Off-market homes are great. For home buyers, an off-market purchase can help avoid a costly, stressful bidding war — the biggest struggle is learning how to find off-market homes so you can actually buy them!
Off-market sales can be a great option for home sellers, as well. Because you aren’t listing your home publically on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), you can reduce the number of people who see your home.
You might ask yourself: ‘Why would I want fewer people to see my home?’ In many cases, the home seller wants as many people as possible to come to their listing, in the hope that they will start a bidding war and drive up the price of the home. This is because, understandably, many home owners want to get the most possible money when selling their house.
Sometimes, however, there are extenuating circumstances that make an off-market sale attractive for home owners.
When Should I Sell My Home Off-Market?
There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to deciding whether you should sell your property off-market. It depends entirely on your personal situation, needs, and timeline. This is why it’s important to speak with a real estate team that will listen to your needs and help you avoid costly rookie mistakes when selling your home.
Here are some common reasons that people choose to sell their house off the market:
Changing family situations
Oftentimes, people’s real estate needs are dictated by family changes. As their family grows, for instance, they might find themselves outgrowing their home and needing to move up to a larger house.
In some cases, people need to sell a house as their family dynamic changes — and unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen under happy circumstances. For many home sellers, particularly those dealing with a death in the family, moving an elderly relative into an extended care facility, or marital separation, the stress of selling a home traditionally is very frightening.
When this is the case, an off-market home sale can be an effective solution. Although selling property off the market reduces the potential price for your home that a bidding war might bring, it also reduces the hassle and stress of prepping, staging, and showing your home. Furthermore, an off-market sale can be faster than going through the traditional channels to sell your home — as long as you work with a real estate agent who can bring the right buyer to see your house.
Bonus Tip:
If you are worried about the stress of selling your home under shifting family circumstances, another solution is to work with a real estate team that can give you an instant offer on your home.
When you use an instant offer program, you can skip the stress of the home sale entirely and get a cash offer, without the hassle, in as little as 24 hours!
Testing the market
If you start your home sale process off the market, there’s nothing that says you can’t go live on the market at a later date — so some people choose to “test” their home’s value off-market first.
Essentially, you can ask for a higher price while your home is still off-market (or coming soon) and see whether your agent can bring any interested home buyers.
If so, great!
If not, then you can go live on the market at the price that you and your agent have agreed upon, and then the home sale can proceed like a traditional, on-market transaction.
This approach essentially gives you more control over the pricing of your home — but it can take longer than some home sellers want to wait.
You might be asking: “Why would you test the value by going off-market, instead of just listing your home at the higher price and dropping the price if no one is interested?”
The thing is, reducing your house’s list price can be a huge red flag for real estate agents who are looking for a deal. When you drop the price (or if your home is active on the market for too long), it can be a sign to smart home buyers that you might be getting desperate. This can really hurt your ability to negotiate once you get to the closing table. That’s why a smart, capable real estate agent will help you test the price off-market, where price reductions are less visible and less likely to damage your bargaining position.
Bonus Tip:
As always, it’s good to have as much information about your home and the market as possible when you’re thinking about selling. That’s why we created a unique way to find your home value, so you can be an informed home seller!
Ease of mind
In general, off-market property sales are less stressful for the home seller than a traditional home sale. Because you are not putting your home up in a public forum, you have more control. Rather than dealing with the hassle of constant, intrusive showings, off-market home sales tend to be less stressful on your time.
Bonus Tip:
If you want more ways to reduce stress, then you need to be working with a team that offers a robust guarantee program. With the Keri Shull Team’s Home Sale Guarantee, for instance, we promise that we will sell your home — or else Keri will buy it from you!
This guarantee will give you the peace-of-mind that you need to be confident and comfortable in your home sale — so you can get excited about moving up to your new home!
As you can see, there are many reasons for home owners to sell their house off-market — including the ones given above. The best way to know whether or not proceeding with an off-market home sale is the right decision for you is to speak with a real estate agent who specializes in off-market sales.
A good agent will ask you about your reasons for selling your house, as well as what is most important to you in the process. If you answer these questions honestly, you and your real estate agent will be able to put together a plan of action for selling your home.
How Do I Sell My Home Off-Market?
So, you and your agent have decided to sell your property without listing it on-market in the MLS. What now?
Luckily for you, the hard part is over — choosing the right agent! Because your home is not actively listed in the Multiple Listing Service, it becomes your agent’s job to connect you with interested, motivated buyers.
That’s not to say that you don’t have to do anything else. Depending on your agent’s strategy, they might ask you to go through standard processes of staging, home repairs, or renovations that can raise your home value. However, the majority of what needs to be done rests on the shoulders of your hard-working real estate team!
So, how do you find a team that knows off-market sales like the back of their hands? Well, you need to make sure that you are working with agents who sell a lot of off-market homes each year! Most agents are lucky to sell just 1 or 2 houses off-market each year, and they don’t have any people in their phonebook who are interested in buying an off-market home.
But at the Keri Shull Team, we specialize in selling homes before they ever get to the market! We have a network of over 30,000 people searching for a house, and we would like nothing more than to connect you to them! Think of our team as expert matchmakers — we put you together with the perfect buyer for your home! If you want to learn more about whether selling your home off-market is the right move for you, then our expert home analysts are standing by to help — just click here to schedule a time to meet with us!
It doesn’t matter whether you are living in Arlington VA, in one of DCs hottest neighborhoods, or anywhere else in the DMV; our local experts are sure to help you with all your home selling needs! Give us a call today and find out how we can help you!
