Not all home buying and selling involves purchasing a brand-new, fully functional home. This isn’t HGTV, after all, which means that you might run into issues selling.
One of the more challenging contexts for selling a house is when you have a teardown house. This situation means that you aren’t selling to regular homebuyers, buy contractors and investors who want to make money from the property.
Here, we will run through some of the steps you need to take in order to develop and sell your teardown home.
What is a Teardown House?
In simple terms, a teardown house is a house that needs torn down.
More specifically, a teardown house is a house that has severe structural and cosmetic defects. This means that it isn’t feasible to fix the home within a reasonable budget. This doesn’t mean that the house is completely lost, necessarily. But it does mean that no homeowner or investor is going to buy and renovate the home with any expectation of living there or making a profit.
How to Sell Your Teardown House
To sell a teardown home means to sell to someone who wants the land for a different reason than living there. Most likely, whoever buys the home will not even keep the house–they will immediately tear it down.
This provides you, as a seller, with some ways to learn the market and understand how to turn a profit on a teardown house.
- Find the Market Value of Your Home. This may go without saying but know what your property is worth. This isn’t the bottom line of what you should sell for, but it will give you an understanding of what the land is worth.Also, compare to homes around you. Is it in the same ballpark? If not, then consider that an investor or builder will be looking to make a lower sale to build the property up to those values around the neighborhood. This could give you some bargaining power.
- Locate Reputable Builders. Many builders that teardown homes to build new houses or apartments will typically have active neighborhoods scouted. In fact, if you own a teardown house you may have already heard from some! You don’t want to get mixed up with builders that undersell their customers, and you don’t want to just get rid of your property.However, if you are sure you don’t want to renovate, then finding a builder who flips properties can make a sale fair and fast, with little worry about fluctuating prices and markets.
- Check Out Habitat for Humanity. If you are of the more charitable type, or if you simply want to get the property off your books, then consider donating or selling to Habitat for Humanity. This organization takes properties and builds high-quality affordable housing for those in need. If you want to give back, then give back to someone who could really use it.
- Settle on Your Own Terms–And Know Your Neighborhood. Check out who is selling in the neighborhood, and what is happening with that property. Are new apartment buildings going up? Or are your builders replacing single-story ranch houses with large luxury homes? If so, consider what those new homes are worth and calculate what you want to sell for based off that. You aren’t going to get that kind of market value for your land, but you can absolutely get a better deal than you think.
