Guide to selling your home quickly due to relocation

How can you make your property ready for a quick sale due to relocation?

How to prepare your home to sell fast due to relocation is essentially the same as how to sell your property quickly at any other time. The only difference is that you need to get everything exactly right to sell your house when you’re relocating, because you have a very specific date to aim for – and you don’t want to be late on your first day! Here are just some of the ways to speed up a house sale:

1. Price your home realistically – naturally you want to get the best possible price for your home, who doesn’t? If you had all the time in the world to wait, you could hold out for the very best offer, but if you’re relocating, you need to be much more realistic. Don’t ask your estate agent how much they think your home is worth, ask them what price will attract the most buyers and get the fastest sale.
2. Offering a discount for a quick house sale – the best way to sell your home quickly when you’re relocating is to offer a generous discount to attract buyers. Pricing your home significantly lower than similar properties for sale will put you at the top of most buyers’ list. It will cost you a little, but it could save you lots of time and trouble.
3. Fix any issues – one of the things that slows down a house sale most is issues with your property that are either identified by the buyers or spotted on survey. Getting quotes for work and haggling over who pays for what can cost you weeks of time and stress, when you have so many other things you need to organise ready for your move. If you’re honest, you probably know where the problems are going to be, so if you want a fast sale, make sure you get as many issues sorted as you can before you put your house on the market.
4. Consider selling at auction – selling at auction can help you sell your house fast when you’re relocating, but it might not be your best option. Auction sales take around two months and only achieve around 90% of the value of your home. What’s more, at least one in three properties will fail to sell at auction, setting your sale back by at least another month.
5. Consider selling to a fast cash house buyer – if you want to sell your house quickly due to relocation, then a fast cash buyer could be your best bet. A cash buyer will buy your home as it stands today, so there’s no delay, they’ll buy your house quickly, in as little as 14days, and they can be flexible on completion dates to suit your schedule, which can be particularly useful if your start date is yet to be finalised.
6. Consider renting, to buy some time – another option, rather than selling your property fast due to relocation, is to keep hold of it and rent in the new area. You could rent out your current home to help cover the mortgage and/or your new rental costs and it will take the pressure off you and your family at a very busy time. However, managing two properties does come with its own problems.

 What issues could you face when selling quickly due to relocation?

There are a number of issues that you could face if you’re selling a house quickly due to relocation. Moving yourself and your family, lock, stock and barrel, across the country takes serious coordination, and making that work with a start date for your new job is not going to be easy. Here are some of the issues you could face: 

• Timing – Perhaps the biggest issue with selling a house quickly due to relocation is timing. A traditional open market house sale takes at least five months according to Government figures and few promotions or new jobs come with that sort of lead time.

• Lack of flexibility – Not only are traditional home sales slow, they don’t have the flexibility to adapt to the tight and often variable timescales of a relocation move. 

• Selling too soon – If you sell too soon then you risk being essentially homeless until you move. This will involve extra moving costs into rented accommodation, as well as endless incidentals, such as kennels for pets that aren’t allowed in rented accommodation.

• Selling too slow – If you sell too slowly you could still be dealing with the sale of your current home when it comes time to move, and you won’t have the funds available to buy a new home in your new town or city. Again, this will mean all the costs and inconvenience of renting, when you should be getting on with starting your new life.

• Selling from a distance – If you don’t sell before you have to relocate, then you could end up having to manage your property sale remotely from hundreds of miles away. If your relocation involves a move overseas, then this becomes even harder to do.

• Low offers – If buyers get wind of your reason for moving, you could also find the offers you get are lower than you expected. People will not hesitate to take advantage of your situation, especially if it saves them thousands of pounds.

• Dealing with multiple estate agents – most house moves will involve two estate agents, one to sell your current home and one to buy your new one. However, when these agents are hundreds of miles apart, things can get much more complicated and are more likely to go wrong. Working with a national chain can help to improve communications, but your estate agent still won’t be dealing with the familiar faces they’re used to at local firms.

• Financial issues – if you are currently in a fixed rate or special offer mortgage, then you’ll usually have to pay an early repayment fee if you sell your home. This can be set as a percentage of your total loan and can cost you thousands of pounds. You may be able to transfer, or ‘port’, your mortgage to your new property, but this can get complicated if you spend time renting during the move at one end or the other.

Is it easier to relocate first and then look for a quick sale?

There are arguments to be made both ways. On the one hand, moving to a new town or city, and starting a new job and a new school for the kids, can be a lot to deal with. Some would argue that you should make things as easy as possible on yourself and your family by postponing your sale until you’ve settled in. This will also give you time to get to know the area and see where you might want to live.

However, this does mean you’ll have to rent your new home and you won’t get a clean break from your previous life because you’ll still be responsible for your old house. It also means you’ll have to manage the sale, or the rental of your old home from a distance and this can be both expensive and time consuming.

On the other hand, selling your home quickly due to relocating can give you the clean break that you want, ready to start your new life. It can also give you the funds you need to buy a property near to your new job.  However, as discussed above, it can be very hard to time a house sale on the traditional market to fit in with relocation, and you may not want this extra stress on top of everything else.

The easiest option by far is to sell your home fast to a cash house buyer. That way you can arrange a guaranteed sale, with no risk of fall through, and organise completion on the exact date you need it. It’s not the best value option, but it is far and away the simplest.

Relocating abroad and requiring a quick sale

All of the issues we talked about earlier become much more complicated, and expensive, when you’re selling your home to relocate abroad. If your sale does not complete in time, you’ll be faced with managing a home sale from overseas, and potentially having to travel back and forth at significant cost to complete the sale when you need it.

This is where you need to be absolutely sure of your sale and your completion date, and the best way to achieve this is by selling your home to a fast cash buyer. The good news is, you could get more for your home when selling your home quickly due to relocation than you would for a normal fast cash sale. This will give you more cash available for your new home.

Why you could get more for a cash sale if you’re relocating

Normally, a fast cash house buyer will offer around 80% of the market value of your home. This price reduction is to cover their costs, including financing costs, remarketing the property, operational costs, legal fees and in most cases Stamp Duty when they buy your home. 

The Stamp Duty bill normally comes to several thousand pounds on a property purchase, but there’s a special relief available to cash home buying companies in cases where the seller is moving due to relocation. FA03/SCH6A/PARA6 of the Stamp Duty guidelines states that ‘where a property trader purchases a dwelling from an individual, and the purchase is made because the employee had to change residence due to a job relocation’ then that purchase is exempt from Stamp Duty. 
If you find a reputable cash house buyer, chances are they will pass this exemption on to you in the form of an increased offer. If you’re selling a property fast due to relocation, you could find that a cash house buyer is able to offer you up to 85% of the market value. This can make the quick sale deal far more attractive and could make your figures work – especially if you also get some financial support from your company to help toward the move.

Expert Insight from Kelvin Elliott