Can Investing In The Appearance Of Your Home Really Increase Profits When It Sells?
When people ask me about selling a home AS IS it’s usually because they don’t have any desire to make improvements to their property in order to sell it. Real estate agents are keen on sprucing up your home to make it show well. That means repairing any bothersome problems like leaky faucets and broken drawer pulls, among other things. Those are small items that are easy to see, and of course there are many, many repairs that are not so small, even though they may be harder (or impossible) to see.
Making repairs and spending money on updating the appearance of your home requires you to spend money. Let’s say your home is worth $100,000 and you estimate that it needs $10,000 of repair work and remodeling. It wouldn’t be hard to spend that much money in a very short time to put a home in tip-top condition for sale. If you owe $60,000 on your mortgage note and you spend another $10,000 on improvements (money that you borrow or cash you have on hand) then you either have to raise the price of your home to cover the improvements, or you simply have less equity and receive a smaller check at closing. Considering the bottom-line reality, you can see why some homeowners begin to think about selling a home as is instead of going ahead with home improvements. Why spend money in order to make less money?
Now that question may not seem fair, but it’s a good point to explore with a pad of paper and a pen, as well as a calculator. Write down your anticipated selling price, your estimated cost of home improvements, your mortgage balance (what you still owe on your home) and start moving the numbers around to see your various options.
Obviously you have to pay off your mortgage when you sell your home. That’s a given. But you certainly do not have to spend money making improvements in order to sell your home. You simply have to locate a buyer who is interested in your home in its present condition. If you find yourself giving serious consideration to selling a home AS IS, then you will want to check out the classified ads and look for a real estate investor to come by to look at your home and make you an offer. Investors have the means and the experience to see the potential in your home, and to help you get a home sale transaction closed quickly.