The Benefits of a House Sale Net Sheet

Knowing the best strategy for selling your home isn’t always obvious. There is a lot of advice available online regarding what you should—and shouldn’t—do. Friends, family, and coworkers tend to want to give their own two cents based on personal experience as well. As well-meaning as these sources may be, the end result for many home sellers is just more confusion and, sometimes, a misguided decision. And when you’re also faced with selling a house during a separation, a medical crisis, or because the bank has threatened to take your home, the stress of your situation won’t help you see the best path more clearly.

Creating a house sale net sheet is one way to solve the problem of what could otherwise grow into an overwhelming state of indecision. Done correctly, it’s a highly effective tool for mapping out exactly how, and to whom, you should sell your home—especially when you need to sell your house fast. It also holds the potential to benefit your bottom line.

The benefit of using a house sale net sheet to inform how you sell your house can’t be overstated. After all, no one likes to be underpaid when selling their home.

What Is a House Sale Net Sheet?

A house sale net sheet is typically a comprehensive one-page document that accounts for all of the costs associated with selling a home. The purpose of drawing up such a document is to show what you, as the home seller, will realistically pocket once all of your expenses are subtracted from your selling price. This helps you intelligently entertain a variety of scenarios, such as whether you should prepare your house to sell to a traditional buyer by performing extensive repairs or simply sell it as-is to an all-cash buyer, usually an investor.

All too often, homeowners mistake the list price for their house as the net profit they will receive once it sells, forgetting all the money they spent to bring the home to market in the first place. Plus, there are all the fees you have to pay when selling a house—such as a cost to transfer the title and your real estate agent’s commission—that come out of your final payment when the transaction actually closes. It can be a shocking experience, especially when the house sells for less than you hoped or expected.

A house sale net sheet helps you bypass seller’s remorse by calculating all of your expenses upfront so that you can make financial decisions that benefit your bank account in the end.

All too often, homeowners mistake the list price for their house as the net profit they will receive once it sells, forgetting all the money they spent to bring the home to market in the first place.

Calculating Your Expenses and Potential Profit

Calculating all of your potential expenses so that you can determine how to achieve the most promising profit is simple, but not necessarily easy—or fast. You have to know in advance the cost to perform all the needed repairs or be willing to take the time to conduct detailed research. The same is true of the holding costs you’ll likely accrue while working on the home and how the market may shift by the time you’re ready to sell. Plus, there are the fees you’ll pay out when the deal does close, including any bank-levied penalties for early payoff of your loan.

There are multiple costs to consider for inclusion in your document, and the numbers, without fail, have to be as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, best guesses lead only to money loss. These numbers have to reflect your property’s age, size, and style, too and must include what it will probably sell for based on comparable houses that have recently sold in the area. So, if you’re selling a home that needs major repairs, is a few decades old, and has two bedrooms, don’t price your house based on the newer three-bedroom that sold nearby a few months ago. Your profit calculations will be off. Plus, you’re likely to scare off most buyers.

How you interpret your calculations and their impact on your personal situation matters as well. If you’re upside down in your mortgage, for example, it may not make sense to pour money into repairs since selling at full retail won’t help you break even. Short selling your home as-is may be your best course of action. Conversely, if you’ve only owned your home for five years or less, are current on payments, and live in a high-demand market, then doing all that you can to raise the home’s value could potentially raise your profit margin.

Our main goal is to help you net the highest possible number that also benefits your unique situation.

Where to Get Trusted Advice that Benefits Your Bottom Line

Gathering all the data so that you can see the options before you, then analyzing it correctly to ensure your decision nets the most money, can seem like a complicated endeavor. It is. Creating a net sheet for the sale of your house takes a lot of time, too—unless it’s something you already know how to do. But, the benefit of using one to inform how you sell your house, and to whom, can’t be overstated. After all, no one likes to be underpaid when selling their home.

That’s why, here at Sell Your House Direct, we create a house sale net sheet for each of our clients in addition to making a direct all-cash offer on the purchase of the home. Of course, we’d like to be the one that takes the house off your hands. But, what we can pay to close on your home, as-is, in seven days or less, may not be in your best interest. Since our main goal is to help you net the highest possible number that also benefits your unique situation, we may recommend you perform the repairs, hire a REALTOR®, and choose another buyer.

The decision is ultimately up to you, but we’re here to help you make it. We charge zero fees and commissions for this service, too. As local real estate advisors in the business of seeking solutions for sellers, it’s simply what we do.