If you are planning to put your home on the market, the speed of the sale should definitely be one of your primary considerations when deciding which buyer you want to work with, what to set your initial asking price to, and what kinds of work (if any) you need to perform prior to selling. In fact, studies suggest that average-days-on-the-market for a home in the United States is 65. That’s a really long time if you are hard-pressed to get the property off your hands quickly due to certain circumstances like a job change, marriage or looming foreclosure.
It’s absolutely possible to sell your home in a matter of days, and sometimes even within the first week of putting it on the market. To achieve this, you need to think outside of the box. If you are using mostly traditional methods for selling homes and hoping for better results, you are probably going to be disappointed.
Here is a brief list of some of these traditional methods:
- Spend Money and Time on Upgrades and Remodeling: In order to sell your home, you need to spend a lot of time and money to make it as appealing as possible to other people. It makes sense right? Who would want to live in an old or poorly maintained building?
- Wait for the Right Time to Sell: A lot of people you know probably suggest that you should put your home on the market at a specific time, normally spring. After all, that’s what everyone else does too. In fact, look at what this study says – the data clearly indicates that homes sell for more in the Spring than any other time of year, even though this is just a general trend and might not necessarily apply to your individual situation.
- Wait for the Perfect Buyer: If you really want to sell your home, you need to wait for the perfect buyer who “falls in love” with your property so he will be willing to offer more. Don’t pay any attention to how long your home will stay on the market and keep paying those hefty holding costs every month. In the long run, it must be better to wait for the perfect buyer to come along.
Follow the herd! It's gotta be the best way to get ahead!
The above-mentioned methods are very time consuming and some of them require a rather hefty investment of money on your part. For example, you may end up spending $10,000 on remodeling your kitchen, without any guarantees that you can recover the cost. You will also typically have to pay nearly 4% to 6% of the sales proceeds to a real estate agent (coming out to thousands of dollars in total), who is supposed to help market your property sell it for top dollar. Instead, here are some time-tested methods that you can use to sell your home quickly:
Find a Cash Buyer
The biggest time killer in a typical property transaction is the transfer of funds from the buyer to the seller, especially if you sell to a traditional buyer who needs to finance the deal with a mortgate. Not only will the deal take far longer to close, but the buyer also needs to go through each step with his/her lender, leading to far more moving parts where only one missing piece can kill the entire transaction. First, the buyer needs to be pre-approved by the lender. Then, the bank conducts a home appraisal. The process involves a lot of paperwork and even a slight mistake can result in the buyer’s mortgage application being turned down. In order to avoid uncertainty and eliminate the time-consuming process of mortgage financing, you can sell your home to a cash buyer. The closing can be conducted in less than a week if necessary and you can be far more certain that the deal will actually go through to completion.
Sell Your Home “AS-IS”
If you do not have a trusted team of contractors, or any home improvement expertise yourself, then you cannot be sure whether or not you will be able to recover the cost of repairs, cost of repairs and maintenance. Generally speaking, it is better to outsource this problem to someone else, and this is exactly what you’re doing if you decide to sell your property in “AS-IS” condition. You may have to compromise a bit with the asking price, but believe it or not, it’s far better to receive slightly less on the offer price than to spend months on making costly repairs only to realize that your property’s value didn’t increase enough to cover the cost of those repairs, making it a net loss of both your time and money.
Price Your Home Competitively
Many sellers make the costly mistake of setting a very high asking price when listing a property, then being forced to keep dropping the price when no one bites. In most cases, this ends up being a horrible waste of time. You should price your home competitively from the very beginning. You can always increase the price if you receive a lot of offers, and in many cases, we find that properties in Jersey City end up selling for significantly above asking price as buyers get into bidding wars with each other and egos start getting involved.
““Those are the two best words in English, ‘Bidding’ and ‘War’.”
”
Don’t Waste Time on Open Houses
Holding an open house is very hit or miss. You are investing your personal time and energy into planning out your schedule and making your property look nice and presentable every week in exchange for a CHANCE (not a guarantee) of receiving an offer that you would accept. How most open houses work is first, you set a date for the open house, and then you make a lot of necessary behind-the-scenes preparations like carrying out repairs and renovations, before finally cleaning it up every weekend and clearing up your schedule to show it to a parade of buyers. Many Real Estate agents will advise you to hold open houses, because it is a great way for them to market themselves in addition to marketing your property, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Don’t Wait for the Right Time
As mentioned above, it really is possible to sell your home at any time and in any market. If you need to sell in winter, don’t wait until spring to list your property. We know from personal experience that there are more than enough motivated buyers in winter, especially in a market as hot as Jersey City. As a bonus, the competition will be lower for you due to the fact that most people choose not to sell in the winter, leading to an inventory shortage.
Conclusion
If you are willing to step out of your comfort zone and learn to think creatively, nothing is impossible. We have seen cases where homes sell in 3 days for very good prices. Most sellers only consider one thing – the final offer price, and most sellers are also nowhere close to financial freedom. It is our opinion that these two things are related. Financial freedom is a direct result of opening your mind up to come up with solutions that other people are either too lazy or too set-in-their-ways to do. At the end of the day, what really matters is how much money either ends up in your bank account or is allocated towards an investment in your financial freedom. If you can get more money by selling your home ‘as-is’, why should you spend thousands of dollars on repairs and remodeling work? If you understand that having a trusted source of knowledge is important for making the right decision on your property, why would you pay thousands of dollars in commission to someone who can only recommend a standard listing and sale as opposed to avoiding those fees altogether AND having access to some of the most comprehensive and custom-tailored information out there by calling 551-236-3325 and scheduling a free consultation?
Written by Brandon Lor