What is your best option when you get ready to sell your home? 

Let’s talk about the 4 options for selling your home that most sellers use:

• 1. List and Sell with a Realtor
• 2. Sell it themselves through For Sale by Owner
• 3. Sell it to a local Real Estate Investor, like kcmoHomeBuyer
• 4. Do Nothing.

Working with a Realtor

When you choose to work with a Realtor, we recommend talking to 2 or 3 Realtors who work in your neighborhood and know how to sell your type of property. Just because Cousin Suzy is a Realtor does not mean she should list your house.

Talk with the Realtors and find out what repairs, updates, clean up, clean out, and staging they would recommend for the optimum selling price. Also find out what they think it would sell for right now today with nothing done to it and how fast they anticipate selling.

Keep in mind that a Realtor will need to market it with lots of photos and details online, that you will have a sign in your yard and hopefully a lot of people walking through your house for several weeks until you get an offer and negotiate a contract.

After that be prepared for about 20 to 30 days of inspections, renegotiations, repairs or price adjustments, appraisals, and last-minute problems.

A good realtor will handle all the paperwork and will make sure the buyer is qualified. You will have a Realtor commission, and closing costs at the title company and potentially need to pay the seller’s closing costs if they ask.

For Sale By Owner

When you sell for sale by owner, you should do all of the above, except rather than having a Realtor do the marketing, handling the showings, and managing the transaction and paperwork, you have to do it all.

First, consult with a Realtor to determine the best selling price and things you can do to make it sell faster. Make sure you have a lot of good quality photos and descriptions to post on all the online sites like Zillow, Trulia, and others so that most people out there can see your house for sale.

Be sure to include that you are willing to work with a Realtor and offer then 3 % commission so you can get more potential buyers from the local Realtors in your area. And before showing your property to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet, make sure they are pre-approved or have the cash to buy your home.

Cash Buyer / Investor

Your third option is to work with a Professional Home Buying Real Estate Investor. As not all Real Estate Investors Are created equal, be sure to ask how long they have been in business, how many houses they have purchased in the past year, and how they plan to pay for the house.

Here at kcmoHomeBuyer, we have been in business since 2000 and have bought 100’s of houses. We sometimes buy with our own cash, but we often utilize private funds from friends, family, and industry partners to be able to pay cash.

A good investor will give you an offer that would allow you to take what you want and hand over the keys on the day of your choosing. A few might also give you an option of selling for a bit higher price if you are willing to take payments over time.

What you need to watch out for are those cash investor buyers who need 60 or 90 days or more to close. These folks are tying your house up with a contract and then going out and trying to find a buyer to buy it. These investors don’t have the money or the private partners to buy your house, and they often back out at the last minute.

Do Nothing

Your fourth option is to do nothing. You may find that what the Realtor thinks it would sell for or what we might offer you in price is just not enough to make you move. You have time to sit on the property for a while, so you might choose to do nothing.

We have seen people that choose to move into an inherited property and keep it. Others can’t sell so they become accidental landlords for a while. This can work out great, although, in the inherited house that heirs have moved into, we have found that the heirs often don’t have the income or ability to keep the house up and eventually sell to us and lose a lot of money. Others try their hand at being a landlord and fail miserably, again eventually selling to us for way less.

So be sure to consider all your options.

If you would like to see what we might be able to offer you on your house here in the Kansas City Metro, take a minute to tell us about your house and we can give you a callback.