Looking to sell your home as soon as possible? Read on to learn 4 simple and easy to steps to ensure the process is swift and efficient!
For some, selling a home fast can be a complicated process. These structures are more than just four walls and a foundation — they’re the site of countless memories, family first’s, smiles and tears. While deciding to sell can be difficult, once they make this decision, many homeowners are ready to get their homes sold and begin making memories elsewhere. Unfortunately, selling a home can take longer than many anticipate, leaving some families in a state of limbo.
If selling a home quickly is at the top of your priority list there are several ways to expedite this process. Read on for ours top tips for selling a home quickly!
When you sell a piece of furniture, a bicycle, or collectible playing cards, you can photograph these items, list them online, and put them away to preserve their condition for a potential buyer. Unlike these objects, you likely can’t seal your home away after listing it for sale. Rather, you have to continue living your day-to-day life in it, all while keeping it ready for showings which can happen with less than a day’s notice. Anyone who has listed their home for sale before knows how tedious it can be meticulously picking up every single crumb while continuing to live a normal life, and the quicker a home sells, the less time sellers have to spend in this in-between state.
But that’s not the only benefit to selling your home quickly. As a species, humans want things that other humans find desirable. It’s in our DNA, but it’s also a result of our material culture. Because of this, many buyers may begin to view a home that has been “sitting” on the open market as undesirable, resulting in potential re-listings or drops in asking price. Factor in the time it can take for a prospective buyer to be approved for financing, and this seemingly straightforward transaction can become a months-long affair.
It’s not just a real estate trope — location, location, location tends to play the biggest role in the speed at which a home sells. But there are countless factors that influence a home’s desirability, one of which is its architectural style. Spanish-style homes, as beautiful as they are scarce, spend half the average time on the real estate market.1
The more subtle “traditional” style is also popular, proving that it doesn’t take award-winning design to move inventory.
If your home isn’t in one of the above styles, there isn’t much you can do to change that. But there are still many tried-and-true strategies for selling a home quickly that will help you get the best price within your desired time frame.
We won’t beat around the bush. In many cases, a cash-only sale is often the quickest way to get out of one home and into another. With that said, there are a number of drawbacks to a cash sale — including lower average sale prices. According to a study of home sales from 1980-2017, cash offers were 12% lower than financed offers, on average.2 They were also marginally quicker, so the question becomes whether time really is money.
Aside from conducting a cash-only sale, here are several more ways to speed up the sale process.
One of the best ways to sell a home quickly is to make it easy for prospective buyers. Showings can be a pain, and having to pack up yourself and your family for an hour while strangers tour your home might not be ideal, but being accommodating can play a huge role in selling a home quickly. Some busier schedules may not allow for last-minute showings, so an open house can be a great time to invite prospective buyers in to check out the home. It’s worth noting, however, that most real estate professionals encourage serious home sellers to opt for private showings.3 If you can find the time in your schedule, you might find your home selling in record time.
A home (like baseball cards and bicycles) is a product, and the costs of selling a home quickly will rely on effective advertising. No, you don’t need to take our full-page ads in the local paper or put billboards up along your town’s main road. Instead, play with the cards everyone else is using — at a higher level.
One way to do this is by hiring a professional photographer to capture your home’s essence. Despite the incredible technology housed in the average iPhone, the advantage will always go to the home that was professionally photographed. Before the photographer comes, however, clean and declutter your home to ensure that its “best side” is being captured. If you’re looking to give your home its best chance of selling quickly, consider hiring a professional stager and sprucing up your curb appeal to make the home as inviting as possible.
Once your home has been cleaned, staged, and photographed, do your best to tell a story through your listing description. Though pictures are certainly worth, a thousand words, top real estate professionals still emphasize the importance of a concise and informative listing description.4 If you’re selling your home on your own, your writing skills may be put to the test. If you’re relying on a professional realtor, however, the description will likely be included in their responsibilities.
Buying a home needing repair — no matter how minor — means taking on a certain degree of risk. While some buyers have no problem with this, it may be a complete deal breaker for others. And for some, it will be seen as an opportunity for negotiation, thus lengthening the sale process5. To give potential buyers as little to balk at as possible, take care of minor repairs before listing and showing your home. This can include tightening wiggly door handles, oiling squeaky (and annoying) ceiling fans, touching up paint, or caulking tiles. Any cosmetic or surface-level defect may force an interested buyer to question if there are more sinister repairs lurking.
We should note that now is not the time to take on massive home improvement projects. While there are a number of improvements that can be made to improve the market value of your home and make it more appealing to buyers, these will require more time and will undoubtedly slow down the sale of your home. If you feel that these projects absolutely need to be taken on, note that your ideal timeline will be shifted as a result.
Despite the potential emotional impact of selling a home, selling a home is a straightforward transaction. The sale price must make sense to the home seller, be within the means of the home buyer, and be valid to a loan provider. When your goal is to sell a home quickly, the price may be the biggest determining factor. But how do you make it worth your time while taking as little time as possible to sell?
One way to determine your home’s market value is by getting it professionally appraised. While this responsibility generally falls on the home buyer, going through this process on your own will give you a professional estimate of what your home is worth in the current real estate market. Being able to use this estimate to reinforce your asking price will (ideally) eliminate any doubts that a buyer or their loan provider may be having. If time is of the essence, the cost of a home appraisal becomes worth it.
Despite heightened market conditions and competition among buyers, not every home is flying off the metaphorical shelf; homes that are priced to sell will still receive the advantage. If you have a price floor in mind, you may be tempted to start with a higher price and gradually approach your floor. If selling a home quickly is your top priority, however, you might consider starting with that price floor to snag a speedy deal.
In addition to combining the above tips for selling a home quickly, homeowners can separate themselves from the pack by thinking strategically, understanding buyers, and sharpening their selling skills. Or, they can hire a top real estate agent to do this for them.
While hiring an agent — and subsequently being on the hook for a sizable commission fee — might not be the “secret” many home sellers are looking for, a top real estate agent can quite literally be the difference between a speedy sale and a sluggish one. The right professional will have industry experience in every market condition and will know how to properly position your home so that it catches the attention of buyers and fetches a fair sale price. Though skill is a significant part of what makes a real estate agent key to a quick sale, experience is only part of the picture. The true benefit of an expert real estate agent is their ability to act autonomously when scheduling showings, creating listings, organizing stagings, and setting a listing price. The time it would take sellers to tackle all of these things on a tight timeline in addition to their daily lives is enough to slow down the sales process and will likely make the commission fee worth it.
The above tips may have made selling a home quickly seem like a gargantuan task, but take a week-by-week look at the process, and you’ll see that 30 days is all you need to get your home ready to sell.
Unlike the first week of school, where it’s all ice-breakers and syllabus reviews, the first week of selling a home quickly will set the pace for the remaining 30 days. Here, you can familiarize yourself with how to use home equity to build wealth before deciding if you want to conduct a cash sale. If you decide to list with an agent, use this time to find the right fit and begin compiling a strategy — list price and necessary preparation — as a team.
After making the decision to sell and enlisting the help of an experienced real estate agent, spend some time working through your smaller home improvement projects and ensuring that your home’s interior is decluttered. Extensive personalization can hurt a home’s chance of selling (or selling fast), so be sure that potential buyers don’t feel isolated by your interior design choices. No need to go out and buy all-new furniture; just put away anything too personal, touch up paint if needed, and get your home camera-ready.
Curb appeal is crucial, with buyers paying up to 7% more for homes with excellent curb appeal6. For this reason, week three should be largely devoted to boosting your home’s exterior appearance. Things like lawn maintenance, pressure washing driveways, and touching up exterior paint should all be taken care of, but homeowners who are looking to take their curb appeal up a notch can go far beyond these tasks. Upgrading exterior lighting, laying concrete pavers, and new plants can play a huge role in giving a home a visual lift.
After weeks of preparing your home for its big day, week four will center around deep cleaning, scheduling home inspections, hiring a photographer, and outlining your availability for showings with your realtor. Cross any uncrossed t’s, get all your ducks in a row, and breathe a sigh of relief! The hard work is over. Until you have to start packing, that is.
If just reading that week-by-week glimpse felt like a workout, then the thought of getting your own home ready for a fast sale might feel like prepping for a marathon. But with a residential leaseback agreement, you can avoid the stress of selling while freeing up your home equity — and unlock a sense of freedom you never thought possible.
If you’re asking yourself “should I rent or sell my house,” we have the solution you need. By selling your home to Truehold, you skip the traditional sales process while ensuring that you get the best value for your home. Instead of scrambling to sell and then scurrying to pack (and unpack,) you pay fair rent and stay exactly where you are for as long as you want. All the perks of selling, just without any of the stress.
To learn more about Truehold’s Sale-Leaseback and see why selling might not be the best option, request your free Info Kit.
Sources:
1. Realtor. The Features That Help a Home Sell Fastest. https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/what-home-sells-the-fastest-according-to-data/
2. Nerdwallet. Are Cash Offers Better for Sellers? https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/are-cash-offers-better-for-sellers
3. Trulia. Private Showings: Better Than Open Houses? https://www.trulia.com/blog/private-home-showings-better-than-open-houses/#:~:text=Although%20there%20are%20reasons%20to,is%20the%20way%20to%20go
4. U.S. News. How to Write a Great Property Description to Sell Your Home. https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/pocket-listing/articles/2022-03-23/the-homeowners-guide-to-writing-property-descriptions
5. The Ascent. Should You Buy a Home That Needs Significant Repairs? https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/articles/should-you-buy-a-home-that-needs-significant-repairs/
6. Homelight. Top Agent Insights for New Year 2022. https://www.homelight.com/blog/real-estate-top-agent-insights-for-new-year-2022/
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