The first thing that comes to mind for many people when they think about selling their house is stress. From the moment you decide to sell there are so many decisions to make, a wide variety of people to deal with, and what feels like dozens of different requirements, schedules, and appointments to juggle, you might want to give up before you have even begun.
However, there is a way to sell your house, without all of the stress that’s heaped upon you when you sell in the traditional way.
By working with a reputable real estate investment company, like FasterHouse, you could sell your home and have cash in the bank, without all of the stress and headaches in as little as seven days.
It can be that easy.
Why Is Selling A House So Stressful?
You might be selling a house for positive reasons such as moving for an exciting new job or to be with the love of your life. On the flip side, you may be putting a house on the market for a less favorable reasons such as having to downsize for financial reasons, moving into a nursing home or maybe you inherited a house from a loved one. Either way, if you want to move or if you don’t, selling a house can become incredibly stressful, so much so that it can feel like it is taking over your entire life.
What causes all of this stress?
Choosing A Realtor
If you’re lucky, you will already know a reliable realtor who you get along with and are confident you can trust to put your best interests first. If not, you might be able to find someone through recommendations from family and friends, but most of us will have to do at least a little research before choosing someone to sell your home.
Depending on where you live this could involve going through dozens, if not more, of websites to discover what services each realtor offers, how many homes in your area they have been selling lately and for what price, and researching what kind of commission each one charges. You will also have to find out if your realtor makes any upfront charges and if all costs are covered by their commission or if they will also invoice you for items such as flyers, hosting an open house, advertising online, etc.
Carrying Out Repairs
If the house you are selling needs any apparent repairs, you will need to consider whether or not you are going to carry out the work before your home goes on the market. Then you will need to decide if you can live with the upheaval of having tradespeople in your home and the costs involved, or you can decide not to carry out the work which will hand your buyer a great big stick to beat you with during negotiations.
Upgrading Your Home
Similarly to repairs, upgrades to your house might improve the sellability or price but might incur costs and hassles you could do without. For example, do you replace your single pane windows with double glazing? You might get more money for your house, but it will require you to go to the trouble of getting the windows replaced, cost you money to do it and tag on extra time before you can even think about selling the house. This is time that you might not have, and that could be costing you money.
Decorating
Even the most inexperienced house seller knows that a fresh lick of paint on the walls can make a home more likely to sell. At best this means you will have to devote some time and cash to buying the paint and decorating the entire house. At worst you will have to wait and pay a fortune for a professional company to come and redecorate for you.
However, decorating is not always a sure fire way to improve the saleability of your house. If the person who paints doesn’t know what they are doing and leaves you with a shoddy job, the house can end up looking worse than when you started. Even with a well-decorated home, some potential buyers are suspicious as soon as they smell fresh paint because they think you are trying to cover things up. Sometimes you can’t win!
Staging
Your realtor could suggest staging your home so that potential buyers can imagine themselves living there. This can be a double whammy to the wallet. First of all, it could mean packing up a significant proportion of your belongings and putting them in storage, which you have to continue to cough-up for while your house is on the market. Secondly, you might find yourself footing the bill for a professional house stagers services, and thirdly they may suggest you go as far as renting furniture and art to make your house look as “wantable” as possible.
Keeping Your Home Ready
Not all stresses of selling your house come with a price tag attached; some are just pure, constant mental pressure, like trying to keep your house ready for viewings. This is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do when you have children or pets who do not always understand the concept of clean and tidy.
Coping With Single Viewings
Then, of course, there is the trauma known as a house viewing where you all have to hang around trying to look relaxed while a complete stranger walks around your house, looking in cupboards and poking about in the basement, all the while making comments about the faults they find in the hope of knocking down the selling price a little.
Listening to someone unpleasant talk trash about your home is never fun.
Holding Open Houses
Your realtor may suggest holding an open house, or two, or three, or more depending on how long it takes to sell your home. Not only do you have to ensure, like with single viewings, the house is in tip-top shape, but you have to leave the house for an afternoon and keep the family occupied while trying not to think about how many strangers are poking about among your things with nobody to keep an eye on what they are doing. Even with the best of intentions realtors cannot watch everyone, all of the time in your home when there are multiple prospective buyers wondering the rooms.
Waiting For Offers
That jolt of anticipation and hopeful excitement every time your phone rings or a text arrives. Will it be the realtor? Will there finally be an offer? Will it have a ton of ridiculous conditions with it? Alternatively, you might find yourself waiting weeks or even months for any offer at all.
Negotiations
Life would be much less stressful if buyers said “Yes, I like the place, I’ll pay your price and move in when it works for you,” but instead they say things like “The place is Ok, but I’ll have to make some changes, so I want you to knock 10% off of the price. Oh, and I haven’t sold my home yet so you’ll have to wait until me, my buyer, my buyer’s buyer, my buyer’s buyers buyer, and everyone else down the chain of sales is ready. Oh, and I’m still negotiating my loan but if you turn down my offer I’m gone.”
You could then go back and forth for weeks while you both speak through your realtors and juggle bank loans, other sales and all of the other people and tasks involved in a chain of property transactions.
Getting Out When They Want In
Finally, you have the practicalities of moving out. This will invariably be a date set at the mercy of someone else and will not necessarily be the best time for you. There’s nothing quite like trying to book a moving truck at short notice and having to get all of your stuff out of the house before the new owners turn up at mid-day.
If all of this sounds like the kind of drama you don’t want to experience for months on end, there are other things you can do.
How Can You Avoid House Selling Stress?
There are a few options:
- You can decide to stay put and not, sell your home at all and live with the issues that made you considering selling in the first place. This will avoid the strain involved in selling your house but possibly just swap these issues for other problems like living in a neighborhood that is going downhill or having to give up an excellent career opportunity.
- Move on but keep your existing house to rent out. This option is only available if you can afford the costs of owning two homes, can obtain a loan for a second home, and want to become a landlord, with all of the legal obligations and headaches that involves.
- Sell your home quickly, for cash to FasterHouse.
How Is Selling To FasterHouse Less Stressful?
By selling to FasterHouse, you can avoid all of these stressors and sell your house on your schedule, without doing a thing to it, for cash.
How exactly is selling to FasterHouse less stress?
One Company, One Call, One Plan
Once you pick up the phone or submit an inquiry form, one of the FasterHouse team members will contact you to discuss your situation and options, and if both parties like what they hear an appointment will be set to visit at the house.
After one visit to your home, the FasterHouse buyer will make you an offer and set a date for closing that works for your schedule. If you want to accept the offer the FasterHouse buyer and “contact to close” team member will make all of the arrangements, and you just have to turn up to sign on the dotted line at an agreed time and place.
No realtor to hire, no prospective buyers to deal with, no inspectors, no tradespeople, nobody to keep happy and no one to constantly call, to follow-up with, or to constantly tango around the house selling dance floor with.
One person, one plan that works for you and one house sold, in as little as seven days, if that’s what you need.
Time
TimeDepending on your situation, if you want to complete the sale quickly, FasterHouse could finalize the sale in as little as seven days. Alternatively, if you need time to plan your move or make other arrangements, FasterHouse can work with you, leaving you without the pressure of a pushy buyer.
Costs
When you sell to FasterHouse there is no need to carry out repairs, employ tradespeople, redecorate or do anything else to the house that will cost you anything. Also, you will not be paying a realtor a commission out of the money left over after you have paid off your mortgage.
If the house you are putting up for sale is sitting empty, by selling fast for cash, you will be saving the ongoing costs associated with an unlived-in home such as taxes and insurance which can really add up over time.
No Upgrading, Decorating, or Repair Work
It is not only the cost of repair work you will save by selling to FasterHouse, it is the stress of finding someone to do the job, or taking time to do it yourself, buying all of the materials, planning what to do and when to do it, actually carrying the work out and finally, living through the upheaval of spending your time in a house being decorated, upgraded, or repaired.
No Showings Or Open House Nightmares
Sell quickly and directly to FasterHouse, and you dodge the stress of maintaining your house in a “show-ready” state. You also avoid having people traipsing around your home, poking about in your cabinets and asking you awkward questions about the neighbors.
On top of all of that, you also get to side-step the horrors of an open house, with packs of strangers wondering your home doing goodness knows what.
Buyer Loan Issues
By selling to FasterHouse, you do not have to worry about your buyer getting their loan in order because your buyer doesn’t need a loan. No waiting, no uncertainty, no backing out at the last moment.
This is especially important if the buyer is relying on x amount of dollars for their own home and discovers their sale price is falling short. Your buyer may have to renegotiate a loan or will try to renegotiate with you. Either way, it is going to cost you time and add a few more weights to your stress burden.
Problems With The Title
FasterHouse undertakes all of the title work in-house, and we are willing to work to resolve any issues, such as title problems, you might have to ensure your sale goes through. Meanwhile, you do not have to worry about scaring off a buyer who gets cold feet or losing a buyer whose loan offer expires while title work is still going on.
No Negotiations
If you said to a room full of house sellers “Everyone who enjoys negotiations on the sale of their house, raise your hand” do you know how many hands would end up in the air? None, zilch, nada. Do you know why? Because buyers tend to have the upper hand when it comes to knocking down the price, asking you to do extra work and obliging you to a timetable that doesn’t bear any relation to what would work for you.
By letting FasterHouse be your buyer you will get one cash offer, and that is it. No back and forth. No jumping every time the phone rings in case the buyer wants to change something else, and no demands.
What Kind Of Houses Does FasterHouse Buy?
A professional house buyer like FasterHouse will consider paying for any house you might sell through a realtor, plus any other house in an “as-is” condition. It is the less than perfect homes which are most, often the more stressful houses to sell, and this includes homes where:
- A Bad Foundation Or Other Structural Issue Has Been Found
You might have discovered your home has a problem with the foundation, renovations by a previous owner knocked down a load bearing wall, the roof joists are cracked, or there is another significant issue with your house.
- There Is A Mold Issue
Mold can be a significant health issue for you, your family, and for prospective buyers. The worse the mold, the more expensive it is going to be to fix the problem and even if you can afford to do this, previous mold issues can put many buyers off.
- The House Has Not Been Maintained
Perhaps it is the house of an elderly relative, or maybe the home has not been maintained for some other reason. It doesn’t matter why, what does matter is that buyers are put off by lots of work, or you could spend a fortune and several months getting the house up to current market standards.
- There Is Fire Damage
It can only take a small kitchen fire to create enormous costs for repairs. Worse still you might have a more significant fire that puts you out of your house completely. How do you sell a house that is not inhabitable?
- A Hoarder Has Been Living There
Hoarding creates many problems for a house seller. Not only do you have to clear the house of its contents but that clearance can be complicated by bio-hazard issues. Then, once the house is empty, you can discover significant structural, water damage, mold, or other problems that have been hidden or caused by all the contents.
- There Are Title Issues
There are times when a house has been inherited by a minor, a family trust, or there is another complication that makes the sale less straightforward than usual. This can be very off-putting for buyers as not only can there be legal issues to wrangle, but it can take a lot longer to complete the sale than they are prepared to wait.
- A Landlord Wants Out Of Renting
It might be that there is nothing wrong with the house at all, but there are tenants living in it. This can affect the timing of your sale or severely reduce the pool of potential buyers. Or it could be that it is empty and the landlord just wants a fast, hassle-free deal.
- Bad Tenants Are Living There
Owning a house with bad tenants brings several of the stressors above down on you at once. The eviction process can take months and cost thousands of dollars while the chaos the tenant leaves behind can land you with a double whammy of costs and strain.
- A House Has Been Used As A Drug Lab Or Den
If the house you are selling has been used to make, distribute or use drugs in then, you may be lucky and get away with a cosmetic strip down and clean up. However, it is more likely that the work needed will be more extensive and you might have to take the house back to the frame and start again, or even worse, demo and rebuild from the ground up.
- The Neighborhood Has Become A Bad One
It might just be that the friendly family neighborhood with good schools and a supportive community that your parents moved into to raise their family 40 years ago has changed. The crime rate might have gone up, the schools may have gone downhill, or any number of other issues might have changed the social landscape. Whatever the reasons the neighborhood might not be a popular one in which to buy anymore.
Who Sells To A Professional House Buyer?
People just like you.
There are many different reasons why a homeowner might want to sell their house to a professional house buying company. It could be as simple as the fact they have had a previous bad experience with a realtor and do not want to risk going through another bad experience, or there could be a more specific situation such as someone who is:
Losing A Home To Foreclosure
All manner of life events, out of your control, can lead to you falling behind with the mortgage. The majority of homeowners will do anything to avoid foreclosure and losing the money they have already invested in their home. For this reason, it is often not until the final few days and weeks before the end of the foreclosure process that many people consider selling their house to avoid total losses.
Not only that but a foreclosure on your financial record is best avoided if you want to look into buying a new home in the future.
Moving Into A Nursing Home
If you or a loved one find yourselves in the position where you have to move into a nursing home or a similar assisted living facility you may want to sell your home quickly. The bills on an empty house can build up very quickly and waiting for a buyer can cost you thousands of dollars, perhaps when you are already paying out for care.
Inheriting A Home
Sometimes the inheritance of a home is a blessing. It may be you want to move into the inherited property and make it your forever home. On the other hand, you might find yourself with the legal responsibility of a house you do not want, possibility with tenants, outstanding repairs, or a complicated situation where several people have been left a percentage of the house each.
In any of these situations, a quick sale can allow you to quickly get on with the rest of your life.
A Landlord Who Wants Out Of Renting
It may be that you had downsized in the past and kept your previous home to rent out for income, or maybe you bought a second home in the hope that being a landlord would be a relatively simple way to make some extra money.
For some people being a landlord is a rewarding and profitable activity, for many others, it becomes a stressful money pit that they want to get out of as soon as possible.
Moving Quickly For Work
Sometimes a fantastic work opportunity presents itself, and we have to leap on it straight away. On other occasions, our employers might move across the country and offer to take us with them. Whatever the reason there are times where we need to move for work and cannot afford the time or money it will cost to market and sell our house in the more traditional way.
Getting Divorced
It is not unusual for one half of a divorcing couple to be moving away from the immediate vicinity of the family home. This could leave one spouse with the sole responsibility of dealing with realtors and potential buyers, often at a time when they are already under a great deal of emotional stress.
In A Short Sale Situation
If the fluctuating property market has left you owing more on your home than it is worth, you might be in a position to wait it out and hope that the market recovers before you need to move home.
If you do find yourself in a position where you do have to short sell your home, negotiations with the banks or other lenders who hold your loan can take months, and it can be challenging to find a buyer who is willing to wait indefinitely to be able to complete the sale.
In A Hurry and Need To Sell Fast
You or your home may not fall under any of these categories, you might just be a fan of quick, simple, stress-free transactions and want to get rid of your house quickly.
So the solution to house selling stress can be pretty straightforward. Give FasterHouse a call (314) 926-0660, and discover how we can help you sell your home and get on with your life today. Imagine you might have your house sold by this time next week, less time than it takes other people to find a real estate agent.
