While more and more people are working from home every day, businesses continue to shift and change the way they conduct day-to-day operations. Within this is the need to relocate employees in favor of global mobility.
If you find yourself in this situation you may need to sell your house fast for relocation before starting work in your new location. Relocating when you own a house is a challenge but here are some of the steps you’ll need to follow before putting your house for sale for relocation.
Determine What Your Home is Worth
When you need to sell your house fast for a relocation, you don’t have as much time to think about home equity, curb appeal, and the fact that you planned to do quartz countertops next year; you have to sell now.
You want to make sure that whatever you end up selling your house for, it will cover the cost of any remaining mortgage balance plus selling expenses. Expect those expenses to cost anywhere between 5-10% of the overall balance on your mortgage.
The last thing you want is for the relocation to put you in a bad spot financially. If anything, you should come out better than you went in.
Using a home value estimator is a great tool to help you quickly get an idea of what your home is worth.
Of course, you may still want to get a relocation appraisal or have a comparative market analysis done on the home to ensure you’re selling it for what it’s worth. If you can, don’t invest any new money into your home and sell it as it is. You’ll want to have as much cash on hand as possible during and after the relocation when you find yourself in an unfamiliar place.
Take a Look at Relocation Packages
The cost of relocating can range from a few thousand dollars to over $100,000. Having relocation packages in place for employees is a great way to ensure that everything is covered and there are no bottlenecks in the process.
Keep in mind there are quite a few ways to go about this. There are four primary options:
- Lump Sum Relocation
- Managed Executive Relocation
- Relocation Bonus
- Relocation Reimbursement
Let’s talk briefly about each of these:
Lump Sum Relocation Package
This is a traditional relocation package where an amount of money is set aside for each employee to help pay for their moving expenses from A to Z. These can cover closing costs, realtor fees, long distance movers and packaging fees, shipping costs, materials, and even time missed at work.
Executive Relocation Package
An executive relocation package pertains to the moving costs and expenses of the upper-management of a business. In some cases, you could be tasked with moving the corporate headquarters and as a result, you need to help with long-term storage, vehicle shipment, and temporary housing for executives.
Relocation Bonus
A relocation bonus is generally used in situations where the overall relocation package isn’t enough. It can cover unexpected expenses like penalties for breaking a lease or a higher cost of living in the area the employee is moving.
Relocation Reimbursement
A reimbursement works similar to the regular relocation package but instead, the employee will pay for everything out of pocket and the employer is responsible for paying them back. This helps ensure that the employee doesn’t run out of money but issues arise when they don’t have enough of their own money to cover the cost of moving.
Can You Deduct Moving Expenses?
Whether you’re the HR Manager, General Manager, or Entry-Level Employee, you’re not eligible to deduct moving expenses related to a job. This may come as a surprise to some people but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 removed your ability to be able to deduct these expenses.
That said, if you’re an active military member, you are eligible to deduct moving expenses. This is the only situation where you can.
Look at the Current Real Estate Market
While this isn’t something you or anyone has control of, you’ll still want to look at the current real estate market and use your findings to help figure out how your home sale and purchase process will go.
Markets fluctuate up and down with seller markets followed by buyers markets so no matter which way you cut it, you’ll likely do fine on one end or the other. For example, in 2022 houses only stay on the market for an average of 38 days.
What does this mean for you? It means that the sooner you start the process, the sooner you’ll be able to sell and you won’t have to worry about paying for a house you won’t live in anymore.
Sell Your House Fast for Relocation: Your Options
When it comes to actually selling your house for a job relocation, you have a few different choices.
1. Cash Offer
If you’re in a hurry due to corporate requirements or whatever else may be motivating you, getting a cash offer can be a great way to get out quickly. According to Allied Moving Services, nearly 42% of relocating employees only had 0-30 days to settle in before they had to start their new job.
That doesn’t leave much time for loan applications, open houses, showings, and inspections. In a traditional home buying situation, it can take as long as 60 days for the buyer to actually close on your house.
When advertising the sale of your home, accepting only cash offers is a much faster way to sell. The downside is, you’ll need to be content with accepting much lower offers because cash offers will generally come from investors.
Selling the house “as-is” is also an option if you’re concerned about the condition of the home. If you want to be able to forgo inspections to speed up the process, selling the house “as-is” requires buyers to purchase the home without requiring you to fix anything.
2. Hire an Agent
The second option is the more traditional route and what you’ll want to do if the company provides a decent relocation package. Try to hire an agent that specializes in relocations or moving homes quickly. If you’re unsure about how to find someone like that, we work with agents who do this type of work all the time.
Take a lot of great pictures, try to improve your curb appeal, and do whatever you can with the time you have to improve the overall appearance of the home. This will make the sale more desirable and will likely drive more buyers in your door.
3. Rent it Out
Have you ever considered being a long-distance landlord? Perhaps the market is looking good for rentals and you don’t mind the idea of being responsible in exchange for making a little extra money every month.
Of course, your home will have to meet a few unique sets of criteria to be affordable enough for most renters. Certain cities are also more popular for renting than others.
Remember that being a landlord is hard but if you’re living in another state you’ll likely need to hire a property management company to oversee everything and be able to fix things at the house when you’re not there.
4. Hire a Relocation Company
Relocating and selling your house for a job relocation is one of the most stressful things you can do and when you’re forced to do it in a hurry, it doesn’t get any easier. Hiring a relocation company like ARC Relocation can really help soften the blow.
We can help in the following ways:
- Assess your relocation needs and choose candidates likely to succeed.
- Create effective relocation policies to attract and keep the best employees.
- Get a great deal on employee shipping and transportation.
- Sell and buy homes—we’ll even buy the property ourselves.
- Help employees settle in their new location—from finding a home to learning the language.
The difference is, we do this work every single day and if it can happen, we’ve seen it before. If you need to sell your house fast for relocation, learn more by booking a free consultation today with one of our relocation experts!