Getting ready to sell your Maui house? Don’t sign a listing agreement or commit to a realtor until you learn about the other way you can sell your house in Maui!
Usually when someone thinks about selling their house on Maui it involves signing a contract with a realtor to list their property on the MLS. But don’t make the decision to list your house for sale until you’ve taken a look at the numbers. There’s more than one way to sell your Hawaii property, and each way has benefits and pitfalls.
What’s this “New Way?”
Selling your house off market to a cash buyer, like the service that Maui Home Buyers provides sellers in the State of Hawaii, rather than listing it with a realtor for a commission. You don’t just save money on listing fees, cleaning, staging, professional photographers/aerial drone photos, marketing, repairs and closing costs, but you also avoid paying the biggest expense of them all – commissions! The higher the price of the home, the more the seller pays in commission, since they are based on a percentage of the price and they are generally 6%; whether the house is in Ohia and sells for 100k, or in Hawaii and sells for 1.5m! Plus when you sell directly to a cash buyer in Hawaii you don’t have to wait to get your cash! Now you can sell your Maui real estate without the headaches, stress and hassle of the old school sales process!
Just Some Of The Benefits Of Selling To A Cash Buyer
No Commissions – Since you don’t need a realtor to market and list your Maui house for sale, you won’t pay any commissions or fees with us! Realtor commissions are usually 6% of the GROSS sales price.
Privacy – Check out this article by Assured Home Loans about why more and more sellers are choosing to sell their home or condo off market. The two main reasons they cite are privacy and saving time and money. If you’re like me, you don’t like the idea of dozens of looky-loo’s making you leave your home on short notice for hours at a time, almost everyday, just so they can come pry around in your personal space, even though most of them have no intention of actually buying your house. According to this article by Real Estate Agent PDX, you need to have 25 showings on average before you find a buyer to take your house, and that’s assuming that you have it priced to sell! If you’re wanting to sell your house in Hawaii for top dollar, then you’ll likely need to be prepared for many more showings, and a much longer sales process. So many of those people looking through your bathroom drawers aren’t even ready to buy, or they already know your home is out of their price range. But when you work with Maui Home Buyers you only need to show 1 person, and you know that we are a qualified cash buyer with no nonsense.
Save Marketing Fees – You don’t have to pay for any advertising costs to market your house online, in direct mail, or in print. There are no photography costs or fees whatsoever that you need to pay for.
No Staging Expenses – It’s common for realtors in Hawaii to recommend or even require that you have a professional home stager furnish your house. This usually costs between $3,000-5,000 for the typically Maui house.
Cleaning Not Required – One big expense and major headache that is often overlooked when listing your Maui house for sale is keeping it clean and it show-ready condition at all times. You’ll get last minute showings scheduled regularly, and you’ll need to keep your house looking like a model home in order to get an offer, since you don’t know which showing is going to be a serious buyer. You’ll want to make sure you don’t have any personal belongings, including pictures, or any clutter visible. Keeping everything stored away and leaving your home for 1-3 hours with just a moments notice is a major pain point for home sellers. If you sell your Maui condo to Maui Home Buyers you don’t need to clean at all! Just take the things you want with you when you move out on the closing date and we’ll take care of everything!
No Need To Make Any Repairs – Selling your Hawaii house for cash directly to Maui Home Buyers means you’ll never have to invest money into fixing things, making repairs or upgrades that usually don’t even come back to you upon the sale. Listing your Maui house with a real estate agent typically means you need to have your everything in your home in like new, or perfect working order while it’d listed and being shown, and especially for the home inspection. And if anything breaks or starts nearing the end of it’s life you’ll need to disclose that to the buyer, and they’ll often require you to fix or replace it before the sale closes, or they could just cancel and walk away. With Maui Home Buyers you can sell your Maui condo or house as-is, regardless of what repairs are needed. We’ve bought everything from a condemned house that was a complete tear down, to an almost brand new townhome in Kehalani (Wailuku, HI) that was built in 2012 and meticulously maintained (the seller was an engineer and retired Army veteran – we’ve never seen someone take such excellent care of a home! He vacuumed and cut his grass every single day!). So whether your property needs repairs or not, we can help!
No Yard Work Or Landscaping To Worry About – Similar to keeping the inside of your house clean, the outside needs to be ready to show also. It’s critical to keep the lawn nice and green and neatly mowed, free of any weeds or clutter throughout the front and backyards. Don’t underestimate the significance of curb appeal when selling a house for top dollar on Maui. 75% of buyers decide whether they are going to buy a house or not just based on the very first picture they see of it! (and that’s almost always a picture of the front of the house). When listing your house, you’ll either need to put a few hours in each week to keep your yard in tip top shape, or hire a landscaper to come weekly. But of course, when selling property to us, you don’t need to worry about this at all.
Stop All Maintenance Expenses Right Now – If you’re a homeowner in Hawaii then we don’t need to tell you how expensive it is to maintain a piece of real estate in the Hawaiian islands. Stopping these costs now rather than 6 months later means you have more cash in your pocket when it’s all said and done.
Avoid Wasted Utility Costs – I can’t say for the mainland, but I know for sure that here in Hawaii things like electric, water, sewer, homeowners insurance, and property taxes can be thousands of dollars each month. If you list with a realtor you need to keep paying all of these each month for an indefinite amount of time; often at least 3-5 months. Even if you have already moved out or the house is vacant you must keep it insured in case of a disaster, property taxes don’t stop, and you need water and electric turned on for the showings, and also for the cleaners and landscapers weekly upkeep visits.
Get Your Cash Now – Selling your condo/house on Maui for all cash to Maui Home Buyers means you know exactly how much cash you will get and exactly when. No more guessing how much the fees are really going to come out to (why is it that the cost of selling my house always ends up being so much more than I calculated?!) We can pay you in a matter of days instead of months. But if you do need more time, we can also be on standby and have the cash sitting in escrow ready to close, so you can handle your business and know that you can count on us closing the sale and getting your cash once you’re ready. We don’t hold you in limbo, you get to move on with your life quickly and easily. We can even structure a sale that gives you access to some of your money before you even move out, so if you need your funds in order to secure your new residence just let us know; we got you covered! Here’s another article from All In Miami that shares their opinions on the pros and cons of selling off market.
Peace of Mind – When you list your house you never know how long it might take until someone makes an offer, especially in today’s market! And even once you finally do receive an acceptable offer, you still can’t relax because Hawaii is a very “buyer-friendly” state; basically the buyer is allowed to back out of the sale almost any time they want, get their entire deposit back, and they don’t even need to tell you a reason! CNBC recently reported that the rate of buyers canceling home purchases has been increasing dramatically recently, and it’s continued getting worse since their article was published a few months ago and interest rates have continued increasing significantly. I used to work for a broker that would jokingly say “the buyer can literally decide the don’t like the color of the front door and cancel”, and that is true. This is great if you’re buying a house in Hawaii because it means you have nothing to lose! If you’re unsure whether you can qualify for the mortgage, or you’re not sure which house you want you can just put offers on 10 different houses, make the seller pay for all of your due diligence, and cancel them all a month later! But obviously if you’re the seller it means you could waste months of your time, and spend thousands of dollars on surveys, inspections, termite treatment/tenting, cleaning, and more, that is essentially thrown out the window – since the buyer does NOT have to reimburse you for them, and now you’re back to square one, listing your house on the market and starting with the showings all over again. We see this happen all the time in Hawaii real estate.. maybe not 10 houses, but it’s common to see a buyer put 1-2 houses under contract while they continue to shop for an even better fitting home. Then once they find one, they just cancel the others ones. Sometimes they also do this just because they can’t make a decision on whether or not to buy the house, and putting it under contract gives them time to decide because the seller is legally required to sell the house to that buyer and cannot sell to anyone else, but the buyer can back out whenever they want once they have had the time to make their choice. This is an even bigger threat if the buyer can’t pay cash for your house and they are depending on getting approved for financing. If they loan gets denied, or even if it gets approved but the interest rate is higher than the buyer was hoping for, they can back out of the sale on you with zero consequences, often even just a few days before the scheduled closing date (which usually takes 45-60 days in Hawaii when the buyer can’t pay all cash). Sellers who choose to sell their Hawaii house to Maui Home Buyers can rest assured knowing that we have the cash right here waiting for you on the day you’re ready for it! You won’t have to wonder if we might cancel, we’ve bought enough houses to know what kinds of problems we’re going to run into with repairs, etc., and we work hard to make sure we’ve already factored those things in before making our offer.
As you can see, the list of advantages you’ll receive by selling your Hawaii condo or house for cash to Maui Home Buyers is extensive and very appealing to many sellers. Many sellers in Hawaii have found that this is the stress free and simple way to sell that they were hoping for. Be fair to yourself; give us a call to see what we can offer and then run the numbers and see if this alternative method of selling your house is the best option for you!