Easily and Quickly Sell a Home from Out of State

Name: OutFactors
Brand: OutFactors

Posted in Home Selling

Sell a Home from Out of State the Quick and Easy Way

Did you suddenly find yourself the homeowner or custodian of a house located in another state that you need to sell? Perhaps, you need to help an elderly loved one who lives in another state sell their home. Selling a home when you do not live in the area can be difficult and especially challenging if the home is vacant or needs a lot of repairs.

If you find yourself in one of these situations, the information in this article can help you easily and quickly sell a house from out of state.

Selling a home under the best of circumstances is a hassle and a time-consuming task. Selling a home remotely can be stressful and leave you feeling helpless as you are forced to rely on other people who may not have the same agenda as you. Most people have never sold a home remotely and do not know where to begin. No wonder a recent article in the Daily Mail report says selling a home may be more stressful than bankruptcy, divorce, or the death of a loved one.

To make this process as stress-free and easy as possible, we will divide the process of selling a home remotely into small pieces and guide you through each step.

The First Step

Protect the Home
Typically, when a home is being sold remotely, it is not occupied. If this is your situation, you will have several additional issues and challenges that you will need to address.

In this first step, you will need to take steps to ensure the property is insured, physically protected, and will be maintained. Here are the items you need to do as soon as possible:

Make sure the home is physically secured. This includes making sure all windows, doors, gates and other means of entry are locked. You will need to leave the key with someone local, such as a friend or a house sitting company. You should also have a key placed in a combination lockbox somewhere on the property.
Notify the local police and fire department that the home is vacant and provide them your contact information. This way, if there is a problem, you will be notified immediately.
If the property has an alarm system, you should make sure it is fully functioning and being professionally monitored. Provide the alarm monitoring company with your contact information and request all future bills be mailed to you directly.
Having an alarm system and locking up will help but it will not deter an experienced thief or someone determined to break in. Many times, the thieves will break in to steal anything of value. This includes ripping the copper wiring and pipes from the walls to sell for scrap. You can greatly reduce the risk by having someone visit the home regularly, inspect and turn different lights off and on. This is best done by a local friend, but if that is not an option, you should engage the services of a professional house sitting company.

Property Insurance
You will need to verify the home is insured and the premiums are paid as required. You will also need to look at the coverage limits and limitations, especially if the home is not occupied. Due to the excessive risk posed by an unoccupied property, a standard homeowner policy will not cover a loss if the home was unoccupied for more than 30 days. If the home will be unoccupied longer than 30 days, you need to obtain a vacant home policy. An insurance policy for an unoccupied home will usually cost much more and have a lot of additional exclusions. We highly recommend that you shop around as the cost of insurance on an unoccupied home varies greatly.

Property Maintenance
A vacant home is a problem magnet. Old newspapers on the front porch and uncut grass will announce to everyone in the neighborhood that the home is vacant. To prevent this and ensure the value of the asset is maintained, you will need to do the following:

Submit a mail hold or forward request to the local post office.
Hire a lawn maintenance company to cut the lawn and clean around the outside of the home to remove evidence that it is unoccupied.
Contact the local utility and request services be left on (or resumed) and have the bills sent to you or set them up for automatic payment.
Have the water heater turned off, thermostats set to an appropriate temperature, and have one or two lights with low consumption light bulbs left on or set up a timer.
Verify with the regional taxing authority that all taxes are paid current and request all future notices be sent to you directly.
If there is a homeowners association, you will need to change the mailing address and confirm payments are current.

With the home protected, insured, and now being maintained, you will need to turn your attention to the items that need to be cleaned, repaired, or upgraded.

Cleaning and Removal of Personal Items
When we least expect it, life throws us a curveball so the house you need to sell might be full of personal items. How you deal with a house full of personal items can be a real challenge when you are hundreds of miles away.

Let’s take a look at the options and some deciding factors that will make this task easier:

The first step is to determine the resale value of the personal items and if there are any collectibles, heirlooms, pictures, or other personal items that the family may want to keep. If there are potential items that the family would like to keep or items of substantial value, we recommend that you or another family member personally travel to the home to sort through the items to decide what to keep, donate, sell or discard. If there are no family keepsakes and the value of the personal items is minimal, the time and cost of travel will outweigh the resale value of the items and you should consider other options.
If the items are of moderate value, you may want to consider hiring an estate sale company. A professional estate sale company will take a detailed inventory of everything in the home, assign a value, market the items, and hold an estate sale to sell as much as possible. This can be an excellent option if the personal items in the home have resale value. The estate sale company usually charges a percentage of total sales so it can be a win-win for both parties. Any unsold items can then be donated to a local charity or discarded.
Many times, the items in the home have minimal value. In this case, your best option would be to donate the items to a local charity. Many charities like the Salvation Army and Goodwill will send a truck to remove the items for free and give you a receipt for the value of what was donated. Be mindful, some items cannot be donated, like mattresses, so you will need to arrange for these to be disposed of.
The final step in the cleaning and removal of personal items process is to have the remaining personal items disposed of and the house cleaned. Many reputable companies will do this work at a reasonable price. Ask a local friend, the lawn maintenance guy, or the house sitter for a suggestion.

Property Condition
The hardest and most important part of selling a home is preparing the home to be put on the market. Before you can begin this step, you will need to have the property inspected.

For a reasonable cost, a professional home inspector will do a thorough inspection and provide you with a detailed report on their findings. This generally includes a list of items that are not functioning, code violations, systems that are defective or at the end of their useful life and need to be replaced.

With the inspection report in hand, you need to prepare an estimate of the cost to complete the repairs and upgrades, along with a realistic schedule for how long it will take contractors to do the work. This is a critical task that will determine the best method to sell the home. Therefore, take your time and be as accurate and thorough as possible.

Now that you have the necessary information to make an informed decision, let’s review your options.

You Can Hire a Real Estate Agent
If the home is in generally good condition and there are minimal repairs required, hiring a real estate agent to help you sell the home will most likely be your best option. You will still need to maintain the home while it is being marketed, and perform any repairs requested by the buyer. These are relatively minor and can be completed remotely.

Unless you know a good local agent, we advise that you interview multiple real estate agents until you find one that is a good fit. You should look for an agent with experience in working with an out of state seller. Take your time and choose wisely. You are placing a lot of trust in a real estate agent you may have never met and a successful sale is dependent on how well they perform.

Selling the traditional method with a real estate agent takes time and even after a contract is signed, it will take weeks for home inspections, title work, surveys, and buyer loan approval to be completed before you close. This can be costly because when selling a vacant home, time is money. Every day you are paying for security maintenance, insurance, utilities, and taxes. That means every day the sale is not completed is a day you lose money that you will never recover.

One final thing to keep in mind, it is typical for a real estate agent to get paid a 6% commission upon sale. If the home sells for $250,000, the real estate agent will get $15,000 off the top.

An Easy and Quick solution,
Sell Home As-is to a Home Cash Buyer

If the home needs a lot of work that would be costly and difficult to supervise remotely, the fastest and easiest way to sell a home remotely is to sell to a home cash buyer, like OutFactors. This is the hassle and risk-free way to sell a home for an out of state seller, and to get started, all you need to do is answer 4 simple questions. We will do the rest!

With OutFactors, you will sell the home in 1 day and get your cash in 10 days or less, thus avoiding all of the costs to clean, maintain, protect, repair, improve, and market the property. We put everything in writing using simple to read contract documents, the same Texas-approved documents used by every real estate agent in the state.

One of the biggest benefits of selling to a home cash buyer like OutFactors is how simple and fast it is to get the cash you need when you need it. Why worry about vandals breaking into the home or the amount of money you are losing every day the house sits vacant? We take care of the problems, you get cash for house. For additional information, please visit OutFactors.com, and if you are ready to get your fast and free cash for house offer, please click here. The people at OutFactors are super easy to talk to and will answer all of your questions.

Now You Know How to Easily Sell a House Fast from Out of State

We hope this article is informative and helpful. If you have any questions or would like additional information, we invite you to contact us at OutFactors.com.