A Direct Home Buyer
5 Reasons To Sell Your Home To Us
A direct home buyer is a good choice to consider when you need to sell your home quickly. Why? Well, with the booming real estate market in Southern California, you might make more money in the long run. There are many reasons why not listing your home for sale with a real estate agent can benefit you more than the agent. And below are just 5 of those reasons, but it’s up to you to decide if that is the right solution for you.
Simply inquiring about what an offer for your home would look like is a good step in researching all options available to you – and getting an all-cash offer is not obligatory nor binding. Consider it just information gathering in order to make a very big decision.
So here are 5 reasons why you should consider selling your home directly to a home buyer – preferable us at Fast Home Buyers.
1. Fast! Close in 7 days versus 55 days or longer
Selling your home in a traditional way by using a real estate agent will take months to complete. For a variety of reasons, some homeowners don’t have months to wait. Maybe the house has no equity and needs major repairs. Or maybe you inherited a house that you can’t afford to maintain. Or maybe you rent this house and don’t want the hassle involved in vacating tenants in order to sell. You could be going through a bankruptcy or divorce. Maybe you need to relocate fast and time is more important.
For any of these reasons and more, a fast cash offer is a great solution.
What is involved when listing your home with a real estate agent that can take so long?
First, you need to find an agent. According to the Department of Real Estate, there are over 300,000 real estate salespersons in California. That’s a lot of agents to choose from, but choose you must and the best way is to hold interviews with a minimum of three agents. Usually, people find an agent by word of mouth or a family member is an agent or you recognize a name you see often on open house signs.
Regardless of how you find one, the next step is to interview each agent. Upon your face-to-face meeting, each agent will give you a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) and in that report, you will find what their “market value” is for your home, based on the sales price of other comparable homes in your neighborhood that are similar in condition, layout, and location.
As a direct home buyer, we put you are in control when you sell directly to us. You choose to contact us and you decide if you agree with our fair value for your home. It’s a no-pressure, no-obligation experience.
2. Sell as-is with no repairs or cleaning required
The next step when hiring a real estate agent involves deciding your list price, which hinges on your home’s condition. Most sellers want the highest price available for their home, however, to achieve this high price most sellers must put in work, time and money to repair their home in order to meet the standards needed to get this price. Many agents stress three main factors that sell a house and pitch to the sellers to make sure these are the best they can be.
The first is curb appeal. Few sellers will command a high sales price with weeds or dirt lawns, dead flowerbeds, overgrown trees, peeling or faded paint, broken front doors, rotting facia boards, old windows – you get the point. To make these repairs, you will need to spend money and time.
The second factor is kitchens and bathrooms. These two rooms sell homes and the more updated they are, the more money the house will sell for. Some recommendations to maximize these spaces are to buy all new stainless steel appliances, install slab countertops, update old flooring, install new vanity and toilet or paint all the walls. Again, these cost the sellers money and time.
Last on the list is cleanliness. The house needs to be show-ready for photography and open houses. Your home needs to make buyers feel welcome and inviting, so they are not distracted by odors, laundry on the floor, dirty flooring, unmade beds, dusty shelves, clutter inside and out. This is a lot of hassle and effort for sellers to maintain until their house gets sold, especially with children and pets.
This is the part when sellers need to decide if a cash offer is the best solution for their situation because spending money on repairs will make your house competitive and can get you a higher sales price. But if you are not in the position to spend the money or time making these repairs, then your sales price will reflect that. Oftentimes when homes that need work go on the open market for less than a turnkey market price, buyers will offer less than asking and the house stays on the market for a longer time – even in this hot real estate market.
3. No commission fees
At this stage when hiring a real estate agent, you have agreed to what repairs you will and will not make to get your house market-ready which will coincide with the list price, then you get to negotiate the sales commission with the agent. As you conclude each interview, you need to ask the agent what their commission fee is. The commission pays not only your agent for their effort and professionalism, but it also pays the agent who represents the buyer of your home. You can negotiate them down if you choose and if they agree.
Typically, commissions are 6%-7% of the sales price and it’s a negotiation as to how much of that your agent will split with a buyer’s agent. 2%-3% is typical. Remember, the higher the sales price the higher the sales commission to the agent will be. And it’s your money and time used to upgrade your home to achieve a higher sales price. For example, if your house sells for $700,000, the commission you would pay is $49,000 at 7%.
Imagine not being able to make repairs, listing your house for less than the competition, and still having to pay a real estate commission. When you sell directly to us as home buyers, you pay zero commission and keep that 7% in your pocket.
4. No Showings or Waiting for a Buyer
Let’s say that now you have hired an agent and agreed to terms. Within three days of signing the binding listing agreement, the agent must list your house for sale on the California Regional Multiple Listing Service (MLS). This service is an industry standard used to fully disclose the commission a buyer’s agent will earn as well as provide the information needed about the property.
Within this time your agent will need to get photos taken of the inside and outside of your house so buyers get an idea of what to expect when touring your home. The better the photos and condition of the home, the larger more interest you will get which should translate into more offers you receive.
A real estate agent holds open houses for two reasons: one, to sell your house, and two, as a lead generator to meet other people who may sell or want to buy a house that is not yours. Usually, open houses are held on Sunday early afternoons and will continue each week until your house is under contract. This means that you need to clean your house to make it show-ready and leave for about 4 hours with your children and pets so that buyers can walk through your house.
We do walk through your house too before giving you an offer, but it is only once and we do not want you to clean up anything or leave the house. We want to meet you and hear about your house and your goals. Within 24 hours of our on-site inspection, we will get you a fair cash offer with no obligation. We offer a professional experience with excellent customer service and personal contact.
5. No Appraisals, Inspections or Bank Approvals
For our purposes, let’s give the best-case scenario and say it took two weeks to choose an agent and list your house for sale. In this hot Southern California real estate market, houses are under contract within 11 days. If all things go well, and there are no problems with home inspection findings, or lender qualifications issues, your house will sell in 30 days. In this best-case scenario, selling a house with a real estate agent took 55 days.
Now, very few real estate transactions experience no problems. In fact, a recent study conducted by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) found that 5% of all purchase agreements over the past 3 months were terminated before they could reach closing (July 2021). There are many reasons why pending home sales fall through and fail to close – and each one means that the seller has to start the sales process all over.
When a buyer can only purchase your home by getting a loan from a lender or bank, your home must meet certain requirements established by the lender or bank. These are part of the Physical Contingency period and the Financing Contingency period. The default time frame a buy has to waive these contingencies is 17 days, however, oftentimes lenders require up to 30 days to secure a loan for the buyer. It is within these 17 critical days that a home sale can die.
Some reasons a pending home sale can fall through could be because the home inspection finds major damage that neither the seller nor buyer wants to pay for, the appraisal is lower than the sale price, and neither the seller nor buyer wants to go up or down, the buyer fails to fully qualify for a mortgage, the buyer changes their mind. A good real estate agent can find a solution to fix most problems that come up during this process, but it usually requires that both parties compromise. Sometimes the seller needs to pay the extra costs or provide the buyer with a credit, or sometimes the seller needs to allow for an extension to the buyer for more time.
Selling your house to a direct home buyer, like Fast Home Buyers, removes these burdensome scenarios. Within 24 hours of our on-site walk-through with you, we will get you a fair cash offer with no obligation. If you agree to the price, we open escrow with a local, trusted company and can close in 7 days with cash wired directly to you. We require no repairs, no fees, no commissions, no open houses, no appraisals, and no inspection reports – just time to properly deal with the paperwork required to purchase a home.
Selling directly to a home buyer like us at Fast Home Buyers means that we will buy your house all cash in its current as-is condition, no matter what your circumstances are, pay all closing costs, charge zero commission, and close in as little as 7 days. Imagine next week you could no longer have the hassle of your home with cash in your pocket and ready to start living your life.
Give us a call so we can show you options to help solve your current situation.
