Whether you are planning on downsizing, moving to a different city, or it’s simply the right time, you need to be prepared when you want to sell your home. There are a lot of costs to consider since selling your property in Cambodia is not as easy as putting it on the market and somebody buying it. Read further to know the steps of selling your property and the costs involved.
Pre-sale property preparation
Before you put your property in the market, you need to make it presentable to potential buyers. Here’s a couple of things you need to do and their estimated costs:
- Cleaning → First step to attract potential buyers is to clean your home. After all, a disorganized mess of a house does not sell. This doesn’t cost anything unless you hire professional cleaners that can go up to $160.
- Home improvement → Make sure you repair, mend, or replace things in your home that need fixing and updating. This is to make it better for potential buyers. Home improvement costs depend on what you will fix but if you paint the interior and exterior of the property and clean the carpets, the estimate is at $3,985.
- Landscaping → For some buyers, landscaping is important when they search for houses. This can cost around $145 depending on lawn size.
- Staging → Showing your property at its best to paint the picture of a perfect home for buyers is important. Depending on the person you hire to stage your property properly, this can cost around $1,805.
- Pre-inspection → Getting your house inspected prior to it being listed is necessary since you need to prepare for possible property concerns from the buyer to fix it quickly or address it accordingly. Pre-inspection costs around $250 – $700 depending on home size.
- Valuation fees → Pricing your property according to market value is beneficial for you as a seller so you need to hire a property valuator. In Cambodia, valuation fees depend on how much the house is valued, as seen below:
- Below $100,000: Valuation fee is 0.17%
- $100,001 – $1,000,000: Valuation fee is 0.10%
- $1,000,000 – $5,000,000: Valuation fee is 0.050%
- $5,000,001 – $10,000,000: Valuation fee is 0.030%
- Above $10,000,000:Valuation fee is 0.025%
- Professional photos → Shabby pictures do not sell houses but professionally taken photos showcasing the best of your house, does. Hiring photographers can cost around $150 – $200.
- Marketing → To get more potential buyers, you need to market your house. Marketing costs vary on what you use for listings or how to advertise it but this is usually covered by real estate agents.
Post-sale property costs
Once you already have a sure buyer, it doesn’t mean that your property is out of your hands yet. See the remaining things you need to undertake and their costs:
- Transfer taxes → When you are selling your property and transferring the ownership to another person, transfer taxes apply. In Cambodia, there are different types of titles or owning land. Respectively speaking, these titles also have their own transfer tax.
Soft titles are common in Cambodia and are inexpensive since the ownership is transferred at an average of 10 working days. Hard titles have a 4% transfer tax on the current value of the property. The LMAP is another title with a 4% transfer tax similar to hard title since it’s based on the value of the property when it was sold. - Mortgage payoff → One of the costs you need to pay is the mortgage if you took one when you bought the property. The money earned from selling your house will go toward the remaining loan balance. It’s possible that there will be a deficit in the amount if the payoff doesn’t include the prorated interest.
- Capital gains tax → The capital gains tax is when you sell your property more than the amount you’ve paid for it. In short, if you have profited from it then you need to pay capital gains. The capital gains tax in Cambodia is a strict 20% of the profit from the property.
- Property tax → In Cambodia, properties like houses fall under the immovable property. As such, property taxes are known as Tax on Immovable Property (TOIP). If you have properties worth more than $25,000, the TOIP is 0.1%.
Properties worth less than $25,000 are exempted from property taxes along with state-owned lands, agriculture, and industrial lands. Additionally, property taxes are paid every year in September in Cambodia. - HOA fees → Paying for Homeowners Association fees depend if your property is within a community that has an association. If you do, you would be required to pay the HOA fees up until the close date of the property.
- Attorney fees → There are instances where sellers use real estate attorneys to help ease the process of selling properties. You need to pay them accordingly. The fee here can depend on the rate of the lawyer you hired.
KH