5 Ways to Minimize Stress When Buying or Selling a Waterloo Region Home
Did you know that several large research studies have shown that buying or selling a home has the potential to be one of the most stressful periods in an adult’s life, right up there with getting divorced or filing for bankruptcy!
While no one can really claim to know how to make the process stress free there are some ways you can minimize the stress involved. Here are just a few of the most effective:
Home Buyers: Make that Wants List
Before you begin booking showings, or hitting open houses sit down and make a fairly solid ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ list in regards to just what you are really looking for in a new home. If you do not take the time to do this you are likely to find yourself spending far too much time looking at homes that are completely unsuitable and the home hunting process will seem to drag on and on.
Home Buyers: Get that Pre Approval
Getting a mortgage pre approval before you begin looking for a new home does more than just inspire confidence in home sellers. By eliminating that ‘will we won’t we’ white knuckle period that people used to go through waiting for a mortgage approval to coming in on a property they had already fallen in love with you will be eliminating an awful lot of stress and uncertainty.
Home Sellers: Stop Taking Things Personally
Even though you plan on leaving it in the near future, you still love your home and it can be rather upsetting to hear others criticize it, or, worse still, what you’ve done with it over the years. The very best way to avoid this upset is simply try to make sure you are not in the property when your home is shown. Home buyers are making decisions about a huge step in their lives and no, they rarely ever consider that the observations they are making might be rather rude or hurtful to the people who own the home they are making them about.
Home Sellers: Focus on Finding Distractions
Waiting for the right buyer to come along is always going to be stressful, but if you focus on it too much every day the longer it takes the more stressful it becomes. As hard as it is, when there is a big ‘For Sale’ sign your front yard, try not to let it all take over your daily life. When you do leave the home so that it can be shown take the opportunity to visit neighbours you haven’t in a while, or to check out that coffee shop down the street you’ve been meaning to for the last twelve months but just never quite got around to.
Buyers and Sellers: Choose Your Agent Wisely
Probably the biggest key to reducing stress when buying or selling a home is choosing the right real estate agent to work with. This person can – and will, if they are good agent – eliminate a great deal of the home buying or home selling stress you might feel by taking a lot of the tasks, especially the very mundane ones, off your hands. And they can, if you choose someone you actually get along with, provide a comforting shoulder to cry on if things do get a bit much.