October 2016

When I sell my house do I have to clean it, is a question that has a simple answer: Yes.

If you pride yourself on keeping a clean house, you may be dismayed to discover that it doesn’t look quite so clean once it’s completely empty.

Now imagine meeting the removalists at your new home to discover that the former owners, who weren’t as houseproud as you are, hadn’t bothered to clean the house completely before they left.

While dealing with that disappointing start to life in your new home, at least you could be comforted knowing that the new owners of your former home would be having a better time in the thoroughly clean house you left for them.

When will I sell my house, has been the age-old question facing vendors since real estate began.

And if you're reading this, you're probably asking the question yourself after making the decision to put your house on the market so you can get the ball rolling on the great plans you have for the next phase of your life.

You need a conveyancer when you sell your house because the settlement process is complex; one wrong step and you could lose money or be fined.

This is why it is common for sellers to start wondering who pays who, when and how much, as soon as they've successfully negotiated the sale of their property (with your McGrath Real Estate agent, of course).

With settlement just around the corner, your real estate agent will have completed much of their work on your behalf and passed the baton for the next stage of the sale process to your conveyancer.

One of the first questions our real estate agents need to answer when meeting with a home owner is, when I sell my house, who pays what?

Wouldn’t life be simple if when you sold your house, you could just pay out your mortgage and bank what was left?

It would indeed, but that wouldn’t take account of all the people, businesses and government departments involved in the sale and legal transfer of property, all of whom are entitled to collect fees, charges or taxes for playing their part.