If your home is starting to feel a little too empty or you don’t want to undertake the extensive remodeling your home would need to keep you living safely, it may be time that you took retirement living to a retirement community.
And whether you’re moving into a retirement community or empty nest syndrome has you looking to downsize, the first step in a successful move to retirement living is selling your home—no mean feat in Greater Cincinnati’s unpredictable real estate market.
These tips can help you beat the odds to sell your home and make the move into retirement living.
Make your home more attractive to buyers.
While you may love your wild English garden or the second bedroom you turned into a cozy library— your unique style of retirement living may not fit the needs of the average home buyer (who is, according to the National Association of Home Builders, a 38-year-old looking for a 2,200 square foot new home).
1. Renew and Refresh
While your home may not be the new construction of the average home buyer’s dreams, a little bit of sprucing up can go a long way. Even the most modest updates can have a big impact.
- A fresh coat of paint in neutral tones can make your walls look brand new.
- Giving your landscaping an update helps perk up the exterior of your house, and remember to trim back those overgrown rose bushes to let a little more light in your windows.
- Splurge on a cleaning service; there’s nothing worse than a stained carpet or moldy shower to deter potential buyers
Just keep in mind that the average return on remodels is only about 64 percent on the dollar, so skip the pricy kitchen or bath renovations.
2. Get an Inspection
If you want your sale to go through without any complications once you have an interested buyer, you’re going to want to make sure that there aren’t any hidden issues like faulty wiring or leaky plumbing.
Have a house inspector go through your home before you put it on the market to make sure you don’t have any unwanted surprises when you’re trying to close a sale.
3. Be Smart about Pricing
While you want the price you set on your home to reflect the value it holds for you, you also need to be competitive in the real estate market in your area.
Dig into past sales in your neighborhood. See what kind of prices homes like yours have fetched in sales over the last few months and price accordingly.
If your home is priced too high, getting it sold could take over half a year.
If you want to avoid the hassles that come with selling a home, however, you could always join the active retirement living at one of the ERH communities in Greater Cincinnati.
At ERH, we’re dedicated to helping new residents make their transition into retirement living as painless as possible. That’s why we developed the “Life Income Plan,” a real estate program that removes the burden of selling a home and provides residents a guaranteed lifetime income at very favorable interest rates. With this plan, residents of ERH communities are able to bypass the headaches of the sale process and dive straight into the retirement living experience.
There are 3 basic elements that have made the Life Income Plan attractive to ERH residents
- Your house is exchanged without hassle for annual payments at an appealing rate.
- Payments don’t depend on the sale of your home, so you start getting income as soon as the exchange has been made.
- You don’t have to worry about the ups and downs of the housing market affecting your income—payments are fixed so they don’t fluctuate based on market conditions.
Additionally, it is possible for some sales to receive a sizeable charitable tax deduction, so a portion of each income payment could be tax-free.
Image credit: feverpitched / 123RF Stock Photo
