5 Tips to Avoid a Stressful Home Sale in Orlando

By Emily Drilon

Selling your home in Orlando, Florida has its happy and stressful moments. This is true whether in Orlando, Apopka, or any other major metro area. Most of the time, home sellers get stressed if they don’t know what they’re doing or if they're not selling their homes fast enough.

In addition, selling a home requires several steps in the process, and if you’re a first-time seller this can add to the stress. This is especially true if uncontrolled events pop up, making your home selling even more difficult. While all of these are largely unavoidable, you can avoid getting too stressed out about it when you need to sell your home.

Here are some options to reduce the stress of home selling:

Sell It to ‘We Buy Houses For Cash’ Companies

With the help of companies buying houses for cash, you can sell your home without the stressful process of doing it the regular way. Hence, selling your house in Orlando can be much easier than before.

Even if your home needs repair, you can still sell a house fast without spending extra money. Yes, you won’t need to repair or fix your home when you sell your house to these companies.

Selling your house to we-buy-houses is convenient and easy as well. You only need to make an appointment or call them to make your cash offer. When they assess your home and they see it as an investment, they’ll immediately let you know. Upon agreement, you may even receive the payment in as fast as seven days.

Get Help From a Professional and Reputable Real Estate Agent

While you can sell your home by yourself, getting help from a professional will make your life easier; that is, if you hire someone reputable and experienced. That’s why you should do your due diligence when hiring a real estate agent.

Ensure you hire someone who has a proven track record of success, communicates well, and is easy to work with. One of the best ways to do this is to ask for referrals from someone who recently (in the last 3-6 months preferably) sold their house through a real estate agent in your area.

Once you hire a reputable real estate agent, they’ll help you throughout the selling process – from preparing your home, listing it in the market, and finally, as you close the deal, all of which can be stressful when you don’t know what you’re doing. Thus, consider the following before hiring one:

• The real estate agent should value your time. You’ll know this is the case if the agent comes on time during your appointment and never skips an appointment without rescheduling prior to it. Thus, consider it a red flag if your agent keeps showing up late or skips your appointments.
• As mentioned, it’s best to work with an agent with whom you can communicate. You should be able to reach your agent through phone calls or whichever method you prefer. Since they know how stressful selling a home can be, they should know that reaching them can lessen your stress. Though they might not be on their phone all the time, they should be able to return your call promptly and shouldn’t leave you hanging for days after a missed call.
• Moreover, an agent should value your goals. For instance, you may want to sell your home at a specific time frame or price. It's important that they ask and coordinate with you if they need to adjust either one. Leaving you in the dark or having you decide completely on your own is also a red flag.

An excellent real estate agent will also give you realistic insight into your goals. That way, you can both modify your listing as needed in order to reach your goals faster.

Pricing Realistically

Another source of stress for home sellers is knowing how to price their homes. Homebuyers will often do some research before buying a home and have their own strategies. Understanding this, you may receive lower offers for your home. If you don’t know how to price your property, you may end up more stressed due to their low offers.

Although you may think that your home deserves a higher price, you need to set a realistic price, which should be based on the current market value. You can use comparative market analysis to set the right price, based on comparisons with recent sales of similar properties in your neighborhood. That way, you can attract more home buyers.

However, if you overprice your property, it will take your home a lot longer to sell. That’s why it can be a useful strategy to set your house at a lower price than expected to attract more potential buyers who are willing to bid for it.

Showing Your House Systematically

If you’re selling your Central Florida home, you may have to leave during an open house or showing. Imagine if you have too many showings to attend to - you will end up staying out far longer to deal with all the appointments. This can be stressful in and of itself, but add to that the increased timeframe will allow your house to be open and vulnerable to security issues and scrutiny, with viewers seeing your possessions for longer periods.

You can avoid this stress through scheduling multiple showings back-to-back, or holding open houses for a designated window of time. You can also reduce your stress by using some staging tactics, like putting away all of your valuables and keeping all personal belongings in a storage area. While you want to leave enough furniture in place to give prospective buyers an inviting, homey feel, you don't want it to look crowded, with too many personal affects or knick-knacks. When you stage it with the right balance, you’re more likely to get bigger offers while keeping your belongings safe.

Have a Contingency Plan

As mentioned earlier, you may get stressed with uncontrollable circumstances when selling your house. Instead of worrying about them, have a contingency plan to address them in case your worse case scenario happens.

For instance, if your house sells faster than you expected, you may be both happy and stressed, especially if you haven’t found a house to settle in. If you’re tight on finances, buying another house to settle in right away may not be realistic. Hence, a contingency plan could be renting out storage space to keep your belongings during the in-between-time. That way, you can ease your worries about finding a house fast.

Conclusion

When you’re selling a home, it’s obviously not like pawning off your jewelry to quickly get some cash. Instead, it's a big deal, and it's normal and expected that at some point you’ll get stressed with the process. That’s why considering these tips can help you handle your stress better during a home sale in Orlando.

Whether you’re selling your home on your own or hiring a real estate agent, be assured that you can reduce your stress by implementing these suggestions above.