In the rapid real estate market, homeowners often discover they have to sell quickly—for job relocations, due to financial difficulties, or for personal reasons. This pressure results in a desire to sell as quickly as possible. The problem, there are a lot of pitfalls waiting to snag your sale: the market can be down, your home might be in bad shape, and the average time to sell a home can be long.
One potential remedy? Sell to cash homebuyers. These are people or companies that have the means to help you make a “sell my house quick” thoughts a reality and walk away with the funds necessary to carry on with the life you want. A homeowner can buy a new property, make an investment, or spend the cash they make on whatever they want! Homeowners will be given an honest, no-obligation cash price and have an experienced real estate investor to hold your hand through the selling process. You can easily avoid all “seller’s pitfalls” and avoid all the headache you may have felt if you did not find this guide and sell to the right buyer.
Understanding the Market
• Market research will show you how to sell your home fast:
Market research is a key part of your how-to. It will give you all the information you need about what’s going on in your local real estate market, how to plan price, what buyers are interested in, and how to get your property seen.
You want a lot of potential buyers to see your property in listings. Analyzing the prices of equivalent homes listed elsewhere will help you arrive at a fair sale price that will attract the attention of buyers straightaway.
In terms of who the buyers looking at your property may be, market research will help you pick out the demographic that you need to reach. It will help you to decide whether to sell to first-time homebuyers, to a traditional nuclear family, to property investors, etc. You should aim your marketing according to these plans.
For example, based on the valuation of features, you can aim at specific markets with useful information and messaging. You can sell hard to certain markets with just the best features of your home. The more that you appear to be the best deal on a home to buyers, the sooner buyers will come knocking.
You’ll need some good tools to track financial trends that relate to homes. You should always be aware of networking opportunities in your neighborhoods.
Preparing Your Home for Sale
Effective staging can mean the difference between selling your home quickly and having it sit for months. Everyone forms a first impression, and often that impression is a snap judgment that occurs during the first few moments of the experience. Declutter, depersonalize, and create a model home to increase your home’s appeal to others. This will allow potential buyers to begin to imagine their life in your house. They’ll be more likely to form a snap judgment that living in the house is right for them.
Similarly, taking care of minor repair issues and staging your home is another form of making improvements to sell. Small issues like leaky faucets, a paint job that needs updating or squeaky doors all fall into this category. Buyers have a fear of the unknown. Just like you would not buy a car that looks like it was not well taken care of, a home that was not well taken care of aesthetically could have potentially more serious maintenance issues.
Improve curb appeal: The exterior of your house and the lawn are the first parts of your home that a potential home buyer will see. Check to see if your lawn is well-manicured. Add potted plants or a welcome mat. You could make some minor landscaping changes to provide improvement. At the very least, these changes can provide a warm and inviting atmosphere, at least concerning the outside of the home.
Staging your home well and improving the right areas can lead to improvements when trying to find a potential home buyer. At first glance, staging your home means that you have to design your home to look a certain way. But it is about manipulating your home’s environment so that you increase the likelihood that someone else will want to buy your home. And hopefully, you sell in time.
Pricing Your Home Competitively
Setting a competitive price for your home is important so you can sell your home fast without leaving any money on the table.
One of the best ways to do this is to look at the “comps.” These are comparable homes in your area that have sold recently. Looking at comps will allow you to see what people have paid for homes in the past (usually the past three months, but up to a year ago if needed). You can also see what those homes have and how long those homes were on the market before they sold.
Some sellers opt to list their homes FSBO, but having a real estate agent to help you price the home can be invaluable. The right agent will be able to provide the necessary data you need to list your home at a price that will enable you to sell fast. They can also help you prequalify buyers, host open houses, and get your home in front of more people than you would be able to reach by yourself. This can help you to sell your home even faster.
Listing your home slightly under fair market value is a tactic used by many homeowners to sell their property quickly. When a home is slightly underpriced, it can often spark a bidding war as more homebuyers will feel compelled to throw their offers into the hat. As more people become invested, they are more likely to increase their offers. This can get you top dollar for your home if played correctly.
Marketing Your Home Effectively
In today’s extremely competitive real estate market, very specific marketing techniques need to be used in order to get potential buyers to view a property and hopefully seal the deal as fast as possible. It’s no secret that one of the most effective of these techniques is to showcase listings in as visually appealing a manner as possible (i.e. with beautiful, high-quality photos). Many realtors enlist the help of a professional photographer to take that perfect shot of the house to highlight its best angles, get the best staging of all furniture and decorations, and make some stunning edits that will definitely catch the buyer’s eye. Trust me when I say this, humans are visual creatures. A visibly beautiful home with stunning image quality can draw potential buyers in and raise the chance of them reaching out for inquiries.
Taking these photos one step further in the realm of virtual (VR) tours can also help immensely. Not only is this unique feature something that can draw potential buyers to a listing, but it can also deter those who are not interested in what they see and instead attract potential buyers who do like the property. This twofold effect is known as “filtering” in digital marketing and saves time for both buyers and sellers. That way, both parties can save the time and stress of going through each other’s sales funnel. It’s just another win-win situation; the buyer gets to see the house in a unique, virtual way, and the seller saves everyone time and shows the buyer that he is adherent to being tech-forward. Everything else should probably be enacted in order to fully flesh out a good strategy. For all of the photos you have, make sure to add them to your profile on Propy.com and specifically state something related to “how to sell your home quick” for an added bit of targeted marketing (we’ll talk about this very soon).
Considering Cash Home Buyers
Cash home buyers buy your home outright—they don’t need financing. For anyone wondering, “how can I sell my house quick”, this amounts to your answer. Cash home buyers have the money right now to buy your house, meaning you can be rid of it in short order.
Among the situations in which this might be an appropriate strategy are the following:
You’re sick and tired of owning your house You want to sell right now but not move out for a little while
As nice as it might be to get rid of annoying tenants, this doesn’t mean you’re home free. There are still downsides to consider. For one, you might not get what you want for the house. Also, even though you’re not “selling” the old-fashioned way, you’re still on the hook for some of those costs.
Navigating the Selling Process
The strategic approach to quickly closing a sale begins with setting the right price. Look at “comps” in your vicinity to find a price that will draw buyers, but also give you fair value for your home.
Find a real estate agent who has a track record of writing listing descriptions for quick sales. They will have a good feel for the pulse of your market.
Once you have the price, prep the house. A clean house, cleared of any clutter, will show better. By “staged,” I mean arranging things so that they show off the room’s features best.
Good, clear, well-balanced photos help. So does a well-written listing. A listing that points out the property’s universal “wants” or “needs” … rather than your agent’s ol’ blah, blah, blah. Create an “I wanna see…” desire.
In short order, you’ll get some offers. Be prepared to negotiate. Comps can help you here…kind of, sorta. There can be a wide variance, so chat with your realtor to get an idea of ‘net in-pocket.” Retain a “flexible” attitude, and you can negotiate more confidently. You are still in the “…I want a quick sale!” mindset.
Get the paperwork in order. Make certain you have all the title deeds available from the title company. If you have had pre-listing inspections, or other work done recently, any disclosures made available may give you a bit of negotiation leverage. Disclose, disclose … disclose!
Paper-transfer; signing. Back to you. You (should) and your agent (will) know what and where, in order to get it done quickly. At this point, you may come to the conclusion that the cost …is not the “lowest cost at all!” Sometimes…things simply take a bit of time to get all signed.
Many people think that selling a house quickly means taking a lowball offer, but this isn’t true at all. We won’t cover every point, but here are some takeaways from what we discussed:
- A fast sale != a bad sale. By using the right strategy and understanding sales data, buyers can get the price they are happy with (and should rightly get) in a short amount of time.
- One unusual but clever way is to sell to cash home buyers. If you think about it, most “we buy houses for cash” companies are businesses that try to buy houses at lower market value to rent them for a higher price. Most “sell house fast” companies rely on buying an old house, completely renovating it, and selling the house after the renovation.
Oh, and here’s a bonus: even if you don’t plan to sell your house, you might as well start now! It takes time to sell (unless you want to sell to an “”I buy houses”” person). It’s also a pretty fun journey to go on—bargaining, negotiations, finding “tricks” to make people interested in your house, meeting “”buy my house fast”” people, seeing “”cash for houses“” ads, etc. It overall teaches you a lot of “street smarts” and gets you to work with hands-on tasks. Plus, the real estate industry is booming. You’ll usually see neighborhoods with a lot of “for sale” signs and “for rent” signs now (which is super sad because of the pandemic, but hey, opportunity is opportunity).