Sell Your Maryland House Fast

01/01/2014

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Learn how to sell your house today

11/11/2012

Detach To Sell Your Home
by Phoebe Chongchua
Selling their home can feel like they're cutting off their right arm for some sellers. They feel a sense of loss, and go on an emotional ride that takes them plummeting into the uncertainty of a move and another new home. Even if there's excitement building about the new place, leaving behind their home and its memories can cause some turmoil.

While having deep emotions about the home you lived in, for a short or long while, is normal, it can cause a lot of trouble if you unleash your emotions during the process of the marketing and sale of your home.

Telling sellers to detach to sell their home is like telling the kid whose cat has a litter to stay emotionally reserved from the kittens. You lived in the house, cared for it, and now you're being told to detach from it. Sure, some sellers are ready to take the leap into the new home and they couldn't be any more detached. But especially families who have raised their children and watched many firsts happen in their home, stay a little more connected. These are the sellers that often put a greater value on their home simply because they have a strong emotional attachment.

Selling a home is a business transaction and likely the largest financial commitment many buyers will ever make. So understanding how to not get caught up in the emotional turmoil will help you keep your home as a real estate transaction, not an emotional roller coaster ride.

First make sure you price your home based on comps of other homes sold in the area. Sounds sensible but a lot of times, emotions come into play causing sellers to overprice their home. Instead, turn to a reliable and expert real estate agent for advice and guidance. Pricing your home to sell is critical. Homes for sale usually get the most traffic in the first two weeks of being listed. If you price it too high, you'll turn off potential buyers.

Often sellers base their home value on an emotional feeling they have about their beloved home or the fact that they paid top dollar for the home. However, in today's market, a home that was purchased at the peak might not fully recoup that price.

Give buyers space. There's a term for parents who tend to over-parent. It's called helicopter parenting–appropriately named because these parents hover over their children and essentially smother them. This could apply to sellers who tend to linger while buyers are viewing their home. This makes buyers uneasy. Often they feel like they have to cut short their visit to the home. They don't feel comfortable to talk openly about the things they like or don't like about the home in the presence of the owners. The lesson here is don't hover.

Consider all offers. Sometimes there is a tendency to turn away the initial offers because sellers think they might not be asking enough since the offers came in so quickly. Yes, it's a catch-22. Sellers want to sell but when the early offers come they're a bit uncertain. Be diligent and review all offers with your agent. You never know which one will be satisfactory until you see all of them.

Emotionally detach. Remember, when you're selling your home it's just a product to a potential buyer. They will see the things you loved about your home but they also will see the things they don't love about it and they'll share those things with their agent. So, it's likely you'll hear criticism about your home. They may criticize the very things you love. Here's where you detach and let the criticism wash over you. If you need to take action, such as repairing something, do it. If it's just a matter of opinion, don't become emotionally caught up in it. This isn't personal...it's business. Sometimes that's hard to remember because with real estate, the home we buy is, in the end, our personal sanctuary but at the time of the sale–it's business. Keep the emotions out of it and detach to sell your home.

Published: September 21, 2012

11/05/2012

How to Sell Your House ‘as is’ at a Fair Price on the Date of Your Choice

If you want to sell your house in the fastest, easiest, and most convenient manner, read this important message.

You may discover the perfect solution… because we buy houses!

Selling a house is usually an expensive and complicated process. That’s why real estate agents make thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars on a single sale. But, when we buy your house, there are no commissions to pay.

And you certainly won’t have to tolerate dozens of total and sometimes frightening strangers tramping through your home and poking through your drawers and closets.

My name is Derek A. Smith. My company is associated with a group of private investors and we buy houses each month in every price range. But the best part is… we use private funds that require no long, drawn out bank approvals. So we can act fast!

We can usually close within 9 days… or as little as 72 hours.

We’re as serious about buying your house as you are about selling it.

That’s the biggest difference between us and listing with a real estate agent. An agent will list your house… hoping it sells within 3 to 6 months. We want to buy your house… now! That’s a huge difference when you’re the one with the house for sale.

An agent lists five, ten, even dozens of houses at a time, and it’s rare if an agent can give all their properties their close personal attention. It’s no wonder that a listed home can sometimes take a long time to sell while you, the owner, are stuck maintaining the property and making house payments month after month.

What’s your alternative? Of course you could just sell it yourself — without an agent. After all, who knows more about the house than you do?

But consider this. How many houses have you bought and sold in your life? Two, maybe three? You haven’t had to solve even a fraction of the typical problems that can pop up — right before closing.

Remember, buying a house is a big decision for most people and it’s easy for them to get “spooked.” At the first sign of a complication or small problem (like a lien, necessary repair, or one of the other typical closing glitches), they can run like a scared jackrabbit.

Then you have to start all over at square one — it’s a frustrating experience.

Plus, when you try to sell it yourself, you still have to put up with dozens of strangers tramping through your home — only now you’ll have to be there yourself. For some owners, that’s a scary thought.

And what if you need to move fast? You could dump the price and hope someone will steal your house, but can you afford to do that? Or, you could go ahead, move out, and leave it with the agent. And every month, while making two huge mortgage payments (most people find that tough to swallow), you hope and pray that someone will buy your old house next month — and the next — and the next. Of course, that’s assuming you can even qualify for a new mortgage with the old one still on your back.

And when it’s sitting vacant, what’s going to stop someone from climbing through the kitchen window and tearing up your property?

Frankly, that’s more worry and aggravation than most people need in a lifetime.

Pretty grim, huh? Which way do you turn? To an agent with dozens of other listings to handle? Selling on your own and sweating out financing details, lost deals, last minute closing “surprises”? Moving out and hoping you don’t get some midnight call with “bad news” about your house?

I offer a better solution — a way out…