HOW TO MOVE – or – …to the east side…

The process of a move can be a daunting task.

Here are my top ten nuggets of wisdom when it comes to buying and selling your homes, and the move between them.

  1. Select a good realtor and have them do the selling of your home and the buying of the next… My realtor (Jeff Wu, Weichert) managed to time together the sale of my home, the purchase of the next, the rentbacks, and even sprung for the landscaping work – he made us some good cash and made our move a lot easier.

The process of a move can be a daunting task.

Here are my top ten nuggets of wisdom when it comes to buying and selling your homes, and the move between them.

  1. Select a good realtor and have them do the selling of your home and the buying of the next… My realtor (Jeff Wu, Weichert) managed to time together the sale of my home, the purchase of the next, the rentbacks, and even sprung for the landscaping work – he made us some good cash and made our move a lot easier.
  2. Know your location – check it out at midnight on a friday night… we loved out first home during the day, but soon found that there was a criminal element in the neighborhood.
  3. Don’t hardball in a seller’s market. We turned away offers just because people seemed too difficult. And we selected our buyers because they offered 500 dollars more then another. In a seller’s market, offer a little more than the asking price if you really want it.
  4. Look till you find what you want, then jump on it. We kept finding “almost right” places.. but kept looking and eventually found just what we wanted.
  5. Buy Buy Buy – if you can possibly buy in a good market, do. Renting is giving your money away.
  6. Budget the move out on the high end.. then shop for deals. We set a budget without shopping.. just using the first prices we saw.. we set aside that amount of money.. then worked our way down.
  7. Give yourself time to move. We moved in 2 days with just one person at at time helping us. Mistake… thank goodness our friends are forgiving. It can take a few days.
  8. Label your boxes – know which room and what is in them. Use a lot of smaller boxes and keep them well labeled, I didn’t and I am searching through boxes for little wires and plates and stuff. Eek.
  9. Do one thing you always wanted to. For me it was the home theatre… for my wife it was the curio cabinet and the fireplace. It makes you feel special about the new place.
  10. Don’t overspend… yeah, its hard, but make sure you can afford what you’re buying.

Okay, there’s lots more… maybe you guys have some.

EDIT by matthew: tpyos, formatting.