If you are considering the sale of your home and you want to gain a competitive edge, you may want to consider a seller’s inspection. This lesser-known marketing tool can give you peace-of-mind and, quite possibly, put extra money in your pocket at closing.
Traditionally, a buyer requests a professional home inspection after the acceptance of the purchase offer by the seller. The buyer wants the assurance that they are not purchasing a property with hidden problems. Of course, there is no reason why a seller cannot hire a professional home inspector before their home ever goes on the market. So, just why would a seller want to spend the money on such an inspection? Here are several reasons:
1. It Helps You Price Your Home Competitively
If the requested home inspection results in a relatively “clean bill of health” for your home, you and your agent can collaborate in pricing your home with a much higher level of confidence. Plus, a clean report is essentially another marketing tool for your agent to use. The agent can build the confidence of a prospective buyer by advertising the fact that the home has been recently inspected by a trained professional.
2. It Relieves Pressure of Fixing Immediately
The question is simple: would you rather discover a hidden problem before your home hits the market or when you’re facing time deadlines and other pressures after accepting the buyer’s offer? When a seller’s inspection does uncover one or more issues, the seller and the agent can carefully plan as to where to put money into repairs or where to possibly alter the price. Furthermore, the seller now has time to carefully explore options in securing a repair at the lowest possible cost.
3. It Reveals Hidden Surprises
This point is related to the previous one. If the buyer’s home inspector does uncover a serious issue, the seller will inevitably be on the defensive. Whether it’s fair or not, the buyer may feel that you hid information from them, and the relationship between the parties can grow more uneasy. Much of the time, the buyer will merely want the seller to take care of the problem at the seller’s expense, in order to allow the sale to move forward. However, buyers often exploit such a situation by offering to take care of the repair themselves. The problem is that such buyers may want two or three dollars taken off of the price for every one dollar of actual repair expense.
Finally, given the added potential for hidden issues in high-humidity environments such as we have around Destin, it could be that much more advisable to expend a modest amount of money in securing a seller’s inspection.
Selling Your Home in Destin, FL
Why not deal with any possible issues before your home ever hits the market? Given the cost of a seller’s home inspection, it holds an incredible return of investment when getting ready to sell. To learn more about selling your home, contact us or read our free home seller’s eBook:
