Should You Sell Your Home As-Is or Make Improvements?
When you are ready to sell your home, you have some options. One of the biggest choices you will need to make is to either effect repairs through the home or to try to sell it as it is. Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of these two options and provide some advice for you either way.
Selling As-Is
Pros:
- Hardly any work for you
- You can move out faster
- You can often get cash offers fast
- Eliminates a lot of stress
Cons
- You won’t be able to get the full value
- You may have trouble finding buyers
- Possibility of facing lawsuits or complaints if you aren’t protected
Tips for Selling As-Is
If you are selling your home in its current condition, a lot of aspects of selling your home become really easy. There are companies that specialize in buying as-is homes, though, so if you know where to look, you can make a sale fast. You should protect yourself with a seller’s contract that makes the buyer take on all the issues the home has and responsibility for them. They need to understand what they are getting and that it will likely have issues. You also need to decide whether you care going to bother doing cleaning or make even small improvements. It could be worth it to do some of the cheaper repairs and at least tidy up and organize before trying to sell your home as-is. Even though you’re not getting full market value, you should maximize what you can get.
Selling after Improvements
Pros
- High value potential
- Wider buyer’s market
- Easier to make a sale
Cons
- There will be extra work for you to do
- Extra time will be needed to prepare the home
- It will cost you more up front
Tips for Selling after Improvements
If you are going to make improvements, make sure you highlight the work you have done. You can let potential buyers know that you recently renovated some rooms and that the home has been professionally cleaned and organized, if you spring for those kinds of improvements. You may want to hire a realtor to help you sell the home, but that will cost extra as well. There are options for selling your improved home yourself, particularly these days with the wide-open online market. There are a number of websites dedicated to making it easy for homeowners to sell their homes themselves.
You should take the time to look over everything in the home and determine what should be repaired and what may be okay to leave undone based on your time and budget constraints. You should also give yourself plenty of time to plan for the improvements and put them into effect before you try to sell the house. Don’t give yourself a time crunch you don’t have to and end up losing out on some potential profit.
