Read This Before You Sell Your House For Cash
It can be surprisingly time-consuming and emotionally exhausting to sell your house, especially if you’ve never done it before. At times, when potential buyers (mostly strangers) come into your house, it may feel like an invasion of privacy. They’re going to criticize a place that’s more than just four walls and a roof for you, and in some instances, give you less money than you think your home is worth.
With no experience and a complicated transaction on your hands, making lots of errors can be inevitable. You can, however, avoid many of these pitfalls with a little know-how. Read on to find out how to sell your house without the fuss, and for the best possible price within a fair time frame.
To kickstart your selling journey, here are the common mistakes and some helpful tips on how to overcome them:
1. Being too sentimental and emotional
Let’s start with the emotional aspects of selling your house for cash. If you are selling a house that you have bought yourself or an older house that you have inherited and grown up in, you might think it’s impossible to not be too emotional. It’s not.
Tip: Think of yourself as a salesperson
When you decide to sell your house, start thinking of yourself rather than just the homeowner, but as a businessperson and salesperson. This way you’ll distance yourself from the emotional implications of selling the property by looking at the deal from a purely financial viewpoint.
Now, in this way of thinking, try to remember when you were shopping for a house, and think of how you felt. Like you, the bulk of potential buyers will be in an emotional condition as well. If you will note that you are selling a piece of property as well as a lifestyle (that reflects well in good photos for your listings) you would be more likely to put in the additional effort of staging and doing some minor remodeling to get your home to the top of the listings.
This will benefit you two things:
(1) Improvements in the overall appearance of the house will boost the purchase price and
(2) This move will also encourage emotional distance because it will look less familiar than your house.
2. Selling the house yourself
There is nothing wrong with selling your house yourself. There are plenty of understandable reasons for you to do this, and there are also obvious drawbacks like facing problems with the mortgage, fixing all the paperwork by yourself, and screening potential buyers, to name a few. But here are some tips on how to sell your house fast, with less work:
Tip: Sell your house to a wholesaler
Selling your house to a wholesaler means no banks are involved. It also means that much of the conventional hurdles of paperwork are gone.
All the wholesaler does is bring your house under contract to a cash buyer and flip it. This selling process is certainly faster than attempting to list it with a traditional agent. Selling a house may take you months or even more while wholesalers can close a sale as fast as 7 days.
Now, how do you find a wholesaler? That’s a bit more complicated. They often find you. In their search for sellers, they look for signs that properties are ready to sell at a discounted price.
But what if they don’t find you? You can also do a Google for something like “sell the house for cash” followed by your state or your city name.
Tip: Hire a real estate agent in your area
The internet makes it possible to delve into the sales history and professional designations of real estate agents, so you can select the best individual to work with around your area. Look up the online profiles of real estate agents to see how long they have been in the field, how many transactions they have made, and what designations they might have received.
Pay attention to how and where their listings are being advertised, and whether or not they use professional images. You could also meet them and see for yourself.
Tip: Transferring your mortgage
And, the last way to easily sell your home could be to transfer your mortgage to someone else. But this also suggests that someone else must be liable for the mortgage. To find this out, you’ll need to read your mortgage papers and coordinate with a lawyer. If it’s presumable, however, then you’re in luck. This might also suggest that you could stay and rent your house. This last option may require a bit more legwork for you.
3. Setting an unworkable price
If you partner with an agent, wholesaler, or sell your house yourself, it’s important to set the right asking price
Tip: Don’t worry too much about setting a low price
Put the comparative market analysis in mind, the same way you or your agent did to assess a fair offering price when you bought your home. Buyers, too, would do this for your home, so you should be one step ahead of them as a seller.
Setting a low price would allow several offers in and bid the price up to the real market value of the house. In reality, it can be a technique for generating bids for your underpriced house.
Also, with sentimentality in mind, you may think that your home is worth more, but remember to set a fair price based on the area’s comparable homes. Bear in mind that overpriced homes generally don’t sell.
4. Selling during slow seasons
Yes, believe it or not, selling a house also goes by the seasons. You might want to avoid putting up your house on sale during winter times, particularly around the holidays. Winter is usually a slow time of year for real estate.
People are busy with social gatherings, and some prefer delaying all responsibilities and just stays at home. Because of this fewer buyers are likely to be searching and selling your home will take longer, and you may not get as much money.
Tip: Sell when the weather is good
The sun is rising and you feel its warmth. that could be a sign of the perfect time to do your sale. Consider waiting for a good season and put up your listing when the weather begins to warm up. During these times, people are out and about.
Seasoned real estate agents will agree to this: people are more ready and willing to purchase a home when it’s warmer.
5. Not Carrying Proper Paperworks
To properly record a home sale, there’s a lot of paperwork involved. To make things go more smoothly, arrange your papers all in one place.
Tip: Gather and list all the documents you need
Even before the actual sale, prepare all the necessary documents or list them ours for future preference. Here are some of the key documents that you may need to obtain:
The initial sales deal for your house
- Land survey, occupancy certificate, and enforcement certificates with local codes
- Records for taxes
- Home inspection report (if you’ve done one)
- Documents for mortgages
- Insurance for Homeowners
- Appraisal of your home acquisition
6. Hiding Major Problems
It’s a given that nobody ever gets away with covering significant property problems. During the buyer’s inspection, any problem would be uncovered, if not it’s more decent to lay it out to them beforehand.
Tip: Fix the problem before the sale
Fix the issue in advance, and if it’s not fixable under circumstances, it’s only fair to price the property below market value to account for it. You may also list the property at a regular price and give a refund amount to the buyer to fix the issue.
Conclusion
It is important to learn all the ways how to properly sell a home. In a declining market, the house can sit on the market for much longer than you anticipate. It can be more challenging so it is best to use all assets that you can use to get your house sold, fast with less leg-work.