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If you are looking to sell your beautiful Sarasota home, you have one solitary goal in mind: to make as much money as possible from your sale. But the more improvements and fixes you make to your home now, the more you can ask for and the better the chances are that you'll sell quickly. It's a catch-22 that every home owner faces. Sell it as is and save the repair money or take some time and fix it up right and hope to make your money back later?
There are a few different things that a seller needs to take into consideration before they set their sell price and decide how many repairs they want to do to the place. First off, it's a good idea to get a gage on how hot your local market is. Why does something like that matter? If you find yourself immersed in a red hot Sarasota FL real estate market where properties are sold the moment they show up and people are making money hand over fist, you might want to forget about spending any extra money to upgrade your home. Your home is going to sell so quickly once you put it on the market, you can go ahead and overvalue it a little and still not worry about it sitting around on the market for very long.
But there are two sides to every coin. If the local housing market is icy cold, you might want to get your hammer, some nails and the phone numbers for the nearest contractors. Chances are, if you want to sell your home in a buyer's market, you'll need to make your place look as spiffy and new as possible. You don't necessarily go as far as adding on a new room or deck, but you need to make sure that all minor repairs are taken care of ahead of time and most major repairs are either done or in the process of getting done.
Of course, large parts of the decision might not even be up to you. As part of the home buying process, most buyers will bring in a third party inspector to check the home out top to bottom and make sure they aren't buying a lemon. The inspector will come away with a list of all repairs that should be made before the transaction in complete, and then the buyer can include these repairs as part of their offer sheet. The seller will be required to meet all of the conditions of the buyer's offer for the sale to go through, so it's wise to simply complete these repairs before hand so it doesn't look like you're trying to put one over on prospective buyers.
There is no such thing as a lemon law for homes, but if you intentionally mislead buyers and then complete the home buying process, you could be held criminally liable if something were to go wrong. You cannot legally withhold serious problems or defects within a home during the sale process. It is considered a very serious crime and it is not something to be taken lightly. Even though you shouldn't volunteer any minor problems with your home, you do need to mention major ones and you'll most likely be required to fix them yourself before you can sell.
Walking the tightrope between repairs and selling can be a challenge. You want to watch every penny but you also want to make your home as salable as possible. A great way to take care of this problem is to use the local real estate market to gage how long your home will be available and go from there. If the market is hot, sell as is. If the market is cold, fix her up. And make sure you don't take the easy way out because there can be serious criminal consequences if you do. By watching local trends, you can manage your repair budget wisely and still sell your home for a ton. You don't have to "flip" your home to sell it, but those that go all out do tend to make a larger profit on their homes in the end. GBrey | 