Selling a home isn’t exactly a stress-free experience. Even if you’ve done it before, the process can be grueling and nerve-wracking, but it can grow even more complex if you’re selling your home remotely.
You could be out of the picture for any number of reasons. Maybe you need to sell your house remotely because you’ve had to relocate suddenly to take care of an ailing family member, or maybe it’s because your job has relocated you across the country or even around the globe – in the end, the only thing that matters is that you’ve got to find a way to get around your liabilities and difficulties to sell that house as quickly as possible. Here are some important things you should keep in mind if you’re involved in the remote sale of a house.
Prepare Your House for Vacancy
Hopefully you had the opportunity to pack up your belongings and either place them in storage or take them with you when you moved out. However, you might have neglected some important things when it comes to preparing a house for sale if it’s going to be vacant for a while. One of the most important things you can do is to inform local friends and neighbors that your house is going to be standing vacant. This lets them know to call the police if they see suspicious lights on in the middle of the night. Likewise you should inform your local police precinct as well – that way you’ll have your bases covered in the event of a break-in, vandalism, or any other eventuality.
Get a Team of Professionals
Since you’re not going to be able to be as directly involved with the sale of the house with it being vacant, you’re going to have to assemble a team of professionals to look after things while you’re out of the area. Your first, best, and most important choice will be to choose a Realtor that knows your neighborhood well and that has experience in selling vacant houses for remote owners. Next, you’re going to need a good handyman that can perform routine maintenance on the home as needed to keep it in good shape. Finally it can’t hurt to have a solid attorney on your side down in your old neighborhood in order to support the Realtor in your absence.
Don’t Stay Gone for Too Long
This may be the most difficult part of the entire remote selling process. It involves periodically coming back to your old neighborhood in order to get a progress report from your team of professionals that have been watching over your property as well as being able to get a firsthand assessment of the state of your house as it stands. Not only can you keep an eye on your own house, you can spend the time scouring nearby neighborhoods to examine what kind of houses are up for sale there and how they compare to your own home. If you’ve been seeing little progress on your house in terms of bids, it may be time to put your head together with your Realtor and come up with a new strategy, either by cutting the asking price, renovating the property or getting it landscaped to improve curb appeal, or any other number of actions that will help your house sell.
Selling Your House As-Is
Finally, there’s an excellent option for anyone who doesn’t have the ability to make repairs remotely and then coordinate selling your house through a Realtor. Instead, you can sell your house as-is, even if it needs a lot of repairs, to a real estate solutions company like Texas Ideal Properties that will take the property off your hands for cash. This is often the quickest and easiest way to sell a house remotely.