Sell My House Fast: What You Should Know About Selling Your Home Quickly

By Johnathon Case

If you’re facing a situation where you need immediate cash, selling your home may provide the only suitable solution. In just weeks, you can have cash in hand. Here is your guide to selling your house quickly.

Explore the Reasons for Needing to Sell Quickly

When searching for tips on “how to sell my house fast”, you’ll likely come across a wide range of advice. Unfortunately, a lot of this advice fails to consider an important factor — the reason for needing to sell quickly.

You should first consider the reasons why you need fast cash. Your situation may impact the types of options that are available. Some of the most common reasons for needing immediate cash include:

• Foreclosure
• Medical emergencies
• Relocation
• Divorce
• Inheritance
• Debts or liens
• Extensive damage
• You simply want to sell quickly

Foreclosure is a frightening and stressful situation, especially if you’ve never dealt with foreclosure before. Luckily, you may have time to find an alternative option.

When you first receive notice of foreclosure from your lender, you typically have a 90-day period called pre-foreclosure. At the end of these 90 days, the lender will likely set the date for a foreclosure auction, which gets listed publicly to attract bidders.

Instead of allowing the foreclosure to proceed, a fast home sale can help you resolve the problem. You can sell your property and stop the foreclosure from negatively impacting your life and credit score.

Medical emergencies may also require the need to sell your property quickly. You may need immediate funds to cover costly medical bills. While hospitals often offer payment agreements for patients who cannot pay their bills immediately, you may require the funds for treatments not covered by insurance.

Relocation is another situation where selling your property quickly may be important. If your company requires you to move, you may not have time to go through the traditional sale process. You may also have added work responsibilities that keep you from preparing and showing your property.

During divorces, the division of assets is often a central part of the proceedings. In most divorce proceedings, the couple splits their assets evenly, including the property. Selling the property quickly may help speed the rest of the proceedings.

When you inherit a property, you may decide that selling it is easier compared to keeping it. You can avoid insurance, taxes, and any existing liens or mortgages.

You may also have your own liens on your current property or mounting debts. If you’re struggling to pay your debts, listing your property on the open market may take too long. It can take weeks or months to find a buyer. You then need to wait several more months for the closing date.

If the property has received extensive damage, selling can take even longer. In fact, you may struggle to find a buyer for a home that requires renovations. If the property remains on the market for a long time, you may need to continually lower your asking price.

Besides these reasons for needing to sell a home quickly, you may simply want to move and don’t want to wait.

After considering the reasons why you want to sell quickly, you should begin to explore the best methods for finding a buyer.

How to Sell a Home Quickly for Cash

How do I sell my house fast for cash? You can try to sell by owner, work with a real estate agent, or sell your home to a buyer that specializes in fast cash offers.

At Sell My Old House, we can help you with the last option. We offer cash for all types of properties even if they require repairs or have mortgages.

However, you should still explore all your options, including selling your home on the open market either through a real estate agent or on your own.

Selling Your Home on Your Own

You’ve probably seen “for sale by owner” signs in yards. When people decide to go through the traditional home sale process without a real estate agent, they face added challenges.

When you list your home on the open market, you don’t have the same tools used by a realtor for marketing your property. Realtors can list your property on various websites. Most realtors even have their own websites and contacts to help attract buyers.

While there are websites that allow owners to list their own properties for sale, these sites rarely generate the traffic needed to bring in potential buyers. Marketing a property requires a lot of work and homeowners are simply not equipped for this process.

You’ll also struggle to review the qualifications of potential buyers. If you do find a buyer, you may not know how to determine if they’re pre-approved for a loan or how to negotiate the details of the sale.

People often to try to sell their own properties to avoid realtor fees. Unfortunately, the money that you save on fees is often lost during the sale of the property.

Realtors have experience setting effective prices and finding the right buyers. They can often get you an offer closer to your asking price. However, realtors also bring their own drawbacks.

Working with a Real Estate Agent

While working with a realtor makes it easier to market your property and find buyers, you don’t have a guarantee that your home will sell. Even when a real estate agent is actively searching for buyers, your property may simply not attract any buyers.

Some of the reasons why you may struggle to sell a property include:

• Slow housing market
• Too much competition
• Problems with the house

A slow housing market can make it more difficult to sell a property. When there are fewer people looking for homes to buy, you can go through long periods where no one shows any interest in your home.

When demand for homes decreases, there is also more competition. It becomes a buyer’s market, as homeowners compete for the limited pool of buyers in their region. If you want to sell your property in a buyer’s market, you may be forced to lower your asking price.

You may also face difficulty selling your home if it has any existing problems. Water damage, smoke damage, roof leaks, and other issues are not attractive to potential buyers. People want homes that they can move into, unpack their things, and start living.

Working with a realtor can bring a few more disadvantages, such as being one of their many clients. Some realtors are so busy that they don’t have the time to devote to your property, especially if they don’t expect to earn a lot on commission.

Real estate agents typically earn about 5-6% commission based on the total sale price of the home. If you sell your property for $100,000, the realtor may collect about $5000-$6000.

When you work with a busy realtor, you’re also working with their timeline. If your realtor doesn’t devote enough time to your property, it may take longer to sell.

Working with realtors adds at least one extra person to the sales process. When you add “middlemen” to a sale, things take longer. If the buyer is also working with a realtor, all negotiations are completed through two middlemen.

The bottom line is that working with a real estate agent provides advantages and disadvantages. Depending on your situation, the cons may outweigh the pros.

Selling Your Home Quickly for Cash

If you want to know how to sell your home fast, don’t contact a real estate agent. The traditional sale process is lengthy. You may need to wait months before the closing date arrives after spending weeks or months finding a buyer.

You should also avoid selling your property on your own. While selling on your own allows you to avoid realtor fees, you also miss out on the benefits of working with a realtor. You may struggle to attract buyers.

Selling your home for cash solves these issues. You can still sell your property quickly and avoid realtor fees and closing costs.

For most individuals, selling to a cash buyer is the most efficient way to sell a property. Sell my house fast cash offers are often completed in just a couple of weeks.

If you decide to sell your home for cash, you can stop the renovations or repairs. You can also stop worrying about the condition of the paint, the yard, or the siding. Cash buyers often take properties as-is.

At Sell My Old House, buying houses for cash is our specialty. We buy all types of properties, including homes that need extensive repairs or homes that are considered unsellable.

No matter your reason for wanting to sell your property quickly, we may be able to help you out.

Selling a property shouldn’t be complicated. Instead of dealing with buyers that may change their minds at the last minute and lenders that like to take their time, you can work with us. We make the process simple, so you can get your cash in hand quickly.