It is the goal of almost all homeowners to make the maximum amount of money they can on their home sale. However, this goal can be elusive to some. However, it doesn’t take long to acquire the skills you need to sell your house. Some of your home-sale preparation will involve renovations. Other preparations will ask you to learn a little marketing, and still others will require you to be savvy on your next sale. Here are five ways you can bring in more profit when selling your home.
- Landscaping and Curb Appeal
The outside of your home gives prospective homebuyers their first glimpse of your home. You may not want to invest the time into sprucing up the landscaping or boosting up the curb appeal, but you should. Homeowners who have a nicely landscaped home can increase their profits by 5.5% to 12.7%. Aside from the landscaping, you’ll want to pressure wash the driveway, replace worn siding, and even replace the door so that the front of the home looks inviting.
- Insulate the Attic
Not all home improvement projects are created equal, even the ones that have a good ROI. While changing out your front door will net a 91.1% ROI and a stone veneer will fetch an ROI of 92.9%, it’s the addition of insulation to the attic that brings the best remodeling ROI. You’ll make back 116.9% on this remodel once you sell your home.
- Buy a Less Expensive House the Next Time
You’ll pay taxes on your home sale – maybe more than you should – unless you know how to maximize your home sale situation. For example, you might sell your home for $91K, intending to buy a home in the $80K range following the sale of your home. The $11K difference between these two transaction is taxable, but you can offset some of the tax burden to maximize your profit.
However, if you’ve made improvements to your home before you sell it, those can be written off, thus increasing your profits. Say your home improvements came to K. (Tramadol) Your taxable profit falls from $11K to $6K. In a related note, you might even be able to make even more money if you look for a home that has a “for sale by owner” sign in the front yard. Making a bid on that home could drive up your profit even more.
- Timing is Everything
Your local real estate market likely has a “best-time-to-sell” window. That might be in the winter if you live in a warm climate. It might be in the summer if you live in a cold climate. You may not feel like waiting a long time to sell your home, but doing so can make a $20,000 difference or more.
- Create a Sense of Urgency
A little marketing goes a long way when it comes to home sales. Aside from properly staging your home and uploading quality photos to your Realtor’s website, you can also employ some marketing tricks. For example, plan on having your showing on a Saturday morning around 11:00 a.m. Invite all your prospects to your home at that time. You’ll create a sense of competition between the potential buyers, and one or two of whom may put in a higher offer in order to win the bid.
Closing Thoughts
In order to maximize the profits from selling your home, it’s best to combine one or more of these strategies come sale time. Selling high and buying low, choosing the right season, and making the right repairs are just some of the ways you can make more on your home’s sale. It all boils down to preparation and planning, which will have been tasks worth doing if you make $20,000 or more extra on the sale of your home.
