You want to sell your Pensacola house, and you want to get top dollar.
Excellent!
Who wouldn’t want to get the most money for their house, right? But while this may be your goal, you may being asking yourself how exactly do you go about accomplishing this goal. Well…you have questions, we have answers! 🙂
But “What do I need to do to sell my house in Pensacola“?
Here are some tips on how to get your home ready to sell if you’re looking for top dollar that the market will bear:
*NOTE: These instructions are if you’re looking to get full retail value for your house sale. It will require some work on your part. Even houses that are in great shape are rarely ready to list on the market today. There’s always something that will need to be done prior to going on the market so that you can get that top-dollar offer from a buyer. So of these things will just require a little elbow grease on your part and other things may require money.
However, if you don’t want to do the things below… or don’t have the time or money to do the things below… you can still sell your Pensacola house fast for a fair value in a win-win sale that’ll save you time and expense.
1) Clean, clean, and clean. Even vacant houses get dusty and dirty, so keep it up! Nothing short of gleaming perfection will impress buyers. If you’re not a total clean freak, hire someone who is to help you out until you sell.
If you’re a slob(don’t feel bad, I am too 😉 ), consider finding somewhere else to live while you show your house. Maybe you can bribe your cleanest friend to trade houses with you?? Seriously, keeping everything immaculate truly does help buyers feel comfortable in your space. Nothing stops people faster from buying faster than feeling grossed out.
Here’s a pro tip for you: smells are the biggest deterrent for a prospective buyer. Pet smells being the #1 culprit. As an agent, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened the door to a house for one of my buyers, only to be met with an off-putting smell coming from inside the house and it immediately dictates the rest of the buyer’s experience in the property. The house could be in great shape with awesome curb appeal but if there’s an unpleasant smell in the house, that’s all the buyer will remember and they will likely scratch that house off of their list.
2) Cultivate a cohesive, neutral style. You don’t have to paint everything off-white. In fact, some subtle colors can really help change the perception of spaces – for example, a soft yellow will help brighten up a dark kitchen, while a deep dark blue or green will help a bright bedroom to feel like a calm place to sleep (but be careful, dark colors will also make rooms feel small).
Spend the money to get high-quality paint and professional help. I know it can be tempting to try and DIY the paintwork yourself to save money but a great painter can make a room look so much better. On the flip side, a poor paint job sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s most well-spent to hire a reputable painter. Subconsciously people will pay more money for a property with just the right colors and very neat lines – it makes the home feel better built, even though it’s just paint.
Optical illusions are real, and psychologists study this stuff. Don’t believe me?
Look it up. And don’t neglect the outside and just do the inside, or anything else that’s unbalanced.
One more quick note on hiring a painter vs. doing it yourself. While you may save a little money on the front end by doing it yourself, first, consider what your time is worth. There’s a cost and value to your time and it could likely be better spent on other areas of attention to get the house ready to look its best to hit the market. Also, consider what it will cost you down the road when an offer does come in from a buyer and it’s 10% lower than your list price because they thought the paint job was sub-standard. Or lastly, consider the carrying costs of continuing to pay your mortgage, taxes, and insurance month after month if your house doesn’t sell fast and it sits on the market due to it not looking its best and turning away buyers.
3) Fix or replace anything that’s broken. Yeah, it might feel like a waste of money to spend an extra couple hundred bucks on a dishwasher that someone else might just pull out and replace again. But really, quite a few buyers will get a home inspection and use the opportunity to negotiate with you. As the seller, you’ll often end up paying more if you try to hide neglected maintenance from the purchaser – and of course, you don’t want to be guilty of fraud.
Make sure you stay in compliance with all the laws.
While this isn’t 100% necessary, sometimes it can a good use of money to hire a home inspector to come through before you put the property on the market. If you ask in advance, they’ll often charge you a tiny rate to come back after you’ve done a bunch of minor repairs and deliver you a clean bill of health. Prospective buyers love to see an independent report on the condition of the house – it makes them feel very comfortable with the purchase.
When it comes to repairs, a good mindset to have is to take the buyer’s objections off their plate before they even have the objection. What I mean is, go ahead and fix anything that needs repair so that the buyer doesn’t use it as leverage for negotiations. Look, a buyer is likely always going to have an objection to something with a house, so you might as well remove as many of those objections before they even happen, to minimize the amount of negotiating power that they will have when they submit an offer.
4) Make only necessary improvements. The biggest mistake people make when getting their house ready to sell is over-improving. They often spend too much money on customized frills that can’t be recovered in the sale.
Paint is about the only safe investment – it’s easy to overspend on almost everything else, and it’s easy to get ripped off by unscrupulous contractors.
It’s important to know what improvements will produce a return on investment to avoid wasting money.
5) Get expert opinions. You should definitely find at least a few decent real estate brokers who will help you price your property, but be honest with them. If you’re going to market the property on your own, don’t make enemies by lying about your intentions. Great brokers/agents are rare, but they make more money for their clients than they earn.
6) Have a really great marketing plan. Again, great brokers and agents earn their value by doing this work and spreading the advertising expenses across many clients. It’s pretty expensive and time-consuming to start from scratch on your own, but if you’re already a marketing expert you’re ahead of the pack.
If you’re not, spend the time listening to what the best brokers do to sell houses in Pensacola – just to educate yourself on the options.
7) Get a cash offer. We buy houses all over the Pensacola area, and we do all the work so you don’t have to deal with any of this stuff.
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Don’t Want To Do The Things Above Yourself? But Still Want To Sell Your Pensacola Florida House Fast?
While everyone wants to get as much as they possibly can from their house sale… not everyone can do the things or wants to do the things required to sell it at full retail value to an end buyer.
Doing the repairs, cleaning the property up, upgrading the property, marketing the property… those all take money and can take lots of time.
If you have the funds to do these things... AND you can wait the 3-9 months it takes to sell houses in this market… then you’ll be better off financially to do those things then list it on the MLS (the main property listing service that real estate agents use).
If you don’t have the funds to do these things... AND can’t wait months to sell your house… then you may be a perfect fit for our local Pensacola house buying service. You’ll submit basic info about your house over here on our website, we’ll evaluate your house, we’ll make you a fair all-cash offer on your house, and you can decide if it’s a fit for you. But if a cash offer giving you speed and convenience isn’t what you want, we are also a licensed real estate company and can help game plan with you to list your house on the market and get you that top-dollar offer from a buyer. It’s totally up to you and we are here to work with you to produce the best outcome possible for YOU.
If a cash offer sounds like the right direction for you, we can close FAST (often times within 7-14days) if you need us to.
Take a look at what we’ll pay you not to do anything versus the time, expense and hassle involved with doing it on your own.
So if you’re still asking “what do I need to do to sell my house in Pensacola“… now you have 2 solid options.
Either…
- Fix the property up and get it all nice and ready with the steps above to sell it at top dollar
- Let us do all of the work and we’ll make you a cash offer on your house in AS-IS condition. This saves you time, money, and gets the hassle off of your hands.
If you need to sell a property near Pensacola, we can help you.
We buy properties like yours from people who need to sell fast.
Feel free to reach out to us and we’d be happy to give you a FREE home evaluation so that you can decide the best route to take. Also, any offer we make you is 100% no-strings-attached and there’s never any obligation on your part. We’re here to help you succeed in selling your house fast and to make sure it’s a win for you.