Buying a home without a Real Estate Agent - Who should I get to do the paperwork?
Generally, the paperwork realtors use is pre-written and pre-approved by the relevant State and real-estate organizations. The offers, contracts, etc etc a pretty straightforward and standard. You can ask a realtor for a small fee to arrange the documents for you (smaller than the usual 5% sellers' fee they charge, I would say 0.5% or a couple of hundreds of dollars flat fee would be enough for the work). You can try and get these forms yourself, sometimes you can buy them in the neighborhood Staples, or from various law firms and legal plans that sell standard docs. You can get a lawyer to go over it with you for almost nothing: I used the LegalZoom plan for documentation review, and it cost me $30 (business plan, individual is cheaper) to go over several purchase contracts ($30 is a monthly subscription, but you don't have to pay it for more than one month). But these are standard, so you do it once and you know how to read them all. If you have a legal plan from work, this may cover document review and preparation. Preparing a contract that is not a standard template can otherwise cost you hundreds of dollars. Title company will not do any paperwork for you except for the deed itself. They can arrange the deed and the recording, escrow and title insurance, but they will not write a contract for the parties to use. You have to come with the contract already in place, and with escrow instructions already agreed upon. Some jurisdictions require using a lawyer in a real-estate transaction. If you're in a jurisdiction (usually on a county level) that requires the transaction to go through a lawyer - then the costs will be higher. Whether or not you use a real estate agent, at some stage most people use a lawyer to do the actual buying and selling and set up the agreements. If you've never dealt with a lawyer directly before it's probably because your agent has acted as a front-person for the lawyer. If you go to a lawyer and tell them what you want to do they will sort it out, and should tell you in advance how much it will cost. You and your friend will probably need one each. For a real estate transaction there are multiple stages: From the sellers viewpoint: From the buyers viewpoint: If both parties are comfortable skipping some of the steps the role of the agent can be minimized. How will a fair price be determined? Some realism might be needed, to make sure that the loan appraisal will not be a problem. Will an inspection still be needed? What warranty will exist if the A/C dies this summer?  If you still want help from an agent one should be able to help for far less than the normal commission. The seller normally interviews three agents before selecting one, do the same in this situation. Ask how much they would charge for a sale between friends. They can complete their task in just a couple of hours. If the home inspection comes back relatively clean, the transaction should be very easy. The paperwork is the biggest hurdle. You should jointly identify a local settlement company. They will be the ones actually filing the paperwork. They have lawyers. They will check the county records office for existing liens, plats, mortgages and address all the issues. They can send the proper paperwork to the existing mortgage companies and arrange for mortgage insurance. The cost will be the same regardless of the presence of real estate agents and other lawyers.  When they say a lawyer is required, it is only because of the paperwork. Save yourself a lot of trouble you both agree on a Real Estate Attorney to prepare all the paperwork (ie. contract) and conduct the closing for or with the Title Company. Then you both split the normal costs of the transaction. (Real simple professionally handled and you both save the 6%)
Selling a home by yourself, without an expensive real estate broker, is easier than most people think, but it will take some work on your part. You will be doing a lot of things that a real estate agent might normally do. When clearing funds from the sale of a home the following usually happens (USA): The left over amount is what you get.  Your real estate agent should be able to go over all of that with you. If they haven't then you need to get a better real estate agent. Assuming you haven't listed the house on the market yet then you should probably start by finding out what the pay off amount is on your existing home (call your mortgage company), then look at the prices of recently sold homes in your neighborhood for a comparable house (same style/square footage/amenities) to see what it sold for. Now you will know exactly what all those costs are prior to sitting down and signing the paperwork for the sale during the closing proceedings.  If for some reason the amount is less than what you owe on it then the mortgage company would have to be involved for you to even sell it. If the real estate market in your area is somewhat normal, you bought the house on a standard fixed rate mortgage, you've been paying faithfully these past 17 years, you haven't gotten a home equity line of credit (HELOC) loan (or otherwise cashed out of your equity at any point), you've kept up the maintenance of the place and there are no liens against the property (ie: unpaid taxes, lawsuits, etc) then it is highly likely you will get money from the sale of the house.  However we (internet people) don't know any of those details; so talk to a good real estate agent. The contract should address this issue. It will specify the types of remedies and damages that would result if either side tries to back out of the deal. There can be monetary penalties, and the courts can force the seller to complete the deal. Where I have experienced this it generally takes only a gentle reminder from the agent regarding the consequences. There is also limited indirect protection via the contract between the seller and their real-estate agent. Many times that contract will require the seller to pay the agent their commission if there isn't a valid reason to cancel the deal. The contract was to find a fully qualified buyer. The threat of having to pay 6% of list price to the agent, and not selling the house can be enough to get them to complete the deal. All this assumes there was fraud, which could bring in criminal penalties. "You are mixing issues here. And it's tough for members to answer without more detail, the current mortgage rate in your country, for one.  It's also interesting to parse out your question. ""I wish to safely invest money. Should I invest in real estate."" But then the text offers that it's not an investment, it's a home to live in. This is where the trouble is. And it effectively creates 2 questions to address.  The real question - Buy vs Rent. I know you mentioned Euros. Fortunately, mortgages aren't going to be too different, lower/higher, and tax consequence, but all can be adjusted. The New York Times offered a beautiful infographing calculator Is It Better to Rent or Buy?  For those not interested in viewing it, they run the math, and the simple punchline is this - The home/rent ratio can have an incredibly wide range. I've read real estate blogs that say the rent should be 2% of the home value. That's a 4 to 1 home/rent (per year). A neighbor rented his higher end home, and the ratio was over 25 to 1. i.e. the rent for the year was about 4% the value of the home. It's this range that makes the choice less than obvious.  The second part of your question is how to stay safely invested if you fear your own currency will collapse. That quickly morphs into too speculative a question. Some will quickly say ""gold"" and others would point out that a stockpile of weapons, ammo, and food would be the best choice to survive that." "Three companies may have copies of it: the bank, the Title Company (aka settlement company), and perhaps the real estate agent. The bank (assuming you had a mortgage) is usually the easiest one to contact, as you're probably still making payments to them. They may have sent you the form in a large packet when you sold the house and paid off the old mortgage. There is a tradition of sending customers their entire mortgage file once they pay off the mortgage after 30 years - which is very rare nowadays but many banks still adhere to it because the mortgage business is built on momentum and very slow to change. Otherwise, the title company should have a copy of it. If you don't know which company was used, they should be named as Trustee on the Deed Of Trust (which in most states is the official name of the document that we call a ""mortgage""). The county recorder's office will have a copy of that Deed Of Trust on record if you can't find it anywhere. Some counties have digitized these so you could find it online, but some would require you to request a copy and pay a small printing fee for it." This is business as usual, except that you need to keep in mind that the corporate entity is separate from the individual. As such - all the background checks and references should be with regards to the actual renter - the corporation. You should be cautious as it is not so easy to dissolve an individual (well... Not as easy, and certainly not as legal), as it is to dissolve the corporation. So you may end up with a tenant who doesn't pay and doesn't have to pay because the actual renter, the corporation, no longer exists. So check the corporation background - age, credit worthiness, tax returns/business activity, judgements against, etc etc, as you would do for an individual. Finding Zero is the expected result of your Craigslist check. You will have to do a lot more research. A local agent can help you determine the number of days they stay on the market before they are rented. They can also help determine the spread between purchase costs and rental cost. You will also have to figure in the cost of hiring a local management company, if you don't want to drive to Syracuse every time the renter has a problem in the middle of the night, or in the middle of a blizzard. A professional home inspection will clue you in on any problems you might be buying, so it's important in any real estate transaction. If the seller finances the loan, you need a lawyer. It might be a nice opportunity - being in the right place at the right time.  You just have to investigate all angles.