Your Home is Dated - Should You Sell It As Is

Home buyers are incredibly picky. They want all of the repairs completed and everything up to date. This usually means freshly landscaped lawns and gardens, relatively new windows, roofs and driveways, new bathrooms and kitchens and everything repainted. Staging also helps to sell homes because it shows the buyers what their own furniture would look like.

Your realtor has just left and your wondering what to do after hearing what buyers are looking for. Your home, while structurally sound and well maintained, is an older home and it shows. Your kitchen is looking a bit tired and was designed 20 years ago. The same applies to the bathrooms. The deck should be rebuilt and your driveway could use a new layer of asphalt. The windows do not leak, but they are all wood and need to be painted. Your roof was just replaced five years ago thank goodness.

Should you list your home as is or should you spend quite a large amount of money to fix up your home? After all, a remodelled kitchen can cost up words of $40,000 and bathrooms are not much less expensive. Add the cost of the deck rebuild, the window painting and the asphalt driveway paving you could be over $100,000 in renovation costs.

Selling Your Home As Is

Your realtor can help a great deal with this decision. Basically there are two scenarios. Sell as is or spend the money to upgrade the home. The first step is to review with your realtor exactly what should be changed and / or upgraded. You want to make sure that everyone is on the same page so that when the work is completed, your realtor can market your home at a specified higher price.

Next obtain estimates for all of the work that needs to be completed. This may take a little bit of time, however you want to be reasonably close and not have any surprises if you decide to proceed. Once you have all of the estimates, add them all up and add 10% for contingencies. There will always be some surprises once renovations begin.

Decision Time

The other piece of data that you need is, what could you expect to sell your home for in its current state? There are lots of people who are not afraid of doing renovations. They like the idea of being able to find a home that is priced lower than the market which they can renovate to their own style. They expect price reductions based on the amount of work they feel they have to do.

Again your realtor can advise what your home could reasonably sell for. Subtract the expected sale price for your renovated home from the expected sale price of your home sold as is. The difference can be applied to the cost of renovations. Hopefully you will have money left over after all of the renovations are completed, i.e. your profit.

Delays in Selling Your Home

If you decide to renovate, there will be certainly a large time delay in terms of selling your home. By the time you select designs and have all of the work completed, several months to half a year could pass. For many sellers, who want to list their home and move quickly this time delay can be an issue they do not want to deal with.

Financing Renovations

Most people do not have large sums of money laying around for renovations. They will have to negotiate a personal loan, a line of credit or add to the balance on their mortgage. There will be financing costs and legal fees to account for as well.

For many consumers who want to list their home, this is all too much for them and they would prefer to just sell their home as is. Your realtor can help provide many of the facts you will need to make a decision. Current market conditions, factors influencing the market that could cause it to change, associated costs for various options etc.

Once you have made a decision regarding which approach to take, your real estate agent can also develop an appropriate marketing strategy to reach the most interested buyers, whether they are people looking for a home to fix up or one that is ready to move into.