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7 tips for the first-time home seller

First-time sellers face a different world
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Memo to first-time home sellers: This is not your father's housing market.

Today's buyer-take-all bonanza is a boon for fence-sitters and buyers with great credit and deep pockets. But sellers are steeling themselves to new realities that include paying (rather than making) money at the closing table, providing extras to sweeten the deal, and spending more time and cash making the home camera-ready.

For first-time sellers who have never been through the process before, it's a different world. One where the value of the house isn't measured in the profit made on the sale, but by the enjoyment the owners had from living in the home.

Here are seven things experienced sellers would tell you, if they could.


 

 

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