Ready to sell your home? You might want to sell your house fast for cash. Reasons like relocating to a new city for a new job that starts next week or wanting money for that offer you have of a new place can make you want to sell your house fast for cash. It happens! You might also like to sell your home to the owner if you have some extra time and want to pocket more money from the sale.
But after you decide that ‘I want to sell my home by owner’ or ‘I want to sell my house fast for cash, you need to make a plan and sell your home in the right way.
First things first, to close your sale quickly, drum up the interest of buyers for your house. The more buyers you can attract in a jiffy, the better your chance to sell your home fast and at a better price.
Steps to sell house fast for cash
Below are the five steps to sell house fast for cash:
- Reach the right real estate agent
To sell your home fast for cash, the first step is you hire a realtor who knows the local market like no other. Look for someone who has a superb sales record in your locality. Also, as a seller, you have to pay the commission to both the buyer agent and the seller agent. So, in hiring an agent, you get on the hook to give a selling commission of 3% to 6% of your selling price to agents.
A real estate agent would help you with the entire process from overseeing a professional photographer to negotiating the best price for your home. They would put up a listing of your home on local MLS, market your property, and schedule and host showings.
- Price your home lucratively
Let me tell you that the most effective way to sell your house fast is to price it competitively and lucratively. You price it too high and you lose prospective buyers and even make sale negotiations longer as the buyer would want the price to come down. You price it too low and you miss out on money on the table.
Your realtor could help you with setting the price of your home. She can research comparable homes in your neighborhood to set a realistic, competitive price for your home. If you want to sell your house like tomorrow, lower the price of your home by a little to attract buyer interest. If you don’t receive any offers in a few days, you can ask your agent to reduce the selling price further.
Also, you must keep the price point as USD 299,000 instead of USD 302,000, for example, so that buyers looking for homes under USD 300,000 get to see your home listing on MLS.
- Clean, declutter, and depersonalize
Buyers want to buy your house and so they want to visualize themselves as staying in your home. But they won’t be able to do that if your house is cluttered. Clean your house from top to bottom, remove all the clutter and any excess furniture, and hide all your personal items like family photos in the attic. You can definitely go about hiring external cleaners before housing a major showing.
Consider rearranging the furniture to make your home look inviting and make ample space for buyers to move freely. For this, you may want to move any bulky furniture in the attic again. Note that a crowded room seems like a small room.
A home stager can help you exhibit your home in the best way possible, impress any potential buyers, and sell your home quickly for a great price. As per the data by NAR, homes that are staged sell faster and for more.
- Make quick repairs
Since you want to sell your house fast, you won’t have time to make any major renovations but that doesn’t mean you cannot make quick repairs to make your home look presentable. Walk through your house and find if there is anything that needs a quick fixture. You can make fixtures like fixing loose tiles in the bathroom, fixing loose hinges, repairing leaky faucets, ensuring that plumbing systems work, replacing stuck drawer tracks, removing carpet stains, etc.
Depending on the time you have and the money you are okay to spend, you can update fixtures, maybe install new hardware, buy new appliances, and give your home’s interior a fresh coat of paint.
- Attract the buyers
Another way to make your home look attractive to buyers is to sweeten the deal for them. You can offer buyers to cover all closing costs, agree to all inspections, accommodate their moving-in schedules, agree to pay for items of concern, etc. You can even offer buyers a transferable home warranty providing discounted services of repair and replacement for household systems and appliances.
Do I need a realtor to sell my house fast?
You have the option to sell the house fast for cash to cash buying companies. But a good real estate agent could also help you quickly sell your home while getting a good sales price. Realtors are capable of handling many different things in selling a home like coordinating viewings, researching the market, and negotiating prices. For the services rendered, you have to give the agent a commission ranging from 3% to 6%.
For you, the commission cost might be too high and not worth the services you get. Or a real estate agent can prove to be an indispensable asset in selling your home while you have peace of mind during the entire selling process.
What are the ways to sell my house fast for cash?
The TV show on flipping houses became very popular on television in the US. As a result, today, an entire industry has popped up around buying houses as-is wherein companies buy houses, flip them into nice houses, and make a profit selling them for a premium.
Living in the States, you must have come across a We Buy Houses sign in your town or online. One of the best options is to sell house fast for cash. Many of the We Buy Houses for Cash companies are not home buyers. Instead, they are just companies that sell your information to local investors and connect them with you.
Alternatively, you can look for local cash buyers in your locality to sell your house. Rather than selling your house through a middleman, it is better to search for a local individual or company who can buy your house using cash. Since they are not paying the cash to a third-party company by purchasing your house directly, they can pay you more.
Do research to know if the company you are considering is a third-party company or an actual cash buyer. A legitimate cash buyer would definitely have a website telling who they are and what they do.
Bottom line
Selling a home is challenging and it is even more so if you want to sell it fast. Fortunately, you have the means to speed up your home selling process. The average home closing takes a period from 30 to 45 days. Delays may happen too but you can close the sale quicker if you are prepared.
To sell your house fast without a big budget, focus on the first impression of your house. Buyers often make a decision in seconds of coming to a property like after looking at the curb or right after stepping inside the house. So, spruce up your house, take the help of a great agent and make a competitive offer to sell your house fast.