Why You Want To Sell Your House Quickly
Selling your house quickly is good for both your wallet AND your peace of mind. Once you make the decision to put a property on the market for sale, the faster you get it done the less carrying costs you have and the fewer sleepless nights you will experience.
More than that, the longer your house sits on the market, the fewer and fewer showings you will have and the more any potential buyer thinks two things:
- What’s wrong with this house?
- The seller could be getting desperate so I can low ball my offer
Neither of those things are good. A high “days on market” counter will flat out repel many agents and a lot of buyers. Those who do persist and ask for a showing are going to be looking hard to try to find the “problem” and will be tough negotiators.
Follow the five steps for a fast sale of your house listed below and you very well could have multiple offers putting you in the drivers seat!
5 Steps To A Quick Home Sale
While it is possible to sell your house, FSBO style (For Sale by Owner), know that depending on the market and your neighborhood that about 90% of FSBO sellers end up listing with a realtor.
And while it may seem that the realtor doesn’t do all the much for that fat commission check (some actually don’t) there is more to when done right for a fast sale of your home or investment property.
Someone who knows your local market, knows how to research your market and has experience with PROPERLY listing a property on the MLS can be very much worth the money. A GOOD realtor can also be indispensable when negotiating the deal right up through closing also.
One additional benefit of having a good realtor is that a good realtor will know a top notch title company and will have a bit of clout with that title company to make things happen and even to save you money! (I have stories…)
So…
Step #1 – Hire A Great Realtor
He or she can actually be worth the 2 or 3 percent commission that they may have to split further with their broker. Commissions in the San Antonio market today are typically 6 percent total, 3 to the buyer’s agent and 3 to your agent but this is negotiable and can often be 5 percent total (3 to the buyer’s agent still) under various circumstances.
Please note that even if you go the FSBO route, you still have to be prepared to pay up to 3 percent to a buyer’s agent if you want a fast sale of your house. 90% of buyers are working with an agent and do you think an agent is going to steer their client towards or away from a house that pays them nothing?
Your realtor should also be able to help you decide if any updating needs to be done. Currently in our San Antonio market buyers are not very forgiving of out-of-style lighting, countertops etc.
Step #2 – Set The Right Listing Price
Hopefully you realize that what you have “in” the house is irrelevant to the market. The market doesn’t care what you paid for it, how much “sweat equity” you think you have in your home or what you “want” for your house. Factoring those things into the listing price is a recipe for “high days on market”.
Here is where a GOOD realtor will help you by getting “comps” or comparable sales in your neighborhood, in part using the MLS sales data that non-realtors don’t have access to.
Please understand that ANY online estimator is just that, an “estimator”. Sometimes Zillow and other sites are pretty close, sometimes they are not even in the ballpark. I’ve even seen Zillow estimates of over $1 million on a $200,000 home.
There are a lot of factors to account for: one story homes will sell for higher dollars per square foot and in many markets sell faster. A pool was a negative in the market I was in up in Illinois, usually a plus here in Texas and I’m told it’s a MUST in Phoenix.
A good realtor will know all these variables far better than most any homeowner and often even better than a landlord or real estate investor.
Step #3 – Clean, Clean, Clean; Fix or Replace
You don’t often get a lot of feedback from showings. When you do, it’s often just something polite but meaningless. With the 2 houses we sold this past fall, there was one comment we received several times: “this house is really clean”.
People are repelled by “other people’s dirt”.
With the one house we hired a professional cleaning service. It was a 2 story home with high ceilings.
Because of insurance regulations, the employees of the cleaning service are not allowed on ladders – so they do the best they can. That meant that the top of the ceiling fan blades were still noticeably dirty from a balcony on the second floor. They also didn’t clean the cobwebs in the corners of the windows or get the baseboards well.
So for that house and the next one, your’s truly got on his hands and knees cleaning stuck on food off the kitchen tile, baseboards, toothbrush cleaning the 6 panel door panels, etc.
Anything that doesn’t work either fix or replace. You want as few items as possible on the inspection report the buyer will surely order.
The front of the home should be as appealing as possible, so we put a brand new premium light on the front (Texas themed) and repainted the front door. That “no solicitors invited” sign barely visible on the photo at top was removed (be prepared to have paint come off with it!).
Cleaning also goes for the garage and the outside of the home. Trimmed lawn, bushes and if it’s that time of year keep the leaves picked up as best you can. If you have nasty stains on the driveway, see what you can do with a power washer and other remedies.
Please note: If you have a lot of showings you will need to freshen up the carpet with a quick vacuum job from time to time and check to make sure the house stays in “pristine” condition. Realtors and buyers are known to leave coffee cups, etc behind!
If you are living there, it’s tough, but do the best you can to always be ready to show!
Step #4 – Professional Staging
An empty house is the best, in my opinion. Easiest to clean and you can call a staging company to provide everything. Yes, it’s expensive, but worth it. And if the house is empty, you certainly want to stage it as an empty space can only be visualized by about 8% of the population!
For Master, Kitchen, Main living area, the cost was about $2000 for the homes we did. That includes 3 months of staging. If your home doesn’t sell by then there is a monthly fee to keep everything there.
If you are in the home, a professional stager will work with what you have an perhaps supplement with accent items.
With a larger or more expensive home you and your realtor may decide that staging more rooms would be beneficial. Again, the cost will go up but so will the carrying costs on a more expensive home if it sits on the market without selling.
Typically a more expensive home as a limited field of buyers who can afford it so months on the market is higher anyway. You want YOURS to sell FIRST!
Step #5 – Professional Photos
The pictures on this page are not the professional ones we had taken. Those I think are now “property” of the local MLS.
Taking the photos is one thing, and a professional knows how to make your house look best. Editing is where the magic happens and that takes special software and experience.
Lots of homeowners have high resolution cameras (heck, a cell phone is these days) but it’s much more than that. A professional will make the sky blue and, if appropriate, the grass green. Nothing here is underhanded, just accounting for weather and seasonal issues.
These days as folks surf internet real estate sites you have just seconds to catch their attention. If a realtor suggests a home to a buyer, they are looking for a reason to rule it out. Don’t give them one with mediocre photos.
I cannot count the times I have seen photos of houses on internet sites that not only have a person inadvertently in the photo, but it’s their backside to boot! A pro takes EVERYTHING into account to make your house look its absolute BEST.
Getting The House Listed
Once all of this is done your awesome realtor will properly list your house in the appropriate MLS(s) and then you pretty much wait. In some markets a certain advertising media might be successful but don’t count on it.
A very few large realtor groups will have a mailing list that could be useful but each of those leads goes stale fast. If someone is a lead who will buy your house quickly they likely aren’t going to wait months and months to buy. Make sense?
Open houses are generally just a way to dirty up your clean, staged home and get new buyer leads for the realtor. Most “good” realtors won’t even recommend it.
Conclusion
Both of the homes mentioned in this article on selling your house quickly were under contract in less than 2 weeks. The first home, a single story, had multiple offers in about a week. The second, a two story, had an offer at around 10 or 11 days and negotiated in a day or two more.
Closing was quick and painless despite some issues on the 2nd house because we had an awesome title company where our realtor did lots of transactions and subsequently they were anxious to keep him happy.
If you are in the San Antonio market and have a house for sale contact us. Perhaps we will buy it from you QUICKLY on either cash or terms; or, we can recommend an amazing realtor.
