You may be in the fortunate position of having an extra property or an inheritance to make liquid and so you have to sell a home fast.
Unfortunately, there are also circumstances where people need to sell for other reasons. One thing that everyone has in common when selling a home is the lengthy process involved especially when you want to sell your home fast.
How Long Does It Take To Sell and Settle a House?
Selling your home is just a part of the process. To get cash in your bank account for your home, you have to go through both the sales process as well as time for cooling off and then time to settle. This can take months.
Selling Your Home
If you are taking the conventional path of selling your home through a real estate agent, there are a few things to consider that will affect the time to sell your house. However, in general, the SA housing market has been quite active and has seen some properties sell within the first few weeks of being listed. Further, there are aspects to understand before reaching the listing stage which include:
- Your Asking Price – Are you wanting top dollar or more than what the current market is willing to pay? You may end up with an unsold property and those who are house hunting will notice if a property has been listed for some time.
- Finding a trusted agent – There are good agents and there are great agents. Knowledge, experience, professionalism as in any industry will go a long way. You also want your agent to be up front and honest with you with your asking price.
- Presentation – How does your property look in the eyes of a buyer? Often buyers will view a property before making an offer. If your property is not well presented, you may need to improve how your property looks on the outside and inside with some minor home improvements, repairs and a good clean. These all take time and money.
- Home Staging – this has become more important in a competitive market on top of the general presentation of your home. Empty rooms and even personal furniture do not always give a good visualization of what can be done with the property. Good home stagers will stage a home to what the public wants to see.
Days On The Market
According to the linked article from the well-known property website Domain, days on the market for Greater Adelaide on a rolling 3 month aggregation of data showed that houses were on the market for 59 days.
See article here: https://www.domain.com.au/news/how-long-does-it-take-to-sell-a-house-in-the-current-property-market-faster-than-you-think-1169415/
Settling Your Home
When you have agreed on a price and are ready to sell, there are often factors that come into play which could affect how long it takes to settle. Quite often this is a 4-6 week process in South Australia but it can take longer. Things to consider for settlement:
- Your Conveyancer – a well experienced and organized conveyancer will make a world of difference. They are not only efficient at settling your property, they may also identify any potential issues that may arise before they even occur which could delay or hinder settlement.
- Subject to Finance – quite often the buyer will ask for the contract to be drawn subject to finance. This is a potential out for the buyer and if they are unable to obtain finance, not only have you waited for the buyer’s financial institution to approve their loan, you may need to go through the whole sales process again. A good agent may have still have some potential buyers but this is not always guaranteed.
- Subject To Valuation – From the buyer and the financier, properties being purchased are subject to valuation as it may affect how much the buyer can afford to borrow. This process can take several weeks.
- Subject to Inspection – The buyer may insist on a building inspection to identify that all aspects of the property are satisfactory to mitigate any unforeseen expenses after the purchase.
- Subject to sale or settlement – This often happens when buyers are upgrading or downgrading properties. This generally occurs because the buyer is reliant on their property being sold in order to complete their purchase transaction with you.
- Your Sale Contract – The sale contract may have some requirements to be met where the buyer may have included obligations from your end whether it’s repairs, or removal of certain fixtures and fittings etc.
In a worst-case scenario, these ‘subject to’ conditions could potentially see the contract being terminated before settlement which effectively means having to start the sales process again.
If the sales process needs to start again, your agent may have a list of interested buyers but that does not mean that the buyers will still be on the market or whether they will offer the price that you seek.
How To Sell Your Home Fast
If you’ve reached this point now, there’s a good chance that you are looking to sell your home fast and as you can see from above, the sales process can be a timely one. Even if an agent finds you a buyer who offers a cash contract, there is still the time needed to employ the agent, advertise and get an offer as well as the time needed for property settlement.
In general, the quickest way to sell your home fast is to find a cash buyer. There are some buyers out there who have saved up to buy their home and there are also home buying companies like us here at Sell My Home Today who are here to help.
We work with properties all day long so we don’t need you to do the landscaping, deep cleaning or to replace the fly screen to make a sale to someone who might not even want it when they move in. We save our customers time and money by making an offer on your property as it is, right now!
If you’re happy with our no obligation proposal, that’s when we get down to business and get contracts drawn up with the aim to settle with you ASAP.
If you need cash for your home fast, get in touch with us today by giving our friendly team a call or completing our proposal form to give us some basic details of your property.