Buying selling a home is emotionally, what are real estate buyers and sellers scared of in a house sale?
This blog post is all about buying and selling a Maine home and what happens on both sides of the property listing transaction.
In any Maine real estate sale, people are involved.
For buyers and sellers, lots of high emotion can happen around the tight time tables, the fear of missing out, paying too much or letting the place go for too little.
And there are lots of people involved when it’s not a cash sale and you need a bank mortgage for underwriting, appraisals. Then lawyer up, hiring an attorney or title company for searching in the racks and stacks of the county registry where the property for sale is located. The insurance, gotta have a binder on the property. Then finally, hopefully to sit down for the slide the keys, to buy a new home sweet home.
For buyers, what’s it like purchasing a home in Maine?
It’s exciting to imagine yourself buying your first home. Moving in together and starting a life with your partner. Filling the house with furniture borrowed, handed down, bought.
This is the place where a family will live and celebrate holidays, birthday parties and kids grow up here.
With the doorway in the kitchen will get marked up in pen and pencil. Jimmy’s height at five, Julie’s at 10 are all recorded in the Maine family home.
Or buyers purchasing another home finally get to act on their dream to be on the waterfront, at a ski area, near a golf course or to ride their horse.
Buyers and sellers get to up size or downsize their present house to something that just let’s them age in place. Improves their quality of life.
The home just fits better and is more comfortable, affordable, in a better location to cut back on running the roads, etc.
Or it could be a big relief to get on one level and not need to climb up and down stairs any longer that are no fun for an elderly home buyer.
In Maine house prices are so much lower than the national average that buying new is often cheaper. Than trying to undo, redo, make a place over to fit changes in your real estate needs.
The stress of hoping a Maine bank will finance the home you want, that the house inspection goes well can keep you tossing and turning nights.
Can you handle the bigger payments on the mortgage, the cost to insure, heat, maintain and pay increased property taxes? Over thinking about that can stress and interfere with your health sleep patterns.
Fast moving markets can make the house buying experience darn right scary for a buyer.
When new house listings are flying off the shelves, it’s hard to just take your time. To study each new listing without watching one by one of them disappear to quickly. Suddenly going under contract or sale pending happens in a market like Maine real estate has currently.
It’s not fun falling in love with a house and seeing yourself actually living there.
And to end up losing out in a bidding war where the house you wanted went to another home buyer. One who paid above and considerable beyond list price.
Plus you told all your family and friends on social media check out the home you are looking to buy that is history, gone now.
That can make a buyer wannabee feel pretty low and embarrassed.
The stakes are even higher to buy a Maine home when you live at home where you grew up with your parents. Saving money but are so so ready to bust out on your own.
It’s time. Finding affordable rental apartments is tougher in Maine than ever before and expensive as well. Which only adds to the buyer stress for someone who is hoping to buy a home in Maine better sooner than later.
Fear of making a poor decision purchasing a Maine home is always somewhere in the brain. For someone on the hunt for a place to buy, move in and live happily ever after. No one wants to make a mistake on the largest purchase most of us every make right?
Maine home buyers, remember, the local mortgage bank loan lender would not approve you with a green thumbs up pre approval letter if the numbers don’t work.
And consider you are buying, building equity in your home that you can work on to improve. You can never get ahead renting, treading water and not able to touch your own property. Start owning, stop renting… chant that a few times to give you courage to wade into the home listing pool.
Just don’t change jobs, get divorced, buy a new car or make some other major purchases Maine home buyers.
All those financial missteps could jeopardize your bank pre approval at the price range of the house you see yourself buying and enjoying.
Even when your offer is accepted, you make it all the way to the clear to close memo, some buyers still worry themselves sick. About the what ifs… if I get transferred, lose my job, have to replace the furnace or some other major service repair? Hope we don’t end up getting divorced.
When you buy a home, it can clean you out of money reserves, your savings that goes in many directions.
Fees for this, that all can add up very quickly. And expect surprises along the way.
Even though the Maine mortgage lending institution does provide a pretty accurate break down in the truth in lending good faith documentation.
You had to check out with credit scores and debt ratios. On the job two years or more? Good. So far looking good.
Only 360 more monthly installment house payments that you agreed to on the promissory note and mortgage paperwork.
That commitment can sober you up and really make you think. Are you sure? Really really sure about buying a home in Maine?
Winter snow can hamper or speed up the process to buy and sell.
Got to get moved or in and under cover is a strong nesting instinct that only adds to the stress or ease of a Maine real estate sale.
Being sick and tired of writing a big fat check to your landlord for rent will ease the pain of owning, building equity.
Pride of ownership and being a local tax payer will make you feel much more a part of the community.
And to care about voting more, where the town spends the monies generating in local real estate taxes goes.
So the high emotion, being scared of buying a home and the fears buyers feel in a Maine real estate sale.
They increase when it is not just Mom or Dad needing a roof over their head.
When your family is counting on you, your boss expects you to relocate and start work Monday, school is starting. Pressure, anxiety, worry about where am I going to live? Do I need a second or third job to pull this off?
There you have it, in the first part of the real estate blog. All about the Maine real estate buyer.
But what about the seller?
What are Maine home sellers scared of in a house sale?
When you raised your family in a house for decades or longer, worked on the place to steadily improve it, selling is even hard. There is a strong emotional attachment to all the life event memories that happened at this particular street or road property address.
A place like a family farm owned for generations.
You feel guilty about letting go of a family property. Like you are letting people you respect that are long gone down.
It is not easy to detach emotionally from the property in Maine.
Way way easier once you find the next home though that replaces the original one. How does your current house fit your real estate needs? It changes big time.
Just the decision to sell the place loaded with all this stuff you collected over the years can make you tired and to hold back on the move.
Not wanting to deal with sorting through it all for the garage sales or filling the big roll off 30 yard dumpster.
It can keep you stuck from moving on and to cut the emotional attachment to all the memories in the Maine home. You are sentimental unless a Scrooge type lacking all empathy.
You will miss the neighbors, the habit of all the things you enjoyed in this home and location. Heck, Fluffy and Spot you cat and dog are buried near the back line of your lot remember?
For a seller of a Maine home, there is stress about pricing it correctly.
Worry about will it sell on time or at all? For the desired price you need to make the numbers crunch correctly. And will the place you really want to buy to replace it… will that new house listing still be on the market for sale when you are ready? Or a new one you like even better?
Selling your old home before buying your new house has all kinds of added stressors.
The Maine home seller hopes for multiple offers, a quick hassle free real estate sale.
Seller’s remorse can happen when trouble finding the next one makes you second guess letting go of where you are now. Buyers and sellers both can develop remorse in a property sale. Not finding a suitable home to replace the one you have can make a seller nervous.
A seller with an estate house that is empty, being heated and chewing through a lot of money plowing snow, insuring it, cutting the grass is ready to let go for closure. And to stop the financial bleeding.
The seller who is having trouble finding the next place or having set backs building a house can cause the owner to retreat.
I see a seller who priced their house to match the Maine real estate market feels maybe we sold it too low.
When the place goes under contract shortly after the listing. You priced the place right, that’s why it is not on the market for a year or more.
Talk to someone that over priced their place and ask them do they wish a buyer would come along to buy it? They sure do.
But many despite saying “I am very negotiable on the price” will not drop it a dime. Holding out on the hope maybe, what if someone comes along that would agree to the over pricing.
Worry for a seller of a Maine home, what else rattles them and makes their thoughts race?
Wanting a new home buyer to keep the property up, maintained like the seller did. Or hoping the next buyer fits into the neighborhood and everyone likes who you sold to when you left the address. The home owner can not help what the new buyer does or does not do.
What other emotions do seller of Maine house have? Frustration with low offers, buyer demands or hearing negative feed back. Concern about home inspections, the back and forth negotiations or having the house sale derail and fall through so no more real estate closing.
Back to the drawing board for back up buyers and explaining to new home buyers what happened? When they ask sellers “Oh, I thought you had already sold your home?”
When a house sale falls through, more often than not, the public wonders what’s wrong with the house, why is it back on the real estate market?
Not thinking a buyer divorce or unplanned relocation or medical issues will help derail the sale all by themselves. But lots of factors combine to killing a perfectly good real estate sale.
When the seller finally does sell a home, turn the power over and leaves the driveway for the last time, there is another emotion. The feeling of relief once the real estate closes and responsibilities end.
What are real estate buyers and sellers scared of in a home sale?
Plenty of high emotions because lots of dreams and expectations for new buyers who want to experience home ownership. Or fond memories and past experiences that were pleasant that the sellers, property owners associate with the Maine home.
But besides the buyer and seller, there are real estate agents pushing hard in the negotiations.
Lawyers, banks, insurance agents, contractors, oh my, layers of players in any Maine property listing sale.
The trick to getting a tenant to move out before the closing, the meeting mortgage and insurance underwriting need addressing. Can add to the stress and cost of time and money buying, selling a Maine home.
One things for sure. Stay on top of it, get the paperwork in order fast and complete. Everyone involved has a role for success or failure.
The longer a real estate sale in Maine drags out, it like any intensive medical operation.
Complications happen while the patient is under too long and the operation drags on. Same thing with buying or selling a deal that just won’t close.
Other properties come up to woo the buyer away. Another purchaser without complications steps in and your home owner forgets all about extending the original sales contract.
Here to help buying, selling Maine real estate.
It should be, can be a pleasant easy fun experience. Or turn out to be an expensive nightmare if you don’t see the red flags. On what to avoid and why. I hope this Maine real estate blog post helps put yourself in the shoes of buyers and sellers.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA