How Does Deferred Maintenance Affect Your Ability To Sell Your Home?
When it comes to selling a home, one of the most important things you can do to save money and time is to keep your house clean and well maintained. There is no better way to give a prospective buyer a great first impression of your house than for them to come in and see it spotless and undamaged, just like new. Simple, right? It may not be so simple as you think.
Many people choose to put off regular household cleaning and maintenance for as long as possible. This means refusing to renovate old or damaged kitchens and bathrooms, doing the bare minimum to maintain electrical and plumbing integrity, and painting/redecorating only when absolutely necessary. Some people do this because they have little spare money and cannot afford to pay for renovations with cash. Others do so because they have children or demanding jobs that take up too much of their time. Others do so simply because they prefer to procrastinate. Most people, however, do so only because they do not realize the extent to which wear and tear has affected their homes. Years of living in the same place has made them blind to the slow, steady degradation of attractiveness and newness that has occurred around them. Nor, perhaps, do they realize that there are few things more detrimental to your ability to sell your home than deferred maintenance.
Keep in mind as well that as a seller you are required by law to disclose any and all significant damages and changes that have occurred in your home while living there. There is no way to get around disclosing even moderate damages or maintenance issues to your realtor or the buyer. If you fail to keep up with upkeep on your home, all problems, visible and invisible, will come back to haunt you when you try to sell.
When it comes time to sell your home, deferred maintenance can severely impede your ability to do so. The reason for this is that many buyers to not have the large amounts of cash on hand that are necessary to rectify major infrastructure issues. Imagine, for example, that you are trying to sell your home, and you have put off fixing some major issue, such as, for example, a moderately damaged roof. The prospective buyer will demand one of three things as a result of this. Either he or she will ask you for a lower price on the house than you would otherwise sell it for, in order to pay for the renovation, demand that you to personally fix the damage before selling the house, or just decide it isn’t worth the trouble and go looking for a different home. Obviously, none of these situations are ideal. In effect, what you are doing when you defer maintenance to your house’s buyer is limiting his or her options and making it far less attractive for anyone to buy your home.
Is your home physically compromised? Need to sell it quickly? Check out the Blue Marble Properties website today!