Even in a seller’s market like the one we currently have here in Houston, it can take some time to get an offer that you find acceptable. It can take weeks, or even months if you have a unique situation. But what if you want to sell your house quickly?
In a hot market like this, there’s no reason why a good home in a good neighborhood shouldn’t be able to sell rather quickly. In fact, if you do everything right, you might even be able to have your house under contract within a week.
How can you make this happen? Start by doing the following:
The very first step is to price the house right. A lot of homeowners get caught up in the psychology of selling a house and believe that the best strategy is to start high, adjust the price if it doesn’t sell within a few weeks, and then negotiate down to the actual price. But this is actually poor advice – especially if you want to get it under contract quickly.
The first few days of activity are always going to be the busiest. When a new house enters the market, people get excited, agents inquire, and showings are scheduled. If you come in too high, you’re going to dampen the excitement and prolong the process.
No buyer wants to see your clutter everywhere. Even if they’re messy themselves, this doesn’t mean they like your mess. So, before listing your home, do your best to declutter.
You’ll have to pack up once you sell the house anyhow, so why not go ahead and do some of it now? Strip down to the essentials and completely remove personal knickknacks, collections, and junk that has accumulated over the years.
Once you’ve decluttered, you can start to give your house a deep clean. Unless you have a bunch of time on your hands, it’s probably smart to hire a professional cleaning crew to come in and handle this step.
If you have a little bit of money in your budget and want to really wow people with your listing, it could be a good idea to completely pack up everything in your house and have a professional staging company come in and stage the house.
With some simple home staging strategies, you can speed up the sale of your home rather dramatically. You may even be able to increase its value by as much as 1 to 5 percent. Considering that home staging typically costs less than $1,000, the ROI is high.
First impressions are a big deal in real estate. If a prospective buyer falls in love with your house when they pull into the driveway, they’ll be much more lenient when they discover issues inside. On the other hand, if they don’t like what they see when they first pull up, even the best interior features won’t do much to sway their feelings.
If you only have a limited budget for updates and renovations, curb appeal is the place to spend. An investment of $500 on mulch, flowers, pressure washing, and window cleaning will go much further than the purchase of a new kitchen appliance.
These days, almost every homebuyer starts the process online. That means your listing photos set the tone for your property. If the pictures look like they were taken on your flip phone from 2005, you’re going to miss out on some leads. If, on the other hand, you pay for high quality, professional images, you’ll see a nice return.
“Studies have found that good photography helps to sell a home faster and for more money. Keep in mind that with so much research performed online, a good photo can help to get a homebuyer through the door,” marketing expert Laura Ure writes.
If you’re trying to get your house under contract in record speed, you may need to sweeten the deal for prospective buyers. Incentives can go a long way toward closing a deal.
Incentives give you a chance to be creative. For example, you might offer to leave behind your 65-inch 4K television. Or you could offer to hire a painter to paint each room according to the buyer’s preference. Whatever the case may be, incentives have been shown to work. Add a couple when negotiating with buyers and you may be surprised by how much they move the needle.
Homeowners often feel like they can sell their homes without the help of an agent. They complain about commissions and don’t feel like agents bring much to the table. And while it’s technically possible to do a For-Sale-By-Owner transaction, it’s not always the smartest idea – especially if you want to sell your house quickly.
A real estate agent does way more than you think. From preparing your listing and marketing it to buyers to negotiating contracts and protecting your best interests, an agent will speed up the sales process and help you get top dollar. It’s a no-brainer.
The average Houston real estate transaction is going to cost you 6 percent of the selling price – with 3 percent going to the seller’s agent and 3 percent to the buyer’s agent. That means a $400,000 property is going to cost you $24,000 in commission fees. Yikes!
At Green Residential, we do things a little differently. We operate on a flat fee structure, which streamlines the sales process and helps you keep more of the equity you’ve worked so hard to build over the years. While the buyer’s agent will still get a 3 percent cut, we only accept a flat fee. On a $400,000 property, you would save roughly $4,000.
Want to find out more about how this works? Feel free to contact us today.
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