So, you’re ready to sell your home? Of course, as a homeowner, you can choose to sell it anytime you’d like, but you might wonder how long the home selling process takes.
This is a great question, but the answer depends.
If you sell it traditionally, it might take 71 days before receiving the check from your house proceeds. However, if you sell it for cash, you’ll have a faster solution.
The traditional home selling process takes time because it requires steps. If you’re interested in learning more about this process and the required steps, here is a guide to help you learn more about the time it takes to sell a home.
Staging the Home
One of the most time-consuming tasks of selling a home is staging it. What in the world is staging, you might wonder?
Staging is the process that helps you prepare your home for sale. The primary goal is to complete work that improves the home’s looks, appeals, and desires. In theory, staging a home helps you find a buyer faster.
The Downsides of Staging
So, what’s the downside of staging? Here are the two main ones:
The Time It Takes
While it’s true that some homes need fewer steps than others, the work your home needs depends on its condition. In any case, staging takes time.
For example, if your home doesn’t need much, you might only spend two or three weeks preparing it. On the other hand, if your home needs a lot of work, you might spend a few months completing the necessary steps.
The Money It Requires
If you discuss selling your home with a realtor, they’ll offer many home selling tips. However, you can guarantee that staging is one of the top ones. Not only does it take time, but staging also costs money.
Staging might take time and money, but it also helps you sell your house faster after listing it and for a higher price.
The Tasks You Might Need to Do
What tasks should you do during this process? Here are some of the main ones that many homeowners complete when staging their homes:
Cleaning and Decluttering
Cleaning and decluttering are two steps that most homeowners must complete during the staging process. Offering a clean, tidy, uncluttered home is essential for selling a house today.
Painting
Painting is also necessary for most homeowners. Homebuyers look for homes that have fresh, neutral paint colors on the walls. In fact, putting a coat of paint on your walls is one of the best staging steps to take.
Fixing Things
Homebuyers will ask you to fix things if they discover them when viewing your home. Repairs are one of the most common contingencies that homeowners ask for when making offers.
Improving the Curb Appeal
Your home offers a first impression to anyone that views it, and the first thing people see is the yard. So you might need to work on your home’s curb appeal to create positive first impressions to homebuyers.
Updating the Bathrooms or Kitchen
If your home has an outdated kitchen or bathroom, renovating it is necessary.
Homeowners don’t want outdated kitchens and bathrooms. In fact, they’ll reflect these necessary updates in their offers if they decide to buy your house.
After reading this list, you might feel overwhelmed as you see how costly and time-consuming these tasks can be. Yet, they’re necessary for selling unless you sell through a different method.
The other option you can use is selling your house for cash. A cash buyer won’t ask you to stage your home, which means you’ll save time and money by selling it to a cash investor. You’ll also experience other benefits.
Pre-Listing Inspections and Research
The next step that might take some time is getting the inspections and services you need before listing your home. Some homeowners skip these steps, but they’re helpful if you want a smoother and faster sale.
Here are two services you might want to hire before listing your home:
Pre-Listing Inspection
The first is a pre-listing inspection. A pre-listing inspection is exactly like a home inspection a person gets when buying a house. The difference is the timing and purpose.
The timing of a pre-listing inspection is before listing the home, as the name implies.
The purpose is to provide insight into the potential problems the home has. If you find out the problems before listing your home, it gives you time to fix them.
Fixing the issues before listing reduces your time on these things after accepting an offer on your house.
Appraisal
The second service to consider is an appraisal. Appraisals aren’t free or required for homeowners when listing their houses, but they’re helpful.
A home appraisal tells your home’s current value. If you invest in an appraisal before listing the property, you can ask for the right amount for your house. The result is that you might sell the house for a higher amount.
As you can imagine, getting these services has a few downsides: time and money. You’ll have to pay the fees out of your pocket, and it will take time to complete them.
If you’re in a hurry and don’t want to wait for these services, you always have the option of selling to a cash buyer. Otherwise, plan to spend at least a month handling these tasks.
You can also plan to spend another few weeks completing any other repairs you discovered through the pre-listing inspection.
Listing Process
Once you complete the steps needed to prepare your house and research its value and condition, you can hire a real estate agent. The purpose of this is to list your home on the market.
Listing your home involves several things, including the following:
- Choosing an agent
- Inviting the agent to your home
- Discussing the details of the sale
- Completing the contract and paperwork
- Waiting for a photographer to take pictures
These are the main steps required to list a home for sale. Once listed, your home will appear on databases of homes for sale, and people might start contacting your agent within a few days for showings.
The listing process doesn’t happen overnight, either. Instead, you might spend around two weeks waiting for your listing to appear on the databases.
Learning how to sell a house through other methods might help you eliminate some time spent on these steps, and you can always consider selling to a cash buyer. Cash home sales are much faster.
Home Showings
By this point, you’re probably asking, “how long does it take to sell a house?” Unfortunately, you’re still not even close to selling yet, even after completing all the steps listed.
You’ll still have a few steps to complete. The next one is offering home showings. Home showings allow interested buyers to have private viewings of your home.
Your real estate agent schedules these visits when interested buyers or agents contact them. They’ll work out a convenient time for you and the buyers.
Finding a buyer might require showing your home once or many times. The number of showings you have depends on many factors, including your home’s appeal, condition, location, and price.
For example, some homes receive offers within a few days of their live listings. Others, though, might wait a few weeks or months before receiving any offers.
Would you like to avoid all of these steps? If so, you can sell your house in around two weeks by contacting a cash buyer. You won’t have any showings if you handle your sale this way.
Negotiating an Offer
At some point, a buyer will make an offer to purchase your home. This offer will state several vital things that you must review, including the following:
- Offer amount
- Timing of closing
- Type of loan they’ll use
- Contingencies
Your job is to review this offer and respond to it. You can respond in several ways, including accepting it or rejecting it. You can also counter it if you’d like to make a few changes.
The negotiation process might be simple, taking only a day or two. But, on the other hand, it can be more complex in some cases, taking a week or two to handle.
Unfortunately, you can’t proceed to the final stages of the home selling process until you reach a deal you both agree on with the offer.
Steps Required Before Closing
After agreeing on your home sale, both parties have some work to do.
The Seller’s Responsibilities
As the seller, you’ll need to do a few things. For example, one thing you might have to do is complete some steps listed on the contract if the seller asked for contingencies.
Additionally, did the seller ask you to fix things, paint rooms, or change things? If so, it’s your responsibility to do these things before closing.
Next, you’ll have to pack and handle all your moving activities. You might have to find a place to move to and set up the utilities there. Additionally, you’ll have to determine how to transport your things.
You’ll also have to clean your home, locate the house keys, and contact your utility companies to turn off the utilities on a specific date.
Additionally, you must work with the buyer to ensure that professionals can enter your home to complete services, such as home inspections.
The Buyer’s Responsibilities
The buyer has even more responsibilities to complete before closing.
For example, the buyer must contact inspection companies to arrange any necessary evaluations. This might include a home inspection, septic inspection, and termite inspection.
The buyer must also work with their lender to ensure their finances are in order. For example, the lender might ask the buyer for recent pay stubs, bank statements, or tax returns, and the buyer must comply.
When the lender has everything they need, they’ll send the file to the underwriting department. Unfortunately, the home sale can’t close until the underwriters approve everything, and this also takes time.
If the lender experiences problems with the closing steps, they can deny offering the buyer a loan. For example, if your home doesn’t appraise for a high-enough amount, the lender might not give the buyer the loan.
If any major problems occur during this step, you might have to start the process all over. Again, you can avoid the time it takes to complete this step by working with a cash buyer.
Cash buyers don’t require appraisals, inspections, or contingencies. Instead, they purchase properties as-is, so there is no risk of the deal falling through.
Closing the Deal
The final step of selling a house through a real estate agent is attending the mortgage closing appointment. This appointment typically occurs within 30 to 45 days from when you accept the offer.
The appointment takes around an hour, and you’ll leave with a check in your hand.
If this process seems too time-consuming and difficult, you can look for a different home selling strategy. As mentioned, a simpler option is to sell your house to a cash buyer.
Did you know that you can sell to a cash buyer in three simple steps?
You start by contacting the buyer. Next, you wait for the offer. If you accept the offer, you wait just a couple of weeks to close on the deal.
It’s that simple.
Shorten the Home Selling Process by Selling for Cash
The home selling process doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, it takes time, work, and money. But there’s an easier solution.
You could find a cash buyer in your city. If you live in Wilmington, NC, call us. We’ll give you a cash offer for your house, and you’ll have the cash within a few weeks.
Are you ready to learn more? Visit our website or call us to learn more about the cash home selling process.