Selling Process

Introduction

   You have decided to buy a home with Stage Real Estate - but what next? The maze of legal work, negotiations, dealing with surveyors and solicitors, finding a good mortgage deal and worrying about your deal falling through, on top of actually hunting down the home of your dreams, is enough to make anyone's hair stand on end.

   Buying a house is one of the biggest financial decisions that you will make in your life. It is a lengthy and complicated business, which while exciting is often fraught with stress and worry. But luckily the staff here at Stage Real Estate is here to help you make your home-buying experience as easy and problem-free as possible.

   It is important to have a good understanding of the process as it will help you to avoid some of the most common hazards of home-buying. Stage Real Estate has prepared an introduction to the property-buying process to help you to understand how it all works (in the cases where buyer wants to purchase a property in a foreign country, he will be guided by our lawyers to obtain all legal requirements). After reading this you should have a better idea of what to expect and how to set out to buy a home feeling prepared and ready to go!

The Buying Process: A Step-by-Step Guide

   Although the vendor (seller) and the purchaser will have to directly deal with each other to close the sale, they have to go through the following steps with the assistance of Stage Real Estate agents and lawyers in order to simplify all purchase and legal procedures.

   The Vendor contacts Stage Real Estate to sell their property, specifying clearly the methods and locations where he wants the property to be advertised (usually on multiple international listing websites). The majority of our clients are foreigners, meaning that their country-of-origin differs from the country where their property is in.
After that, we register his property on our website (hidden from public view) linking it to an ID so he can always keep an eye on our progress in selling it.

   In 99% of the cases the Purchasers find our properties on various listing websites (we do not focus on bringing traffic to our website - we expose our products and services directly where our clients look for them). The first contact with the Purchaser will be through email, providing him a detailed presentation of the property and a brief summary concerning the legal matters of the procedures related to the transaction of the current property.

   After agreeing to the terms and conditions, the very first section of every standard pre-printed real estate purchase contract form, provides that the buyer of real property to make a deposit of money (generally referred to as an "earnest money deposit" - not to be confused with a down payment). The required earnest money deposit will be held into a maintained trust account of Stage Real Estate - Rental and Earnest Payments Administration. The role of the deposit (especially for international properties) is that it tells us that the Purchaser is serious about entering into a legal commitment to buy. In today's hot real estate markets, it is the only way to differentiate the serious buyers from the non-serious ones.
This will give the Purchaser exclusivity to the property in order to create a purchase contract. A pre-purchase agreement will be made in order to schedule a private viewing.

   Is The Earnest Money Deposit Refundable Upon Cancellation?

The pre-purchase agreement contract will allow the return of the earnest money deposit to the buyer within a specified time period, by default 2 days, should the buyer elect to cancel the transaction.

   The actual viewing of the property will occur. Only the Purchaser and the real estate agent representing the Vendor will take part. In the event that the Purchaser is not satisfied, the earnest money deposit shall be promptly refunded to Purchaser by the Stage Real Estate. In the event that the Purchaser agrees to buy the property, the earnest money deposit will be considered as part of the down payment for the actual purchase.

   The agent assigned by Stage Real Estate to handle the transaction and the Purchaser sign a provisional (or preliminary) agreement for sale and purchase of the selected property (the provisional agreement is usually provided by the estate agent).

   Vendor (along with Stage Real Estate lawyer) and purchaser each appoint their own solicitors to negotiate and sign a formal agreement for sale and purchase (the formal agreement is provided by the vendor's solicitor and is checked by the purchaser's solicitor). The Purchaser then pays the first deposit.

   Vendor hands over the property to the purchaser. Purchaser pays the balance of purchase price. Both parties sign an assignment which is provided by the purchaser's solicitor and is checked by the vendor's solicitor.

Note

The purchase steps apply the same for all of our properties regardless of their location.

Conditions and fees

All the properties that are advertised by Stage Real Estate on worldwide listing websites, do not have any additional fee on them. The cited prices already includes our fee, which covers all the management costs of the purchase. Although, visiting the listed properties will require an earnest money deposit (varies - depending on the country where the property is in) showing the buyer's good faith. The earnest money deposit should not to be confused with a down payment!

Who Pays Stage Real Estate Commissions?

We charge only the seller of the property, a fixed fee of the property net value which includes:

• Stage Real Estate Ltd. fee;
• The lawyer’s fee and the legal certificate;

Legal advice

Relying on regular lawyer is not always a good option as real estate transactions are not part of their everyday work.
Stage Real Estate Ltd. employs an external legal expert, who is specialized, among other areas, in real estate operations. This legal adviser provides our clients (both Vendor and Purchaser) with a complete legal coverage for International purchase operations.
Among the main subjects covered by the legal service it is worth mentioning the followings:

• Making sure your intended property is not subjected to city hall new rezoning program or other urbanistical affectation.
• Authenticity check for all documentation related with the specific property.
• Inquiry regarding the legal status of the intended property, certificate of debts, possible embargo or any other fiscal affectations.
• Preparation and approval of all the texts related to the different agreements to be signed (including the final title deeds).
• Basic advice regarding tax planning, property registration options, aspects related with inheritance etc.
• Official certification of all the inquiries made over the property with its results.

When the purchase operation is concluded our lawyers issue an official document certifying the correctness of the operations and the results of all the inquiries mentioned above. This certification is unique to our company and is a demonstration of our commitment to provide our clients with the best possible service and total quality in every aspect.

Prepare cash for deposit

We always recommend preparing in advance some cash, in case it will be necessary to reserve the property by paying a small deposit on it. The good-value properties do not last long on the market and in many cases you will be required to go immediately to the seller agency office and leave a small deposit in order to secure the deal. Not always we recommend our clients to secure the deal with cash deposit payments as there are other methods which in some cases can be more effective. However in some cases it will be indispensable.