're thinking about selling and you're wondering what is my job during a real estate sale and what is my realtor's job be sure to check out my next video where I outline the homeowner's job and the realtor's job during a real estate sale. As always please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about Portland, Maine or real estate. I am always happy to chat!