How To Sell My Home Fast (2020)

Selling a home is not as easy as selling your stock in the market. Selling your home can be stressful or require a long period of time from getting ready to enter the market till the actual closing date. In this article I’ve explained Top 8 tactics that help you to sell your home very fast! 

In today’s world, especially after the incidents such as COVID19 and their effects on the economy, it’s more important for homeowners to be able to cash out quickly and sell their houses or condos faster, if they need to.

Here’s how to sell a house fast:

1. Hire the right real estate agent

This might look very obvious, but when the markets are in turmoil, it’s super important to choose the right REALTOR for the job if you want to sell a house fast.

There are many ways to find the right real estate agent, in this post you can read how to find the best real estate agent!

When choosing the real estate agent for the job, make sure the realtor knows your area and your market. On top of that the Realtor must be well equipped with various marketing tools!

As a personal experience, I’d like to add that, I’d make sure my house is NOT TOO SMALL for my Realtor, if I want to sell my house fast of course!

Let me explain that with an example. If you go and hire the #1 Realtor in the Universe, with one Trillion dollars sales and all those record breaking numbers and you list a $700,000 home with them, chances are high that you might not get the full attention of that realtor! You might get in touch with the real estate agent’s assistant!

When you want to sell a house fast, you want to make sure to hire a real estate agent who dedicates time and energy to your property.

2. Choose the right pricing strategy

This is another super important thing to consider when you want to sell your house or condo very fast. General home sellers might think that they should list their house high, so then chances are they get a higher price for the home! Well, I’ll explain why it’s not a good idea to list a home high!

When you list a home way higher than the market value, you might deter potential buyers in the first place! For example, your home is worth $700,000, and you list it for $750K, yet there are some buyers whose mortgage broker advised them with a purchase power of $710K. They are a perfect fit for your home and can be potential buyers, however they will never see your listing at the first place because their cut off limit is $710K.

On the other hand imagine, your home is worth $700K yet you list it at $750K. What will happen is that those buyers in the area who are looking for properties in the range of $750K to $800K, come to visit your property. In this case also your house might not stand out, guess why? Because in this case your house is up to compete with other houses in the area which are slightly more renovated, or in a better shape, or have one or two extra rooms, or maybe one or more parking garage! So your house might not stand out between your competition!

P.s. In Toronto’s real estate market, depending on the area, and the property and time, the multiple offers also might happen for rightly priced homes!

The best strategy for pricing is to price it right, at or near market value! A Top Toronto Real Estate Agent can help you to set the right pricing strategy!

Read more: Listing Strategy in Toronto Real Estate Market

3. Stage your house

This one is very important and will get the houses sold fast with a higher price! If you work with a full service real estate agent, they might add that to their services too. But discount brokers usually wouldn’t, and that’s another reason that you might not be able to get the most amount of money for your home in the fastest possible time.

Staging a home usually can be done in a day or two!

4. Be ready for a quick closing

When you want to sell your home fast, you need to be ready for any opportunity and offer that comes along! What does that mean? If you get an offer with quick closing ( that’s the whole point of selling your house fast) you should be practically ready to accommodate that offer! If the property is vacant, then it’s fine, you might be able to close very quickly.

But if you live in the property, make sure to have contingency plans, such as having temporary accommodation and storage for the transition time between your next home and your current home, if the closings are not overlapping!

5. Be Accommodating with all the showings

This is very important to do when you want to sell your home fast. Why should you be accommodating with all the showings?

Most of the buyers and agents, when going on a tour, select a bunch of similar homes in the same area. So if you refuse a showing, the potential buyers might see other competitor’s houses or condos in the area, but not be able to see yours. They might come back another time, but also there are chances that they like another competitor’s house and decide not to see yours anymore. They might prepare an offer for the house that they liked, and if they get it, then that buyer is out of the potential buyers pool!

In Toronto’s real estate market, sales usually happen quicker than in many other cities across Canada or the US. Thus depending on your property, price point, and your area, it might be a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

Also it’s better for you to leave home during the showings ( if possible). Because when the sellers are home, usually the buyers don’t feel that comfort to talk freely about things among themselves, etc.

Below are the things that you can do in order to accommodate the maximum showings possible:

KIDS. If you have kids you know that LOL. If possible try to keep them busy and cooperative. If you have your parents living near you, you might have the luxury of sending them to their grandparents. Or maybe bribe them with cinema and pizza to keep them cooperative and take them outside of home during the showings!

Alternatively you might get temporary accommodation to keep the home vacant during regular showing times 9AM to 8PM, all the week and especially during the weekends. So if you can find a temporary place for a few weeks, that can be helpful as well!

Read More :Why Do Some Listings Don’t Get Offers?

6. Make sure to have a big online presence

This one you need to ask your real estate agent to make this happen for you. Make sure to insist on a big online presence when you talk to your real estate agent. It includes MLS, Realtor.ca, and thousands of other IDX websites on the internet, but that’s not all of it!

Make sure to ask your agent to geo target and demo target the potential buyers pool for you. I have gotten extraordinary results with that kind of online presentation of our listings. We brought that system of maximum exposure and started working with it in 2017, we call our system as “ 360° Marketing “, which covers a huge amount of the audience that could be potential buyers for a home!

7. Declutter and keep the house clean

First impressions are very important. Usually buyers decide to stay and see the house fully, or leave within the first 5 minutes of visiting a property. If your house is full of clutter, then the chances are high the buyer leaves even before seeing the upstairs or your nicely finished basement.

In order to declutter, I suggest for you to arrange a storage locker for a month or two during the showings. The last resort is to put your extra things in the garage, yet I don’t recommend that! An outside storage is a better solution for this. Or if you are downsizing and you don’t need much of your stuff, you can either Donate them, or throw them away. There are companies that take your donations for free! Habitat for Humanity is one of those companies that you can contact!

Cleaning is also very important. Make sure to deep clean your house before photography or videography, and maintain it clean the whole time for showings.

8. Do small touch ups and minor renos

This is one of the things that usually pays off way more than you spend. It not only helps you with selling your house or condo quickly, yet helps you get more money for your home too!

If your house needs fresh paint, don’t hesitate to do it. Or if it’s only the living room, just do it. It pays off. Ask your real estate agent to tell you about the minor touch ups or renos that are needed during staging consultation!

Regarding renos, if you wanna sell your home fast, you might not be able to renovate the kitchen or bathroom in a timely manner. But you still can change a broken mirror within less than a day!

9. Proper Marketing Strategy

If you wanna sell a property quickly, it’s very important to know how and where to market it. When you hire a top real estate agent, they should be able to help you with that. For example, a detached house needs a different marketing strategy than a condo in Downtown!

If you are using a full service real estate agent, your Realtor should be able to come up with a proper Marketing Strategy based on your property, area, and price point!

10. Depersonalize your house

In general, there are two types of buyers in the market! The buyers are either end users or investors. Depending on the property type that you have, you attract one or another (or both). Let’s say if you have a walk up that you want to sell, you most likely will be dealing with investor buyers. Whereas if you have a single family detached house, you most likely will be dealing with end users who want to buy a house for their family. Condos downtown would attract both groups of buyers though.

In order to make the urge in the buyers to buy your home and sell your home fast, you need to make them feel that “ This is it!”. Buyers have to imagine and visualize themselves living in the property. Once they get that feeling they’ll step forward.

Read More: Should You Buy Or Sell First In The Toronto Real Estate Market?

How to depersonalize in order to sell my home quickly?

If you have religious signs in your living room, I suggest putting them somewhere else during the showings because you don’t know who might be the potential buyer! If you have your family photos hanging out of every wall, again, it’s a good idea to remove them during the showings. You need to let the buyers get the feeling and imagine themselves living in your home.