When is the sale of an inherited property profitable?

Thanks to good market conditions selling your property is profitable if you have to pay little to no taxes. This also means it is more sensible to use the property yourself first if you would have to pay high taxes.

When should you sell your property during a divorce?

If you come to the conclusion you have to sell your property do not wait till the last possible moment. You can already sell your property during the year of separation and use it for the equal distribution of surplus.

When can/should I sell due to age?

If you are already looking at the future you should look at age-appropriate real estate if the upkeep of your property demands ever-increasing amounts of money and energy.

But which time is the most ideal?

You can sell real estate whenever you want but only during spring and summer can your prospects stroll through the garden and admire it in its full beauty. It is also worth considering being able to schedule visits later in the evening during these seasons.

Preparation:

Assess the value of your property (you can use this free tool on our website) or get a valuation. It would not be optimal to sell your real estate under value.

Assembling/Obtaining of sales documents:

Assemble the relevant documents for the sale. Keep in mind you will have to go to different offices for some documents. It is easy to overlook/forget important documents or start assembling them to late. Let us help you with that.

Promoting your real estate:

If you do not design your Exposé appealing enough it is quite disadvantageous. Not enough quality pictures (or even videos), not enough emphasis on location and merits of your property, suboptimal addressing of the target group can all be reasons for reaching less people than possible..

Visitations:

Visits with interested parties without actual purchase interest is a waste of time. To prevent this your inquires should be filtered correctly, you need to establish and maintain contact with serious prospective buyers, your documents need to be completely in order and your property prepared perfectly.

Sales Negotiations:

You need to prepare enough arguments to justify the price and convince prospective buyers of your property or you have to sell under value. For this the target group needs to be addressed and convinced correctly. This part would make selling through us especially beneficial for you as selling real estate is our job. We know multiple strategies and always seek good communication with prospective buyers. On top of this we can acquire and process all needed documents for you and even determine the value of your property – granted you issue us a letter of authorization.

Completion and sales contract:

After finding a buyer for your property making a sales contract for the first time is very arduous. Bad organization of appointments for signing and with the notary should also be avoided and if you do not draw up a completion certificate after finalizing the sale the buyer could make complains afterwards. We gladly take over the organization and draw up a completion certificate for your security.

The sales process can be divided into three phases:

During the first phase, the sale preparations, you should draw up a market analysis and a valuation for selling under value would be detrimental to you. We can use our experience in different methods of evaluation and if wished for can also fall back on certified appraisals. Additionally, acquiring and organizing sales documents is also part of this phase. To avoid starting to late with this process or missing important documents let us collect the needed documents and visit relevant offices for you.

During the second phase, the marketing, we will come together for our sales consultation if you have decided to sell with us. Additionally, promoting your property is part of this phase. It would of course be detrimental to you if your exposé has too little pictures/videos or if their quality left something to be desired. We can help you by falling back on our experience designing attractive exposés and tailoring to the target audience.

During the third phase, the sale, contains visits, sales negotiations, and finalizing the sale as well as drawing up the sales contract. Do not waste your time with visits of not actually seriously interested parties. Let us organize your visitations and profit from our professional filtering of applicants. If you have not sold any real estate before or are not completely confident during sales negotiations you can also profit from our experience in these areas. The last part of this phase and the last part of the sale is drawing up and signing both sales contract as well as a completion certificate so your buyer can’t file complaints afterwards. Let us help you draw these up and you can feel confident in having done everything correctly.

Using us to sell your real estate you will profit in a number of ways: The costs for your sale can be kept at a minimum, thanks to our experience we can negotiate confidently with prospective buyers and we can safe you time and nerves by acquiring the required documents and visit the needed offices for you.

Many owners have never sold any real estate. As this is our daily business you can profit of our competence. We also gladly evaluate your real estate, for free, in case you need a firmer grasp on the value of your property. Additionally, if you do not care to select the buyer yourself, be it because of a lack of time or you do not want to confront the tax and legal requirements of a real estate sale, we are happy to help you and let you profit of our experience and network of experts.

We take on market analysis and evaluation of your property using the specifically selected method, acquire the needed documents and organize the sales documents. Afterwards, we consult you on selling and promoting/marketing your property. In the last phase of your sale we organize and perform visits with potential buyers, lead the sales negotiations, draw up the sales contract and finalize your sale.

When looking at the trend of rent and sales prices during the time from 2014 to 2016 in colognes districts (https://www.koeln.de/immobilien/mietspiegel.html (opened on 28.02.2019)) it is very noticeable that rent price development goes from -11% to +23% while sale prices per m² show a range of -8% to +61%. This development did not really change even today as credits are still “cheap”. It is however questionable if this trend is going to continue when loan interest is rising again or if the market might become over- or undersaturated. Therefore, if you want to sell your property it would be sensible to do so soon to profit of this trend.

Selling an inherited property is often associated with a complex process with the needed effort depending on reason for selling and situation. Additionally, the sales profit needs to be divided in case the property was inherited by multiple heirs (gem. §2040 I BGB i.V.m. §2038 I, II BGB und §745 BGB).

While inherited real estate is taxed by inheritance taxes, when certain criteria are met the inheritance does not need to be taxed. For this the property’s value as well as degree of kinship and some special regulations in the ErbSTG (Inheritance and Gift Tax Act). Especially important are the tax exempt amounts noted down in §16 ErbStG as only everything over these needs to be taxed.

Tax exempt amounts for heirs gem. §16 (tax exempt amounts) und § 15 (tax class) ErbStG (27.02.2019):

As we already have experience with all the legal and tax related issues of selling an inherited property, we are happy to advise you in an extensive and customized way.

You own a property and are not sure whether to rent it out or sell it after all? The following factors should be taken into consideration: Do you live in the city your property is located in? Do you have time to look after it? For example, to look for a new tenant? Or handle any issues like water damage or any other problems the tenants might bring up?

Currently we have a phase of high prices and it might be sensible to sell during this phase to maximize your profits. If you sell your property late in your life you could sell it with the condition of being allowed to continue living in your property until you die attached. That way you would also not be dependent on your pension thanks to the profit you made from selling.

Another advantage is liquidity, allowing you to buy real estate somewhere else or finance any project you wish while high costs (like modernizing or renovating) you do not want to or can not bear can be another reason to sell.

If you have to move far away or even abroad due to private or work-related reasons you could also think about selling your property if you do not want to rent it out. This way you would circumvent the disadvantages of renting and could enjoy the security of “instant” cash influx.