Buying a house is a huge investment, and it’s not something people will buy on a whim; in other words, it’s going to be a bit difficult to sell houses with ease. On the other hand, a house is one of the main necessities, therefore there will always be customers interested in making such a purchase. Houses are not cheap, so one sale can earn you a lot of money, and thereby help you achieve an admirable level of financial stability.
It is for this reason that house flipping has become so alluring in the first place. It is a profession that carries a lot of risks for inexperienced sellers, but once you get a hang of it, it will result in a truly lucrative venture.
Here is an opportunity to gain some valuable insights that can help you be more efficient with flipping houses. The following article will give you some tips on how to boost the price and the chances of making a sale, as well as how to mitigate potential risks. Since this can be a risky hobby, it’s good to know how to eliminate potential problems, and how to have a healthy approach to house sales.
Finding an undervalue property
The key component of house flipping is to find a house that won’t cost you too much, and then re-sell it for a much higher price. In other words, you need to find an undervalued property that you can buy and then improve. Unfortunately, you need to find such a deal on your own. You can do this by simply browsing through the neighborhood and finding the houses someone else owns, but does not live there anymore. You can then track them down using public records and just give them a call.
If you have your own real estate agent, you can ask him or her to get you that information, since real estate agents usually have clients with a piece of property they were unable to sell so far. Bear in mind that you can’t be too picky about these homes. There is a good reason why they are undervalued, and it’s going to take a lot of work to restore them to their tip-top condition.
So, before you buy, do some calculations to ascertain just how much money you’ll need for making the necessary repairs and improvements.
Doing the necessary repairs
Basically, what you need to do is make sure that everything that is absolutely necessary for the house to “function” properly is tip-top. In other words, make sure all of the pipes are replaced so that new owners won’t complain about their condition. You should also inspect the wiring in the house and try out all of the sockets to see if they are functioning properly, and check if the heating system is working.
You can also replace old faucets, and you can replace the bathroom and kitchen tiles if some of them have started to crack over the years. Of course, this tends to be a lot of work, so if there are only small cracks in the bathroom that won’t bother anyone, put a mirror on top of them, or remove them and use that space to install a useful gadget like a fan, for example.
You might also need to do some work in the garden, if the property was not practically abandoned. This means that you’ll need to cut down the grass and weeds and plant some new flowers along with new grass. Of course, this highly depends on the season when you plan on doing those repairs, since you certainly won’t do any garden work during winter.
Knowing the market
One way of getting a house for a good price and also getting its price up is to be well acquainted with current market prices. As we all know, the economy is in a constant ebb and flow, thus the prices of houses are affected by it. If you want an undervalue home to purchase and rejuvenate, then you should see with your real estate agent if the prices are low.
Also, you need to ask around about their speculations for the future of the market; if the prices will continue to decrease, then buying a house might not be the best course of action. Another thing that might help you find customers and good prices is a real estate software solution; after all, these are the tools that all the big real estate agencies use to help them with their work.
Just make sure you look at some online reviews, so that you can find a piece of software that will meet your needs. When you find software for real estate agencies that can help you, see if there is a trial period and try it out before you buy it.
Knowing when to sell
House prices are not the only element that should influence your purchase. Believe it or not, seasons can also have an impact on sales. Of course, this should not be a major factor when you are making a decision, but it’s something to think about and possibly take into a consideration. Theoretically, the best chances for you to sell a house is during spring.
There are no major holidays, people are still working, so no funds are going aside for a vacation, and your front yard can bloom, making your house even more attractive. Furthermore, people are generally in a better mood, so the conditions for buying a house are ideal. Autumn, is also a good time to sell; again, no major holidays or expenses.
In winter, people usually put money aside to pay for heating and for Christmas holidays, so they are less likely to make an expensive purchase. In summer, most of them are away on a holiday and their funds are depleted because of it. So, try to avoid putting your house on sale during these two seasons, since if the house is on the market for too long, potential buyers might start to wonder if there is something wrong with it.
Adding improvements to house to boost the price
Once you buy the house and make all of the necessary repairs, you can make some further investments and boost the price significantly. For starters, you can equip the house with an air-condition unit and, as mentioned, you can do some work to beautify the garden. You can add a pond or a small fountain in the yard and it will look really nice. A hammock can also be a nice touch, and customers will just love it.
It is important that everything goes smoothly when potential buyers are coming over to check out the house, so call the exterminator to makes sure no insects or rodents will be present inside your home. Moreover, check your house for mold, and see if there are conditions for mold spores to emerge.
If the atmosphere is humid, you can be unpleasantly surprised one day, so try to eliminate all of these nasty obstacles. You can also significantly boost the value of the house by adding solar panels, or a tankless heater in the bathroom, but these are all expensive investments, so do this if you are certain that the house will sell.
Working on your presentation
Another thing to worry about is impressing the customers. In other words, you need to create a good presentation in order to make them come over in the first place. You can create a website where your will put all of your available houses. You should use high quality photography when you are displaying the rooms, and you can also use videos to give them a virtual tour of the home. It would also be nice if you can create a 3D tour of the house, so that the viewers can move from one room to another with a 360 degree field of vision.
Additionally, you should use social media profiles, since both videos and pictures can be uploaded there, and people are very likely to contact you if you are active on your profiles. Lastly, you can post online ads or newspaper ads as well, since there are still people who look for houses using these methods.
Having a good strategy
Finally, it’s good to have a backup plan, if the conditions for selling a house are not ideal at any given moment. In that case, you can back off from the sale and put the place up for rent. You can find tenants, get some funds in the process and wait for the market to pick up again and for the house prices to increase. When you are finding tenants, make sure the contract is flexible, because you’ll need to act fast when the prices recover.
There you have it, these are some things you can do in order to boost the chances of your sale and to increase the price of your new property. It may appear costly, but you need to offer more if you are to adequately compete with other real estate agencies. Remember to think things through and not to act rashly and you’ll be fine.
