Every property seller wants to boost their home sale profit by as much as possible. This is common sense. However, it always surprises me how little most sellers want to do in order to make more money from the sale of their homes. It is as if they simply want to cross their fingers and hope that some way, any way, a buyer will come along and offer them far more than their property is worth. I think it is time for a reality check and an overdue wake-up call for these naïve investors.
This dialog provides a proactive plan for optimizing profitability from any real estate sale.
Increasing Home Sale Profit
There are many ways you can maximize the profit from the sale of your home, but they all require some work and possibly some risk.
One way to increase profitability is to finance the buyer yourself. This can add a huge amount of money to the sale price of the home over time. However, this strategy can be risky and may not be an option for all sellers or all buyers.
Another way to up the asking price of your home is to renovate everything, making the property into a museum-quality showplace. This can be incredibly expensive and many times, the owner will have a difficult time getting a full return on their investment, especially immediately after the renovation work is completed. Additionally, it is certainly possible to invest too much in a home, which is called “over-building” for the area.
An easier and risk-free approach to increasing the price of the sale is to simply use the statistically proven method of home staging.
Maximizing Home Sale Profit with Staging
Home staging is a proven approach to real estate marketing which demonstrates incredible benefits to sellers at a very low cost. Property staging clearly sells homes faster (2 to 2.5 times faster actually) and for more money (up to 17% more money) than comparable unstaged residences.
An average staging endeavor might cost 1% of the total sale price of the home and make back somewhere between 5% to 10% of the total asking price. Given a home price of $300,000, the cost to stage would be $3000, which is completely tax deductible, and the return on investment would be $15,000 to $30,000 or more. I do not know of any safer and more effective way to optimize real estate sale profitability for so little cost.
Suggestions for Improving Home Sale Profits
Selling a home for top dollar takes a proactive seller. You need to get involved in the sale. Do not sit back idly and hire a real estate agent to do everything. Instead, investigate home staging before listing the property on the market. Prepare the home by doing everything to make it shine and exude universal appeal to prospective buyers. Once the home is ready, then list it and sell it fast.
If you really want to make the absolute most money possible, consider saving some more cash by performing DIY home staging without paying for furniture rental or professional staging fees. In this case, you will truly be in the ideal position to make money than you ever thought possible when the sale closes.