Avoid These Mistakes When Selling Your House
Common Mistakes When Selling Your House
Selling a house takes time and it’s complicated—if you do it right. If you want to lose tens of thousands of dollars, there are agencies that will buy a home almost immediately. Even in such a scenario, it will take a few days or weeks to get the process completed—but it’s a far cry from the sixty-five to ninety-three days which typically define a home sale.
Still, you’re going to do better through routes that take longer. These may or may not include realtor involvement. You can essentially expect closing costs to be somewhere between 3% and 10% of the total value your property may command. That’s in a state like New York. On average, nationally, you can expect 2% to 5% to represent closing costs—here we’ll go with the 10% figure just to properly illustrate a point.
So if your property were worth $300k, you can expect $9k to $30k to constitute closing costs. Closing costs include taxes, they include fees which are “floating” like those associated with the HOA, they’ll include realtor commissions, attorney fees, and a myriad of other items. You can reduce these costs, but that may not be the best way to go about selling.
One of your biggest mistakes in selling a home will be failing to realize its full potential prior listing. Following we’ll cover a few key mistakes you can make when selling to help you avoid being undermined incidentally.
Prepare Your Property Prior to Listing
Landscaping can bring tens of thousands of dollars to the value of your home. Adding a solar array can be done for more value than the cost of the array; you can double or quadruple your investment. Finish the basement and the attic. Paint the walls. Put in new carpet, wood, or tile flooring—whatever’s most feasible. Paint the exterior. Replace, clean, or repair windows.
Do all the little things. Switch out lightbulbs, ensure all the switches work, patch holes in the walls, address smells and leaks. Get everything to its best. If you can afford full refurbishments, upgrades, or expansions, you want to get them done before you list. Landscaping and solar panels alone can offset losses from closing costs.
If before your property were worth $300k, and you added a solar array that’s 3.1 kWh in terms of power, it would cost you between $5k and $10k, and bring between $10k and $30k in value—depending on the array, installation, panels used, and state. Landscape everything and put a few grand into internal refurbishment as well, and you can make up other costs.
If you spent about $20k in refurbishment, you could see as much as $60k in added home value. Now the $300k home is worth $360k. Subtract $36k for “maximum” closing costs and you’re left with $24k pure profit, $4k over your investment. Do it all in under four months, and it’s like you’re getting paid $1k a month to refurbish. Closing costs at 5% make that figure much higher, meaning you profit more.
Work With Realtors, And Look Into Other Selling Options
Realtors know who is buying, and how to most swiftly move your property locally. To help prepare your home for listing, you might additionally look into ISoldMyHouse.com – get your house ready to sell using tactics that are known to work. They can help you avoid tactics which will be less than effective.
Avoid Selling Property As-Is Unless Consultation Advises
As-is property sales almost always leave money on the table. Those who purchase as-is properties are banking on doing all the refurbishment work outlined in the longer point of this writing. So they calculate those costs and what they can make, then subtract that from the amount of money they’re willing to give you.
Unless your property’s cost of refurbishment would be too high, or you’ve got no time whatever to make any repairs, selling as-is to home buying agencies is going to lose you money. However, it could be the choice that best fits your situation. Consult with professionals to get an idea what the best choices are here. Friends and family represent fine resources.
Maximizing Home Value By Avoiding Common Selling Mistakes
Don’t sell your property as-is unless this is the best choice, and seek consultation from agencies, friends, family, and realtors to figure out if this makes any sense. Be sure your property is fully prepared before you list, and don’t avoid working with realtors. If you maximize property value through refurbishment, you can avoid most closing costs.
