How to Sell Your Home or Condo FAST
You want to sell your home or condo and move on to your next home. It's an exciting time! However, no one wants the process to take too long, especially if you’ve already bought a new place. In hot markets, many choose to buy first and set a relatively short closing date on their new property. Therefore, it’s important to get the current place sold as soon as possible!
Or, you're just ready for that next chapter to begin, and don't want the sale of your home to take too long.
When you’re ready to list your home, these are 5 Secrets for Selling Your Home Faster:
1. Prepare your Home for Sale:
Before your home can hit the market, you can do your part to get it ready quicker.
- Start by getting rid of clutter, furniture you’re not moving with, and any personal photos or excess knick knacks. You don’t want the potential buyer to see the property as your current home, but their future home.
- Then, clean! It’s a good idea to hire a professional (especially if you have a pet). It’s surprising what a big difference a good cleaning can make.
2. Make Smaller Updates:
If you want to sell fast, larger renovations likely aren’t a good idea. Doing major renos takes time and money. Many buyers like the idea of renovating the space to their exact taste anyway. It’s better to either go the route of full renovation, or make smaller updates to sell faster.
- One thing that really freshens up a home or condo is a fresh coat of paint. Shades of cream and soft blues/greys are a popular choice.
- Consider replacing dated light fixtures, dated or dripping faucets, or even hardware on kitchen cabinets to give them a modern update without a full scale reno.
- If your own a home remember curb appeal too. Repaint if needed and consider pressure washing the exterior and walkway/patio. Online photos will stand out more with a nice exterior shot as well as interior photos.
3. Next, Stage your Home:
Staged properties stand out in many ways! Staging helps define the interior spaces, catch people’s eye in person AND in listing photos, and helps potential buyers picture how each space would work for them. Also, ask your real estate agent if they offer staging services and how long it will take.
If you own a house, include attention to curb appeal like you did with your minor updates! Place potted flowers, add stylish patio furniture, and any other ideas your stager has for you specific home.
When a property is staged well it will appeal to more buyers, and therefore is more likely to get an offer sooner.
(For more see: Is it Worth Staging Your Property?)
4. Make Your Listing Pop:
To make your listing appeal to more people make sure it appears on all the top online listing sites. A real estate agent will make sure of this, but also ask them about their marketing plan for you listing. How will they make sure it reaches as many potential buyers as possible?
Once the listing is seen, you also want to make sure it looks amazing. One way? Professional photography! Unlike listings with low-quality photos, great photographs make your property looks bright and inviting.
This will help you sell faster, because the listing will immediately grab buyers attention when it hits the market. If it isn’t marketed properly or doesn’t look its best, your listing can linger for a longer time.
Important Tip: Make sure your home is available for buyers to tour as much as possible. Be as flexible with your schedule as possible. Buyers will want to look at the property on weekends, after work, and various other times. The more walk throughs you can accept, the more buyers are looking at your home and the faster it is likely to sell.
5. Price it Right:
This is really the key to selling faster. You want to attract buyers right away. If a property is listed too high it can sit on the market longer, since a high price scares off buyers who might otherwise have been interested. It’s better to set a lower price to attract more buyers.
An ideal scenario is competition over the property and multiple offers. If it sits too long it also makes buyers look at it in a negative light- Why isn’t that property selling? Is there some hidden issue? While in reality, the price is probably what’s throwing people off.
For example: A property can be listed too high, sit on the market, and finally get re-listed later at a lower price. Then, at that lower price the property attracts more buyers and sells in a multiple offer scenario for more than the first (higher) price! Selling faster is largely about setting an appealing price right off the bat.
How will you know what that ideal price is for your home? Hiring a good Realtor is the best way to make sure the price is set right. They know the market, what comparable properties are selling for, and how to target your listing to more buyers so it is likely to sell fast.
Note: HTML is not translated!