Buying And Selling A Home?

I just moved down to Florida a year ago.  Moving your family out of state is an incredibly taxing and stressful event, add to that starting a new job and a daughter moving into a new high school in the middle of her sophomore year, drama is sure to unfold.

The original plan was to rent an apartment in the city where my daughter’s school was located, until we could sell the house back home. Unfortunately, like so many others we were underwater on our old house and the neighborhood wasn’t selling very well.  So we made the decision to see if we could buy a home down here and rent back in Michigan.  So the search began.

The first stop in the process was to find out exactly how much home we could afford – there’s nothing worse than falling in love with something and then finding out you can’t afford it.  Getting pre-approved would also let any potential sellers know that I was a serious buyer.  Next was the fun part – looking through the MLS listings online.  At Tropical Financial we now have a program called CU Realty where you can not only look thorough MLS listings, but also gather important neighborhood information AND find a trusted realtor once you’re ready to start visiting your potential new homes.

The CU Realty program also offers something else that is unique and incredibly helpful – CU Rewards Dollars to help you with your closing costs. As long as you use one of the approved CU Realty real estate agents, the Rewards Dollars can be applied to your closing costs…and the dollars can be significant. 

Here’s a sample of what your savings could be:

Those dollars works both ways, whether you’re buying OR selling your home.  There are also realtors all over the country, so in my case I have contacted a realtor up in Michigan through the program who will be working with me to sell my house back there.  Once the house is sold the CU Rewards Dollars will work basically as a discount on the agent’s commission, which will be very helpful in an underwater home sale.

So whether you’re buying, selling or both it’s good to know that the credit union is there every step of the way!

^Amy