6 Tips For Selling Your Home
Are you thinking about selling your home? If you’re ready to put your house on the market, it’s time to make some decisions and start prepping your house for sale.
There are some crucial decisions you’ll need to make as soon as you can. Once you have them taken care of, you’ll have to turn your attention to the appearance of your house. Get all that right and you can sell your house quickly.
But getting all this right can be stressful. It can also be hard if you don’t really know what you are doing. So, we’ve put together a list of six of the most useful tips for selling your home as easily as possible.
Read on to see what you need to know before the “For Sale” sign goes up in your yard.
1. Decide on Whether to Use a Realtor
Your first decision when thinking about selling your home is whether you are going to use a realtor or try to sell it yourself. There are, of course, pros and cons to both options.
Engaging a professional real estate agent to sell your home for you comes with a lot of benefits. You can sit back and let them do the hard work for you.
They will help you with pricing. They know the local market inside and out. They have connections to potential buyers.
Realtors will assess comp houses in your area, looking for examples that will help you sell your house fast for cash. They have years of experience that you can’t replicate.
Of course, they do charge a fee. So, you might decide that trying to do all that on your own is worth the savings you’ll make on their fee.
2. Work Out the Price
Next up, you need to decide what price to list your home at. If you’re using a realtor you’ll need to have a frank and honest conversation with them. It’s likely you have a figure you need to get out of the home to cover your remaining mortgage and let you buy your next home.
The local market is going to have a determining effect on your price. But there should be some wiggle room in relation to comps in your area. If your house is unique or updated or has a larger lot than the competition, you might be able to price a bit higher.
Don’t assume you have to price it low to sell it. A price that is too low can put buyers off before they even visit your home. There is a correlation between too cheap and low quality or something being wrong with the home.
Finding the right balance is key.
3. When is the Best Time for Selling Your Home?
When considering selling your home you will also want to think about timing. There are times in the year when it is easier and harder to sell. You will also need to think about whether it is a buyers’ or sellers’ market.
Summer is almost always the busiest time of the year for buying and selling homes. This means there is more inventory on the market, but there are also more buyers.
In the winter it’s typically harder to sell a home because there are fewer buyers. However, you will have less competition from other sellers so it might prove easier to sell your home if you find a motivated buyer.
Check the mortgage rates, too. If mortgage rates are low, there will be more buyers because it’s cheaper for them. But if rates have risen recently, you might find potential buyers harder to come by.
3. Understand the Costs of Selling Your Home
If you work with a realtor when selling your home, expect to pay them roughly 5 percent of the selling price as a commission. This will probably be the biggest cost to you when selling.
In some cases, your buyer might ask you to contribute to the closing costs. Closing costs range between 2 and 7 percent, on average, depending on where you live.
Your other costs will be in prepping the house for sale. If you have to make large repairs or updates you will need to factor this into how much you need to make from your sale.
5. Make Improvements
One of the best tips for selling your home is to finally address some of the improvements you’ve been thinking about. From small, such as changing out switch plates, to big, such as updating the kitchen, improvements can go a long way to helping you sell your home.
The kinds of things you can do to improve your home for when you want to sell include the following:
Clean everything. Really deep clean. Make your home sparkle.
Minor updates: Fix any holes in the wall or loose wallpaper. Paint the spots you missed when you did your last paint job. Fix the drawer in the bathroom that doesn’t quite close.
Major renovations: If you’re going to do significant updates to any rooms, concentrate on the kitchen and bathroom. These will have the biggest return. They are also the two rooms buyers look at most closely.
6. Get Ready to Show Your Home
Find out when it’s open-house day in your area. Most cities and areas have one day a week when lots of houses on the market are open for viewing at the same time. Stage your home and put it on the list.
You want random visitors on open-house day, but you also want scheduled appointments for viewings with realtors. The combination will help get your house sold quickly.
Be flexible with the scheduled appointments. Try to accommodate the day and time the potential buyers want. You want to make them feel as though you do actually want to sell your home!
Selling Your Home Doesn’t Have to be Stressful
These tips are all intended to help reduce the stress and difficulty of selling your home. Hopefully, you are moving on to a new home that suits your next stage in life, so getting out of your current one as easily and quickly as you can is important.
You’ll have to make some decisions early on about when to sell your home and whether to use a realtor. Don’t delay on those two.
You’ll also need to work out the best price and understand how much selling your home will cost. After that, it’s all about preparing your home for sale.
We love helping people improve their homes or find out how to sell them. Our website is full of useful articles to help you get the most out of your home. Visit our site today and start learning!
