Many times, in today’s rapid real estate market, given their particular situation, you find yourself thinking, “I need to sell my house fast!” Because for whatever reason – whether it be financial hardship, a job overseas, or just a life change that caught you off guard, you need to get that development off of your plate, quickly. You need a solution, immediately, but again, the traditional selling method can take a long time, depending on the condition of the home and the overall market, among many other factors.
What is stopping you from selling your house fast for cash to our local house buying company?
We are able to assist you and provide you with the peace of mind to move on with your life and to get that “monkey off your back.” Many times, depending on factors that are too numerous to list here, we can usually get our clients the same, if not more, take-home cash in their pocket, than if you were to pursue the traditional route. On the other side, though our model is not right for everyone; only you know your specific situation.
Working with Real Estate Professionals
Appointing a Realtor who focuses on quick sales will give you a great advantage. They will have a real bead on what’s driving the local market to be able to price your property to sell quickly. They will have a highly refined syllabus for the type of ‘promotional push’ required for the likes of online listings and open houses.
When you’re fishing for the right sales pro to get things moving, quiz them about the sort of luck they’ve had at closing home sales generally in very short amounts of time. Ask them to see other listings they have handled that are similar to yours. Check out their client reviews.
Ask them about some of the ‘marketing’ they will do to bring large numbers of the home-buying public in to look over your house. There are many ways to sell houses. The Realtor can act as a very useful guide to show you the best way to get your home out in front of the masses to speed your sale along. The agent you finally select should also be extremely business-like, somebody who will keep you firmly “in the loop.”
Understanding the Need to Sell Your Home Quickly
“There are a number of reasons that lead you to sell a house quickly.
- New job/moving
- Often, a new role requires an immediate move. That means a new house, a new environment, a new community. It also means you have to sell your old house fast. This is more than just cursory move – it’s convincing another human to move into your old house. In less than five heartbeats. The stress that time pressure causes directly influences your decision-making ability, forcing you into suboptimal deals.
- Financial difficulties
- Maybe you’ve just been slapped with medical bill, you’ve lost your job, or you’re straddled with insurmountable debt. Whatever your situation, you need cash. And you need it now. The only way to get that cash, you resolve, is to sell your house. Fast. Often, the burden of the loss is too much to bear for these individuals and families, augmenting the degree of stress already present. Having to take whatever gets offered causes you to stomach lower offers – lower offers that don’t do much to help in the long run.
- Divorce
- Like migration, sometimes the destruction of a relationship motivates and requires a move. When these irreconcilable bouts occur, both parties want nothing more than to move on, to donate the physical and emotional space required to heal. Again, you need to make the best decisions possible – otherwise, someone’s getting screwed. Likely, you. These people, often stuck between hotspots, are desperate to finalize a deal and call themselves done with it.
In all three of these circumstances, stress and decisiveness form a deadly cocktail – one that invariably shortchanges them on a deal on their old property.”
Pricing Your Home to Move Quickly
Getting the price right is everything if you hope to sell quickly. Pricing your home correctly creates a buzz among buyers, potentially leading to competing offers. Even if the ultimate sale price is close to the home’s market value, you will still achieve a fantastic outcome. On the flip side, if you set your price too high, your property may languish online. Instead of showing up and being excited about the potential purchase, buyers instead will start scratching their heads and wondering what’s wrong with your listing. Overpriced listings often don’t move, which ultimately leads to price drops and a lower sense of desirability among potential buyers. That’s why it’s crucial to understand the home’s market value in convincing it to move quickly.
To get a sense of what your home might be worth, start your research online to see if you can find any recently sold comparables. Look at other places that have sold around your neighborhood that are about the same age, size, and condition. From there, you can get a sense of real estate prices — which I find a fun and very interesting exercise. You might even consider calling a local real estate agent or appraiser to get their take. Real estate professionals price homes for a living, so they’ll take you through the steps required when considering your unique situation. Just make sure to think things through so you can get an accurate estimate based on their honest professional opinion.
When considering your price, think about where you want to be positioned. Where will your home shine among the competition? Is your place particularly unique for style? How does its condition stack up versus that of other competing homes? Maybe you have fewer bedrooms, resulting in a discount compared to similar properties if you can take a huge loss… Though I’m always a big fan of going a little low with price, there’s got to be some common sense paired with what you decide. If you go below other comparative homes and make a quick sale on price standpoint alone, your place will look like a bargain based on other list prices. You have to make a selling attempt at least somewhat strategic so you can get someone to bite once the home is on the open real estate market. They’ll want to reach out to potentially buy the home because your location suits their needs, and buyers will like other key attributes they find in your offering. Just remember, this is purely based on getting your sale to go as quickly as possible. If you’ve got 3 or more months to wait, then by all means, price your home where you think its market value might fall. Otherwise, go below value for a swift sale.
Preparing Your Home for a Quick Sale
Getting your home “show-ready” can make all the difference in how quickly your house will sell.
First and foremost, clean. Clean everything: baseboards, windows, carpets, oven. A clean house not only looks good, but it also allows potential buyers to picture themselves owning and living in the home.
Staging your home can be nearly—if not just—as effective, and sometimes less work.
List off minor repairs around the house and do them. This will signal to potential buyers that your house is well-maintained. Plus, since all buyers will have to have a home inspection as part of the homebuying process, no one will buy thehouse if there’s something wrong with it in the first place.
Remove any personalized items (not all of them, you want your home to feel like a home). Pack up your family photos, and hang a generic print in its place. Neutral or “vanilla” decor will allow potential buyers the chance to envision themselves and their stuff in your home, which may be the missing piece to a higher price or quicker sale.
Marketing Your Home Effectively
In the current competitive real estate market, several flavors of marketing are needed and are expected to sell your home fast. Online listings are among the first places sellers deploy all the stats and figures about the house they want to sell. A wide array of popular sites exists for just this purpose. Sites like Zillow and Realtor.com can be searched by prospective buyers looking for homes that meet their requirements. All sorts of open-market, private-owner, and auction-style options are available to list current conditions and detail the property.
Social media has been used as an option to sell properties, too. Facebook Marketplace, Instagram channels, and Twitter feeds have features that allow a seller to hook themselves into various marketing opportunities. Ads and other types of outreach, targeted to prospective buyers, lets you get the word out about the highlights of the property (and the community). Show the highlights that would make the property attractive to prospective buyers. Most importantly, investments in 20–100 minutes of walk-through exposure increase the likelihood of making a sale by 300–500% points. Professional photos and videos are now essential to sell your home fast.
In summary, online ads, often in the form of drive-by traffic-producing snippets, are required. Produce regular social media posts. Schedule and perform open house exhibits. Plus, professional-style photo and video content will sell your home fast.
Considering Cash Offers for a Quick Sale
A buyer who wants to make an immediate, full cash payment makes a cash offer. Cash offers don’t involve securing financing or a mortgage as you would with a traditional home purchase. This can speed things up significantly because you’re not waiting on a mortgage approval, which can often take 30 to 60 days to happen.
You may be able to close on the property within a week if it’s a cash offer, depending on the situation. That’s a good deal quicker compared to aligned sales. In most cases, the closing process can take up to four to six weeks.
The danger with waiting it out is that there are fewer obstacles with cash purchases that could prevent the sale. Maybe the appraisal comes in too low, or the would-be buyer placed a contingency on the offer that is now preventing the sale from going through. Cash buyers are likely to be less bothered by issues like this, and they’ll often also be more motivated to make a purchase.
With cash buyers, often there’s a need to create an agreement that’s going to be beneficial to all parties. You might say this comes about because it’s difficult to get back to being “cash” once you’ve spent cash! Oftentimes, this urgency to buy can accelerate the negotiation process drastically, as cash negotiators usually do not represent the super-posh end of the market.
Some people may offer you lower than what you’re asking. Preferably, they won’t, but be aware. This is because it’s double-edged; those who have already thought about all of the benefits they will have previously discussed one problem seen with such types of buyers. Those types of buyers are very good at “convenience” food.
It might be best if you want to sell as ASAP as possible, and for whom a high sale price depends less than the “who’s buyin’?”. Taking time to think “who do I want to choose?” is a good idea. It can help you seal the deal, even.
Yes, if you had known which buyer you liked most before you read this far, it shows a bit of wisdom, also. Make a decision that fits your “situation”, not another person’s.
Knowing how to price, prepare, and market your home is key to getting it sold quickly in today’s competitive real estate market.
Setting the right list price for the current real estate market condition, as well as for the location and the specific features of your home, is critical. Price too high and you may turn off potential buyers. Price too low and you may lose out financially. Do some research to help you attract the most buyers and offers the fastest.
Just about everybody loves a meticulously clean, well-staged home with few visible homeowner flaws. You can probably sell your home faster if you take the time or spend the money to do a thorough pre-list cleaning and decluttering—and probably a painting and staging. You may find that you can get more buyers to write an offer sooner than you think if you show them a “move-in-ready” home that meets all of their home-buying needs and desires.
Pictures say a thousand fords—and videos do too, along with listing descriptions. Market your home with high-quality photos and try writing creative, engaging, and detailed listing descriptions. Most buyers begin their home search on the web these days, so be sure to have your home properly marketed on all of the most popular social media and online real estate listing platform sites.
If you have an uncooperative or needy tenant or you are a landlord who needs to sell your home as fast as possible, consider selling it to a home buyer who will buy your home in cash. Oftentimes, these “we buy houses for cash” home buyers can close faster than the average home buyer because they don’t have to get a home loan.