Your company’s Relocation Counselor guides your relocated employee and family through all phases of the home-buyout program:

• Appraising the property
• Appraisal review
• Listing the home for sale
• Guaranteed Offer
• Offer period
• Accepting the Guaranteed Offer
• Equity calculation
• Assigning an independent sale (through the Assigned/Amended Value Sale plan)
• Title transfer
• Vacating the property

Your company’s Relocation Counselor complements the home-buyout program with the following steps:

• Arranges for two brokers to develop professional estimates of value for your transferred employee’s property -- to include a suggested listing price and a probable selling price
• Helps your employee and family select a reputable real estate broker
• Assists in establishing an initial listing price
• Develops a "customized" marketing plan
• Manages the real estate broker’s activities
• Reviews all offers with the transferee
• Recommends an attorney (or escrow agent) who will charge a preferred fee for closing services
• Monitors all closing activities
• Proceeds with the closing of the sale
• Forwards a settlement statement to your employee
• Calculates and pays your employee’s equity after the closing

As part of home-sale assistance, The Relocation Group offers an attractive "For Sale by Owner" program, which is administered outside of the real estate community. Typically, when an employee is successful in a bona fide sale independent of a real estate broker, the customary 6% real estate commission that would normally be paid to a Realtor is rolled into the employee’s equity as an employee supplement paid by the employer.

Sometimes, renting the departure-area home is an alternative to home sale -- especially for shorter-term relocations. In this case, the Relocation Counselor initiates the required steps:

• Coordinates the establishment of a "guaranteed" Fair Rental Value for your overseas-transferred employee’s home
• Helps your employee and family list the property for rent with a reputable real estate broker or agent
• Assists with any employee-negotiated higher-value rental and assignment of the lease to The Relocation Group for finalizing and handling
• Arranges for The Relocation Group to list and rent the home if it is not leased by your employee
• Screens all tenant applications per your employee’s confirmed wishes, as well as per state and federal fair-housing regulations
• Draws and executes lease agreements
• Manages the property
• Pays bills (i.e., monthly mortgage payments, taxes, maintenance, etc.)
• Arranges for necessary repairs
• Monitors the on-site agent
• Provides quarterly accounting services for your employee (depositing rental revenues, paying bills, etc.)
• Returns the home in "move-in condition" to your employee at the end of the overseas assignment