Selling that hasn’t been updated can be hard (Ask us how we know)

If your house is updated, we recommend using a realtor so you can get a home owner that uses bank finances and you can squeeze out top dollar. If your house is dated and/or is in need of repairs it can be a hard process. Depending on the loan the seller is using there are a bunch of different requirement and things that will come up during the inspection. As very active cash house buyers we understand this better than most. So we should know better with this old rental we had sitting stagnant on the market.

Check out the video so you can see our Founder Aussie Steve talk about the rookie errors we made that meant this rental sat on the market with no activity. You can also read the video transcript below.

Video Transcript

“Hey guys, Aussie Steve here from Home Buy Louisiana. We buy houses in any condition in Louisiana. I’m here at a property we own on the NorthShore, in St Tammany Parish in Slidell. So, we bought this one a couple of years back, actually. Bought it with a partner of mine, Courtney Fricke. There was a tenant inside, so we owned it for maybe 18 months before the tenant moved out, and we decided we didn’t want it anymore. So, we’re going to sell it at that point.

We put it on the market, and I mean, I speak to sellers all the time who want to list their property with a realtor, and I tell them, it can take time and you need to do the work to update it. So, I must admit, we got a little bit lazy with it. We didn’t fix it up. It’s not a rehab, you know, so we didn’t work with a realtor up front to get it ready. We used a realtor we knew and we listed it back in December. It’s now April, so it didn’t sell, didn’t really get much action.

So, we actually got a new realtor. You know, in a tougher market like this you need to get the right realtor, and she just gave us a bit more advice. We’re still not doing a full rehab on it just because it just doesn’t really justify in this area. But it did need to be painted and some changes so that an FHA or VA loan would get approved. So, we got my contractor here. We got Robert from RE Home Maintenance. Robert, you want to say hello?

Hey, how’s it going?

This is Robert. He’s a great contractor. If you’re looking for someone. So yeah, we had to get Robert out here to come do some work. We need to paint it because, you see, now we’re selling and the person’s probably going to get a loan, like, for this sort of property. It’s going to be like an FHA, a VA, or a rural loan, and there’s just requirements it needs.

And the truth was, our realtor just gave us advice that the house had some chipped paint and these things that needed to be fixed. So, we’re out here doing that. Then we’re going to list it again tomorrow with the new agent. So, you know, yeah, we’re a bit over four months in, and we still haven’t sold it. So, you know, that’s the benefit we get when we tell sellers that are coming to us that when we buy a house from you, you sell the house AS IS. You don’t need to fix it. We move quickly so you can get your house sold fast. We don’t need to have inspection and FHA loans and all that sort of stuff.

You know, we’ll close generally in 21 to 24 days. We can be closed and moved on. And then we fix it. So, you know, we have the same issues, you know, again. If it was a rehab, I would have worked with a realtor up front and we would have got plans together and done the rehab to their capacity. But since we bought this with a tenant and it was a rental and we sat in it for a while, you know, we didn’t have that plan together.

So, you know, we feel the same pain as you guys feel trying to sell these houses. So, you know, if you have a house you want to sell AS IS for cash, you know, could be what someone has a renter tenant inside, you know, we’ll buy that. Or could be a house that needs a rehab. Reach out to us. We’ll give you a cash offer. You can check out our website, homebuylouisiana.com, for more info on what it’s like selling to a cash buyer like us. Cheers, guys.”

So you if you know anyone selling a house in a house in Louisiana let them know that we are buying. We are particularly focused on buying houses in Baton Rouge, Greater New Orleans, Metairie,  the Northshore and the Westbank at the moment”