If you want to sell a retirement home, then you would likely need to use a different strategy than you usually would with a typical property. We will now take a look at some guidelines to help improve your chances of success.
Realistic Valuation
Check out the listings that have been sold in the same area as your property and even in the same development. This will help you to determine the typical price that properties are being sold for. Next, before you come up with an asking price, keep in mind how much it will cost you to keep the property. This is important because service charges easily add up. It is a good option to have a lower price from the start and get a sale as opposed to not getting the property sold and having to deal with thousands of dollars of debt.
You should also consider factors that would impact the value or salability of the property such as:
– A new development being built close to your property in recent times. This will likely negatively affect your resale.
– Buyers who are a bit older would be less interested in buying a neglected property as oppose to younger buyers since they would not want to spend money, time and energy renovating and fixing it. Therefore, it is definitely a good idea to ensure that the property is well maintained and repairs are completed.
– If there are handrails and hoists that have been installed for the assistance of older persons, this may also be a turn off for potential young buyers. So, you should think about removing these before you do viewings or take photos.
Get The Correct Agent
As mentioned previously, getting a retirement home sold requires a different strategy as opposed to selling a typical home and the marketing strategy that you create should show this.
In addition to online estate agents or even local estate agents, you should also get your property listed with a specialist retirement property agent in order to sell your house fast. These type of agents will have a much better understanding of the requirements of selling a retirement home, the service charges, provisions and more.
These specialists will also be able to better market your property to the right people. You can easily find out about these specialists from property managers that they personally know. However, you should remember that not every single specialist agent works for themselves and a lot of them work for developers as resellers.
There are lots of large firms that have resale schemes where they do marketing for old properties along with their brand new properties. However, the selling fees for using them would be higher as oppose to typical agents. In some instances, the developer may have unreasonable prices. This is due to the fact that it isn’t in their best interest to offer an older property at a lower price. This would move their potential customers away from their new properties and it would also show how their properties would decrease in value as time goes by.
Pay attention to how well the house would be advertised: In lots of cases, the developer would only place the property as a listing on their website and then wait for interested persons to call. There are also developers who have a “put option” for a couple of their schemes which allow you to purchase a property at the original price along with a 10% assignment fee.
The agents that are actually independent that focus on retirement properties are quite few. You will likely realize that the larges sellers are typically housebuilder subsidiaries which only handle their own development’s properties. There are a couple of nationwide independent agents and local companies who focus on retirement properties. However, there are also non-specialist nationwide agencies that also actively list lots of retirement homes.