“Help! I Need to Sell My House ASAP, What Are My Options?”

“I need to sell my house ASAP”. Just the phrase itself is enough to stress someone out. Selling your home is a stressful undertaking at the best of times. But if you need to sell your home fast – because of a financial hardship, a new job, a divorce or another unexpected situation – the pressure is really on.

However, living with the constant pressure of thinking ‘I need to sell my house ASAP’ can lead otherwise smart and savvy people to make rash decisions they’ll regret. A need to sell fast does not have to equal getting a bad deal. though. and it does not have to mean coming out on the short end of the deal.

If you want to sell your home quickly, you have options. And you should know those options from the start so you can make a rational, informed decision that you won’t spend months and years regretting.

What Are My Home Selling Options If I Need to Sell My House ASAP?

Although they are not the only ones, most homeowners face three basic choices to sell their home as quickly as possible:

1. List the home with a real estate who seems to have a good track record of selling homes quickly.

2. Take matters into their own hands and sell their home FSBO – For Sale By Owner

3. Take a cash offer from a cash home buyer

Which of these is right for you and what are the pros and cons of each? Let’s review the choices one by one.

Sell Your Home Fast with a Realtor

There are a lot of good Realtors out there, and many have a great track record of selling homes quickly. But there are market factors that even the best Realtor cannot control. While they can help you price the home appropriately -homes that are overpriced stand no chance of selling fast- there is little they can do if the market overall is slow.

Another downside of selling your home in this more traditional manner is the weeks that a Realtor will want you to put into preparing the home for sale. To sell it, they have to show it, and they need it to ‘show well’ if they are going to get you a good price.

In most cases for a house to show well it needs to be in good repair, it has to be scrupulously clean and increasingly it needs to be staged – at least to a certain extent. These things can rarely be achieved in a day, or even a week, and so your chances of selling your home as fast as you need to are decreased in that way too.

You can list your home with a Realtor ‘as is’, making none of the improvements they might suggest and they may indeed be able to sell it, but you can expect that sale to come along with a ‘bargain basement’ price tag that will leave you with a lot less cash than you expected.

Sell Your Home Fast with FSBO

Whatever some people – usually those with a service to sell you – might say, FSBO is often a losing prospect even when you are in no real hurry to sell your home. Not only does it involve a great deal of work on your part as a homeowner but working with FSBO sellers is something that often makes home buyers feel uncomfortable.

Some of those who are in the ‘I need to sell my home ASAP’ situation are seduced by the idea that they will save 3-7% of their equity by not paying a commission to a Realtor by going FSBO, but once they find out just how much work that Realtor would have done that they now must undertake themselves, and realize that they are not getting much interest in their home, let alone any offers, most FSBO sellers call in an agent anyway.

There are plenty of statistics to back this up. According to the National Association of Realtors FSBOs accounted for just 7% of national home sales in 2017. The typical FSBO home sold for $200,000 compared to $265,500 for Realtor-assisted home sales and fewer than 30% of the home sellers reported that they were interested in selling their home quickly. Bottom line, unless you live in a very ‘hot’ real estate market FSBO is a losing prospect no matter what the conditions you are selling under.

Sell Your Home Fast to a Cash Buyer

If you really need to sell your home ASAP there is, in reality, no time to look for the right real estate agent, no time to worry about repairs and staging and no time to experiment with pricing to see what the local market might bear. But, as I mentioned at the beginning, no one wants to think they are losing out on money they could have made, money you need to start your new life, wherever and whatever that might be – once you sell your home.

Cash buyers – those who make a living investing in real estate and have the funds needed at hand to purchase properties – are often just that, cash buyers. They are not interested in your home staging, they will make their own repairs and upgrades to the property later, when they own it and as there is no mortgage to be approved a fast close is more than a good possibility, most times it is a certainty.

You do need to make sure you work with the right cash buyer. One who has not only their own interests in mind – this is an investment for them after all – but yours as well. One who will make a fair offer and then give the time you need to consider it.

Real Estate Solution Providers are such buyers. We want to help sellers as much as we want to advance our own interests. We’ll listen to your needs and help find a solution that works for everyone, and get you out of that house, ASAP.