Hello everybody, this is Alex from Coastal Edge homebuyers. Today I wanted to talk about inherited houses and what can you do with them, if you have a house that was inherited, a relative passed away and now you’re wondering “what can we do with this house, how can we sell it what is the fastest way is there more than one way to do it and what are the pros and cons of each”. So, imagine that somebody has passed away and maybe the house is not in great condition, and you need to sell it. This is exactly what we specialize in – we help people like that all the time we’re Coastal Edge homebuyers and we buy houses as-is, in any condition anywhere in the Hampton Roads area.
So, basically if you have a house that was inherited, you have several ways that you can deal with it. Number one – you can do all the repairs yourself, put it on the market through an agent and sell it that way, most people are familiar with this way, which can be done either with or without doing repairs. The second way is – you can do something we call FSBO or For Sale By Owner and that way means you can save yourself the portion of the commission that otherwise would be paid to a selling agent – the one representing you as the seller of the house, but you still need to pay commissions to the buying agent, which is the person representing whoever is buying the house. Basically, these are the traditional ways that most people know about on the ways to sell a house. What you may not be aware of is that there’s another way and that is to sell it as-is to an investor, like us, so what is that way to sell as-is to an investor versus the other ways? If you sell through an agent, you will pay commissions – usually that’s 6 percent, split 3 and 3 percent between the selling and the buying agent. You also may have to provide (in today’s market) closing cost assistance another 4 percent, so you’re right away minus 10 percent off the top from the selling price and that 10% goes towards the agent and closing cost assistance for the buyer.
So, what else do we have there – in order for you to sell a house the traditional way, the real estate agent will sign probably an agreement with you so they can represent you in the sale, they’re going to do all the marketing, you’ve got to prepare the house for showings – it has to be in a decent condition you got to do cleanup, maybe some repairs, actually some repairs may be necessary because if you do an inspection in most cases you will do whatever comes up from that – you’re gonna have to fix it. So, imagine that you have a number of heirs, maybe the people that inherited the house is a group of people of kids and grandkids maybe it’s three people four, or five, it may be hard to actually manage a project to repair the house, clean it up, put it on the market, because if you want to do a rehabbing on a an older house, you’re going to have to do it like a project management engagement, you have to hire contractors, someone has to pay them, someone has to watch over them. What if not all the heirs agree to that, or the pricing, or the contractors doing the work? What if you live out of state or some of the heirs live out of state? This can become quite a challenge, so now contrast that with a way to sell it as-is, to an investor like us. Yes, it would not be a top price such as the highest prices you see online – which is usually for a house that was rehabbed recently, but that’s not the price you’re going to get anyway regardless of how you sell it, if the house needs work.
Basically, when you sell it as-is, we buy exactly as-is what you hear is what you get. We make cash offers, they’re quick and easy, and you get cash within three weeks, and you can split it up between the heirs. It’s nice and easy process – no cleaning, no repairs, basically exactly as we said – we’re buying it as-is and that’s exactly what we mean. This is the fastest and easiest way to sell a house. Now there’s another version of it (to sell), which means you can get a little bit more money over time, but that is something again that requires the approval of all the heirs – everyone must agree – and it’s a long-term commitment, but you can get a little bit more money that way. We’ll be happy to go over that option with you and see which options are available. Just give us a call – we’ll be happy to look at your situation specifically and then you can make a more informed decision of which way to go, so that’s how we work. We’re Coastal Edge Homebuyers. If you have an inherited house that you need to sell, maybe it’s located anywhere in the 7 Cities of Hampton Roads such as Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, or Newport News, give us a call – we’ll be happy to help you out: 757-414-7117.