Buying a home can be one of the most stressful processes you’ll ever experience so it’s absolutely critical that you have competent, experienced professionals working on your behalf throughout the process. From finding the right home for you and your family, to writing a contract on the home of your dreams, to securing a loan for your home and even the actual closing of your new home (this involves signing all of the required paperwork), there are LOTS of moving pieces involved and it’s critical that each step is completed correctly.
In this recent episode of the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show, Stephen chats with Tracey Reynolds about the actual home closing process. They also discuss the many moving pieces and what’s involved in the processing of finalizing the purchase of your beautiful new home.
Prefer to read? Here are the transcripts of the video:
STEPHEN: Hello, I’m Stephen Cooley and welcome to the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show. It’s always a pleasure to have Tracey Reynolds on the show.
TRACEY: Thank you.
STEPHEN: Welcome to the show Tracey and, as most of you know if you’ve watched the show before, Tracey is an attorney here in Rock Hill and she does a ton of real estate closing all for us and lots of other realtors and people out there, and you’ve handled my personal properties flawless and thank you so much for that.
And we’re just having a conversation today about things going on in the market and things are moving really quickly Tracey, homes are selling fast, a lot of buyers out there, and I just want to talk about how important it is to make sure that there are professionals involved throughout the process. So very stressful and actually rank from the top five most stressful events in your life is buying and selling real estate.
TRACEY: I can certainly see that it would be, yes, and I think that having picking your professionals is a big part of having a good experience. It really is.
STEPHEN: And really before you start the house hunt the thing to make a decision on what professionals are going to be involved and so if you’re selling a home that’s picking your listing agent because that person’s really your buffer to the entire world of buyers and other realtors out there as a listing agent you’re really protecting that seller from everybody out there looking at houses the Charlotte MLS, which we’re all a part of, now has 16,000 realtors in it. So when you pick your listing agent that person is protecting you against all those 16,000 potential buyer agents who are bringing buyers to the property.
The same goes with a great lender, and there’s lots of lenders out there. There’s own land lenders, there’s local lenders, and then there’s national lenders.
The same with the closing attorney. I mean, there’s so much paperwork out of closing and if you sit there and read all that after closing, it would take two days.
TRACEY: Exactly.
STEPHEN: So you’re really trusting the lender to make sure that these papers are filled out correctly and you leave on in the house.
TRACEY: Right, absolutely. The preparation part is imperative and having those professionals in place is key from my experience to having a good experience.
STEPHEN: How long have you been in the field?
TRACEY: 21 years.
STEPHEN: I think I was probably there in your office 21 years ago..
TRACEY: Yes, you were.
STEPHEN: Because I’ve been doing this 29 years and so we closed about 10,000 homes with the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Group, you probably closed a lot of those for us. The challenge is when people get ready for closing, everything comes together at your office at that closing table. And if that stuff’s not done correctly it can be a.. but everybody’s tense – the seller’s tense the buyer’s tense, the lender has sent their money to you. Eeverything comes together at that closing table. Something I bet that’s exciting.
TRACEY: It is, it is very exciting and it should be very exciting and it’s our job to at that point manage how everything comes together, but we’re dependent upon everyone else having done their job. So the agent haven’t done their job with creating the contract which it sets out how the groundwork for all of us everybody is set out within the contract, so it’s very important that’s created correctly and then there’s also your home inspector even more importantly knowing what to do when the home inspection comes back that’s, you know, how to create the addendum that allows for the repairs to be made and that it’s stated correctly so that everything that you want is done and prior to closing not coming to closing and having those repairs made after you leave. There’s deciding which we come into play with this if you want a new survey. We’ll look at the title work, and if there’s not one that’s been completed within a certain time period. We will advise that you may get a survey, so having the outline of your property and seeing where items are placed on top of the property is important. You may not recognize it at that time, but either when you get ready to sell or you 10 years down the road you realize how important it is.
STEPHEN: Because if you’re a buyer or seller these sales contacts are eight to twelve pages deep and they are very complicated and they’re legally obligated once the buyer and seller signs these, they’re legally obligated the seller to certain duties legally obligating, the buyer to certain duties. What happens when the home doesn’t appraise what happens when the inspection comes back with repairs on it, what happens when there’s no clear title and all that is filled out in the legally binding contracts is very important to make sure that you’ve got representation all the way from picking your agent all the way which we’re kind of at the front end all the way to the last day which is the closing at the closing attorney’s office is picking people who can navigate you through these waters we hope for clear pretty days, but sometimes we have hurricane.
TRACEY: Right and that is one of my ways that I describe myself to clients is that I can never promise that you’re going to have a smooth closing, but I can promise you that when you run into something where you need someone that has the experience to help you navigate through those waters I am there for you, and you will appreciate that advice at that time just with you having the experience that you have it’s an imperative to a great closing.
STEPHEN: Yeah, and what I’ve noticed over 29 years, there’s no two situations identical because you’ve got a unique seller who may have never sold a home in 20 or 30 years, you’ve got a unique buyer who’s possibly never bought a home; 48% of buyers right now are first-time homebuyers, then you’ve got a property that may have never sold before. You’ve got all those veritables coming together so there’s no blanket advice that a great realtor or great closing attorney can give folks because it’s unique to that very unique situation and sometimes that answer is something that just comes from all your knowledge over the last 21 years.
TRACEY: Exactly it is, and I will say that and I know you have to, we have created forms, I’ve trained my staff to listen for keywords, younger in my practice, I would literally leave the closing table and go back and make a note to help these people because they told me something at a closing table that I could have helped them with at the beginning of the process through my legal world. So I put this in my form. It’s a lot of information a lot of questions that we ask that help us determine how to best help them with their closing.
STEPHEN: Well you’re doing amazing job and thank you and I look forward doing business with you for 21 more years. Great information. If you’re interested in reaching out to Tracey, if you’ve got a closing coming up or a refinance coming up, Tracey tell folks how to reach you.
TRACEY: I have two offices. There’s one in Fort Mill, there’s one in Rock Hill. My phone number is 803-328-0150 and my website is threynolds.com. You’ll find a lot of information there regarding my top five closing tips are a lot of what we’ve talked about today. There’s information about restrictive covenants, do I need a new survey, so look forward to seeing you.
STEPHEN: Thank you so much for being our expert on today’s show. We’ve got beautiful homes for sale in your area. We’ll be right back.