Mortgage, Savings & Investment

The Simplest Guide to Successful Selling

You are ready to sell your investor house and collect the benefits. Hopefully. But your profits are razor-thin, so you don’t want to involve a broker who will reduce the small amount you will make.

You are saving typically anywhere from one to ten percent of the price, but you will have to work a little for it. Since you want to work as little as possible, here is the simplest guide you will ever need.

Technology helps here.

Start with very, very basic elements. The paperwork. Get it ready, including legal documents, contracts, etc. Ask a friend for sample documents that you might use (you can hire an attorney if necessary but try to spare the expense).

Now you’re ready to price it. That is perhaps the single most important element. Now landlords often have a problem with this because they inflate their values. They often think this product that they poured time and effort into is worth a lot more than it is. So be realistic on what you can get.

How do you go that?

Also remember technology? Turn to online services such as Yahoo and Lending Tree.com to get a rough estimate of what to charge.

It’s also not hard to check public records of comparable sales. That’s usually what real estate brokers routinely do, though they also use judgment. Initially pricing a home to high or too low is a common problem. But don’t worry too much about it because you can always lower the price (raising it is a different issue and probably not one you will have to consider). You might also have to apply some judgment here that a broker would be helpful with, but it depends in part on how quick you want to unload the property.

Here is a point to consider whether you want to provide financing. Probably not, unless you are desperate. But it is an option to consider.

Have you by now considered what needs fixing to properly present it to would-be buyers? Small and inexpensive additions such as plugging holes in the kitchen make major differences in how would-be buyers view a purchase.

In the past, I have not recommended stage furniture. If you don’t know what that is, forget it. If you do know about it, you can consider it. Try to keep the price down, however.

Now you get to the hardest part, though that is not as bad as you might think: marketing.

Start again with a basic “for sale” in the yard and around the corner. Never under estimate the lure of signs for motorists driving around town.

Also see if there are other open houses in the neighborhood or garage sales to tie in with your own project.

In the “old days,” a newspaper ad would probably work. But these are different times so online is probably the place to go for the fastest results.

Now you have to exercise some patience. You are to a large degree dependent on your local market: supply and demand where you are. This varies, of course, but now you’re at least ready when offers start coming in. At that point, I can also suggest you be flexible on issues such as closing dates and keep in mind the important thing here is to actually complete the sale. ###

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