How a home sale actually goes.
The guides tell you what to do at each step. These are about the parts nobody warns you about: what it really costs, how long the quiet weeks last, and why one contract in six never closes.
6 pieces · free to read · no advice about your own sale
Everything else.
Newest first. Grouped by where you are in your sale, further down.
- Getting readyHow much of this do I actually have to produce?The paperwork nobody warns you aboutMost of a sale's documents are written by somebody else. A small pile is yours, and it is almost always the same small pile.
- Under contractI accepted an offer. Now what?What happens in the month after you accept an offerAn accepted offer is the start of the busiest part of a sale, not the end of it. Here is the order things actually arrive in.
- Getting readyWhy does every agent give me a different price?How to read an agent's pricing recommendationThree agents will give you three numbers. The number is not the useful part. The reasoning behind it is.
- On the marketWhy am I confused when I'm paying somebody for this?You have an agent, and you still lose track of your own saleA good agent runs the transaction. Nobody runs your copy of it, and that is where the confusion comes from.
- Under contractHow often does this go wrong, and why?Where home sales actually fall apartRoughly one in six sales that go under contract do not close. The reasons are boring, repetitive, and mostly about dates.
Or read from where you are.
The same stretches your Room uses, and the money, which runs through all of them.
Getting ready
The work that happens before a sign goes in the yard.
On the market
Showings, offers, and the weeks that feel longest.
Under contract
Inspection, appraisal, the loan, and the things that move the date.
The money
What a sale costs, where each figure comes from, and what is left.
Looking for the step-by-step instead? Every guide covers the whole sale in order, and paperwork by state covers what your own state asks for.
How these are written.
Four rules, and they are the reason the posts are shorter than they could be.
Written by the people who built it
Keighbor Research is us. Our founder practiced residential real estate in Indiana and that license is inactive, which is exactly why nothing here tells you what to do about your own sale.
Every figure names its source
Where a post quotes a number, the source is linked in the sentence and listed at the foot. When a source moves or a number changes, the post changes.
Nothing here is advice
These describe what usually happens and what people commonly do. What is right for your house, your state and your buyer is a question for somebody licensed to answer it.
Nothing is published that the reference says better
If a guide or a state page already answers it, a post links there instead of writing a worse version of it.
Every underlined word in a piece opens its meaning beside the sentence, from the glossary, and every figure we quote names where it came from. Found something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it and say so.
Reading it is one thing. Running it is another.
A Room turns all of this into your own sale: the steps in order, the documents filed, the dates on a calendar, and one line saying what is next.
Organize my sale