Listing prep
What to know about selling your home
It’s a good time to be a home seller — homes are selling fast and for a premium — but that doesn’t mean you can jump into the market ill-prepared.
Roughly 1 in 6 homeowners plan on selling their home in the next 18 months, according to a new NerdWallet survey conducted online by The
Harris Poll among 2,127 homeowners. Here’s what you need to know if you plan to join their ranks:
1 Home improvements In addition to cleaning your house for showings, preparing to sell your home often means doing repairs and upgrades. But inventory is so tight that homebuyers may be open to buying homes that are less than perfect. Unless the home has a major issue like a leaky roof, sellers could likely save some money by limiting or forgoing expensive projects altogether.
“You really can get away without doing renovations and minor repairs,” says Holden Lewis, NerdWallet mortgages expert. “Unless the house has a major problem like a leaky roof, you’re probably better off selling as-is. Make it a priority to declutter and depersonalize the home so it’s easy for buyers to imagine themselves living there. The buyers can fix it up and renovate it on their own dime and schedule.”
2 Move quickly If you list your home in this market, there’s little question of the outcome. Barring any significant faults or dramatic overpricing, you’ll sell your home. It will happen quickly, and you could receive multiple offers over listing price.
Single-family homes are in high demand, so selling now means you’ll sell faster and for a higher price than you would under other conditions.
Existing homes are only on the market for an average of 20 days, according to the most recent data from the National Association of Realtors — that’s listed and under contract in less than three weeks. So be prepared to sell the moment you hang that “For Sale” sign.
3 Replacement home The very things that make it a good time to sell make it a tough time to buy a different house.
Given the likely ease with which you’ll sell and the difficulty you might have finding a replacement home, it may make sense to be under contract on a purchase when or soon after your home hits the market.
You can make the contract of the sale of your home contingent on finding suitable housing. While buyers are usually reluctant to do this, the intense market conditions may make it acceptable.