Seller FAQs

The honest version of the trade: selling it yourself saves the listing side of the compensation and costs you the multiple listing service, the buyer-agent traffic that comes with it, and the part where somebody else handles the disclosure packet, the deadlines and the negotiation. On a straightforward home in a hot tract that can be a fair trade. On anything unusual, or in a slow stretch, it usually is not.

Worth knowing before you decide: most buyers are working with an agent, and that agent is being paid under an agreement with their own client. So selling without representation does not mean nobody expects to be paid, it means the conversation about who pays reaches you directly.

So read the end date before you sign, and treat its length as negotiable like everything else. A longer term is not automatically bad, and on a distinctive property that will take time to find its buyer it is reasonable, but it should be a decision rather than a default.

The related question sellers really mean when they ask this: can I leave if it is not working. Ask that directly and ask for the answer in the agreement, rather than relying on a conversation. Any agent confident in their work will put a cancellation provision in writing.

As-is means you are not agreeing to make repairs. It does not mean the buyer takes the home without being told what you know about it. The disclosure packet is still delivered, you still describe the defects you are aware of, and the buyer still gets their investigation period.

In practice as-is works best when it is paired with more disclosure rather than less. A seller who provides an inspection up front and prices accordingly gets a cleaner sale than one who says as-is and waits to see what the buyer finds, because the second version simply moves the negotiation to week three.

That second half is the part that matters and the part sellers miss. The three-year mark removes the duty to raise it. It does not give you permission to deny it if a buyer asks, and buyers in this county do ask, because the information is often findable anyway.

Our own advice, and it is advice rather than a rule: where something is likely to be discovered and would matter to a buyer, saying it early costs far less than having it surface during escrow. A buyer who learns something at week three does not just reprice it, they start wondering what else they were not told.

Two practical consequences. The buyer is inheriting your tenant, the lease and the deposit, so all three belong in the disclosure packet and the deposit gets credited at closing. And your buyer pool narrows, because an owner-occupier generally cannot use a home that is occupied, which shifts you toward investors and changes what the property is worth.

Showings are the other half. A tenant has a right to notice and no obligation to be enthusiastic, and a home shown grudgingly shows badly. Where a sale really depends on presentation, it is worth a conversation with the tenant about timing and, sometimes, about compensating them for the disruption.

These turn up regularly in older Orange County tracts and they are upsetting to read. The language is unenforceable and carries no legal weight whatsoever, but it stays in the recorded chain of title until somebody asks for it to be struck.

There is a straightforward process for having the offending language removed from the record, handled through the county, and any title officer or real estate attorney can walk you through it. If you find one on your title report, tell us and we will point you at the right person. It is not something you have to live with.

This is the most important answer on the page and the one most often assumed wrong. Whatever you may have read about exemptions for an owner selling their own home, it does not reach how you advertise the property, and California's own protections are broader than the federal ones.

The practical version: nothing in your listing, your photographs, your conversations or your choice between buyers may turn on who somebody is. If you are selling on your own and unsure whether something is acceptable to say, that is a question worth asking a professional before you publish it, not afterwards.

The full exclusion normally needs two years of ownership and two years of living there within the last five. Falling short does not automatically mean the whole gain is taxable; a partial exclusion is available where the reason for selling fits one of the recognised categories, and a job move far enough from the old workplace is the most common of them.

How much you get is arithmetic based on how long you were there, and it is genuinely worth calculating rather than assuming. Take it to your CPA before you sell, because on a short hold the answer sometimes changes the timing of the decision.

Without a certification, 3 1/3 percent of the sale price is withheld and sent to the state. That money is not lost, it is a prepayment against what you owe, but you wait for it until you file rather than receiving it at closing.

Ask your escrow officer for the form at the start of escrow rather than at the end. This is one of the few places where a piece of paperwork submitted a week late costs a seller real money for no reason at all.

It is calculated on the value actually conveyed, so any loan the buyer takes over comes off first, and very small transfers are not taxed at all. Certain transfers between family members, into a trust, or as part of a divorce settlement are exempt, and the exemption has to be claimed on the deed at the time of recording.

If you think an exemption applies to your transfer, raise it before the documents are prepared. Claiming it afterwards means an amended recording, which is more trouble than the tax.

The distinction is established early in the estate and it changes almost everything about the sale: whether the price can simply be accepted, how long it takes, and whether the property can be overbid by somebody else at a hearing. Which one applies to your estate is a question for the attorney handling it, and it is the first thing to establish before anything is listed.

We have a fuller page on this at Probate & Trust Sales. What is worth saying here is that a probate sale is a normal transaction wrapped in an unfamiliar process, and the delays in it are almost all procedural rather than about the house.