I Need to Sell My House Fast. What Do I Do?

When you’re called to duty or relocating for a job, whether it’s across the country or across the Atlantic, you don’t always have time to get your life—or house—in order. Depending on the situation, you may get as few as two weeks’ notice to pack up and move out. It’s always jarring, especially when you have had time to sit still in one spot long enough to establish some roots in the community, make new friends, and even buy property. 

Past experience won’t necessarily keep you from anxiously asking, ‘I need to sell my house fast. What do I do?’ either. Though you’ve learned to keep a cool head under the most stressful of circumstances, you also know that trying to sell a house quickly is a whole different stressful story.

I Need to Sell My House Fast. What Do I Do?

Selling your house is stressful.

Listed as one of the most stressful things an individual can experience on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, changing your living conditions for any reason creates tension. When the move is also associated with a shift in your job responsibilities or relocation, the tension grows. This is true whether you’ve been offered a new and exciting position that you fought for or have been issued military orders to take your combat expertise elsewhere. When everything also has to happen fast, it can quickly start to feel like you don’t have much control.

How quickly a house sale can go through, however, is actually up to you. Not only do you have more control than you might think, but there’s at least one scenario that may help make your move stress-free. It just depends on what works best for you and your family. For example, you can:

Sell to a Cash Investor

The benefit of this scenario is that most experienced, reputable investors who pay for properties in cash can close quickly.

Since they don’t have to deal with traditional lenders like banks and credit unions, they aren’t dependent on third-party timelines. 

If you need to be out of one house and on your way to the next in two weeks or less, they can often help make that happen. If you don’t want to hold showings, allow for an inspection, or haggle over price, some investors can close in days.

This option also gets you closer to selling your home as-is. All-cash buyers who invest in houses are in the business of taking fixers and repairing them so that they can turn a profit when selling them later. That means you can sell a house with bats, termites, or other pests to a cash buyer as well as a home that needs new plumbing, electrical, and cabinetry. Not only are they not afraid to deal with these issues—they want to. For many sellers, moving quickly on a sale and handling fee (if any) repairs is a good enough reason to go with an investor.

Sell to an Owner-Occupier

The benefit of this scenario is that there is the possibility of making more money when you sell, especially if you can and want to perform repairs and upgrades.

A renovated house will generally yield higher offers from traditional buyers than what you’d get if you sold as-is to an all-cash investor. 

Even simple changes like replacing old appliances, landscaping the yard, and painting a house before selling can make a difference to a buyer who wants to live in the home. The longer you can wait to close escrow, too, the more offers you are likely to get. Depending on your market, there’s also a chance those offers will run even higher if more owner-occupiers are given the time to compete with each other.

This option may push your timeline for selling well past what you can comfortably afford, however. Even minor rehabs can take three or more months to complete. A major overhaul may take six months. That doesn’t even account for the weeks or months your house may sit on the market before getting an offer. It also doesn’t guarantee that the offers you get will cover the rehab you performed, especially after paying a commission to the agent who helped you sell the property in the first place.

Still, if you can find a way to make this option work, you may get more money. Unfortunately, what it won’t do is help you move quickly. If you decide that the best answer to ‘I need to sell my house fast. What do I do?’ is to sell to a cash investor, be sure to choose one who will treat you fairly and can close when you’re ready. Find one who charges zero fees and commissions, too. You don’t need more stress.

Move as Fast as You Need to, Stress and Fee-Free

Disabled veteran-owned Sell Your House Direct has years of experience providing solutions to seller problems.

Not only do we know first-hand the importance of needing to move fast, we know how hard it can be to make swift decisions that affect your life and the people you love. For every client who calls to say, ‘I need to sell my house fast. What do I do?’ We provide you with a one-page document that breaks down the benefits and drawbacks of every option and help you find the solution to best fits your needs. 

Your best option could be to sell your home to us for cash, especially when you need to move fast. If your house also needs a lot of work to get a good price on the open market, you may not want to bother just to make a little more profit. If you’ve got the time to invest in rehab or upgrades, it could be worth more to you to take that route. That’s what we will show you: What you stand to gain or lose. We give you this information at zero cost. That way, you can stress a little less when you need to make a speedy, informed decision.