4 Best Ways for Selling a Home in Connecticut

Selling a house in Connecticut in a private sale is a fast transaction, because it’s done with cash. Cash eliminates the buyer’s need to qualify for a mortgage and your need to wait until it’s done.

A private sale removes the risk that your buyer will fail to qualify for a loan after you’ve waited weeks in escrow for that news. If so, you’ll then be back at the beginning in the search for a new buyer.

It also eliminates the chance that the lender-required home appraisal won’t match your buyer’s sale price.

That means more weeks of delay, and you’re then saddled with a failed home appraisal that you’ll need to disclose to any subsequent potential buyers.

And when you sell a property in Connecticut by using a private sale, it’s, well, private.

You won’t have looky-loos out for an afternoon excursion stopping in at your open house to look through your closets and comment on your interior design choices.

So, just who are these buyers who pay with cash and can close quickly without headache? The next section answers that question.

What Are Home Buying Companies?

Home buying companies purchase homes quickly by using cash.

They might be a solo operator who buys a property in as-is condition to repair and resell. They may also be a firm that has pooled investor cash with a focus on buying real estate for rental income.

These companies buy investment properties in Connecticut, including mobile and manufactured homes, and even vacant land.

They typically aren’t concerned about cosmetic damage. They look for properties with sound bones to remodel or repair and will buy houses in any condition.

Professional investors have experience helping owners sort through complex issues, including:

• owners selling a home to avoid foreclosure
• landlords selling a house with renters
• property owners selling a property before bankruptcy
• families selling a damaged house
• heirs inheriting a house and then selling it
• homeowners selling a house with back taxes owed
• caretakers selling a hoarder’s house
• seniors selling a home to downsize
• couples selling a house in a divorce situation
• workers selling a house for a job relocation

Investors generally work with a local Connecticut investor-friendly title company due to their experience dealing with all-cash transactions.

Before choosing this option, you’ll need to consider all aspects of selling your home for cash to an investor, including its pros and cons.

Pros of Selling to a Home Buying Company

• When selling your property privately to a professional investor, you sell your house fast.

• Connecticut cash house buyers don’t need to be qualified by a lender. There’s no risk your buyer will fail to pass borrowing requirements and be unable to close the sale.

• Real estate investors in Connecticut typically pay home seller closing costs. Those can add up to 10% of the sales price.

Cons of Selling to a Home Buying Company

• A cash property buyer in Connecticut generally won’t offer market price for your home.

This may seem off-putting compared to a market value offer that a Realtor could promise you. But don’t be misled.

When selling a property in Connecticut by using a Realtor, you’ll pay brokerage commissions and closing costs. So, the amount you’ll take home will no longer equal the market value.

When you sell your home to a cash investor, there aren’t any commissions, and they’ll typically pay your closing costs. What you are offered is what you take home.

In other words, it’s the net proceeds that you should compare, and not offers.

If you look at it this way, you may decide that selling to an investor is more beneficial to you, considering how quickly and easily it happens compared to a traditional realtor-assisted sale.

How to Find an Ethical Home Buying Company

There’s another upfront consideration when selling to a home buying company. Not all are ethical.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. Not all real estate agents, brokerages, and mortgage lenders are honest either.

The key is to vet the investor to make sure you’re dealing with a professional who’ll make a fair offer and can actually close the transaction quickly.

You can locate honest and ethical home investors by doing some simple vetting. It’s time-consuming, but it’s necessary to protect your interests.

After finding a few local investors online by typing “sell my house fast” or “cash house buyers near me” in Google, examine the firms’ websites to see if they disclose the investors’ identities and provide info on their experience.

While real estate investors aren’t required to hold a license in CT, some of the prospects on your list who engage in activities related to reselling property or taking out permits for rehabbing may have a traceable record with the state.

You can confirm the company is in good standing without any formal complaints by checking the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection’s “Verify a License” lookup.

All this vetting is time-consuming, but there’s a faster way to find a reputable professional if you use our website.

Request a cash offer on your house now. Complete the simple online form, and we’ll match you with our partnering professionals who work in your area.

We’ve done the heavy lifting to vet the investors partnering with us, so you can focus on selecting the cash buyer who has the best terms and offer.

There’s no fee or any obligation. You can refuse all of the offers you receive if you don’t like any of them.

A traditional sale is managed by a real estate agent who does basically everything for you.

Who Are Real Estate Agents?

Your agent has the training, expertise, experience, and a real estate license to sell your house correctly, quicker, and at a higher price than if you did it yourself.

They’re your legal fiduciary who represents your interests in the sale.

Agents using the title “Realtor” are members of the Connecticut Association of Realtors (CT Realtors). These real estate professionals take an ethical oath to put your interests first in the transaction.

Pros of Using a Real Estate Agent

• A good agent knows the law and real estate practice inside and out. They are your expert voice in the transaction.

• Realtors have access to a proprietary database of home listings and property sales. This can assist you in setting an asking price for your house.

• Your agent handles all details of the sale with your consent and approval. That allows you to go about life without having to pause for home showings or to host open houses.

Cons of Using a Real Estate Agent

• Many homeowners have extreme sticker shock when they discover how much it costs to hire a Realtor to sell your house. Experts don’t come cheap. You’ll pay an average of 2%-4% of the sales price to have an agent represent you in the Nutmeg State. You may also have to pay as much to your buyer’s agent, even though it’s not you whom they represent.

• You’ll have to wait for your home to sell, and that could take some time. If your house needs repairs, you may wait a very long time before you even see an offer.

• Agents typically bring buyers who need mortgages, and this adds weeks, perhaps many weeks, to the closing calendar.

How to Find a Good Real Estate Agent

An agent is the key to a smooth sales transaction. The first step to locating a Realtor is to collect a list of prospects from family and friends who have recently moved.

Use the CT Realtor’s “Find a Realtor” search engine to locate licensed members to add to your list of prospects.

You can also contact the local boards associated with the CT Realtor professional trade group to narrow your search to local agents.

It’s then time to vet those agents. Confirm the Realtors on your list of prospects have licenses in good standing by using the “Verify a License” lookup listed above.

Skim local consumer feedback websites for agents on your list: Real Estate Bees, Connecticut BBB, Yelp, and others.

The most important screening tool is the personal interview. Set up a calendar of interviews for agents at your property.

Ask them to develop a marketing plan for your home and to bring their professional portfolio to the listing interview.

Keep interviewing until you find an agent that has a marketing plan you like — and one who you feel you can work with during the listing and sale.

You can tile your bathroom yourself, landscape your yard, fix your car, so why not sell your house yourself by listing it “for sale by owner”?

The FSBO listing involves preparation before you invite any prospective buyers to your home.

You’ll need to do a property assessment and determine your target buyers.

The general public looks for move-in ready properties, so you’ll need to upgrade and improve your home to match those expectations. That might mean painting or upgrading flooring and landscaping.

If investors are your target buyers, you won’t need to do any home prep. The only thing you’ll need to do is to alert the cash investor that you’re now open for offers.

You’ll then need to set an asking price for your home. A home worth calculator can help you to decide that.

The next step is to complete the required state and federal property disclosures.

The Connecticut Residential Property Condition Report is required and must be given to all prospective buyers. The federal government also has a lead paint disclosure that needs to be completed.

Once you have those disclosures ready to share with home shoppers, it’s time for marketing.

Ways to Market Your House Yourself

• You’ll want to install a “for sale” sign on your property. However, make sure your community doesn’t prohibit it.

• Online walkthrough videos are an easy way to have prospective buyers tour your house without ever having to leave their home. YouTube and Instagram post these without charge.

• Advertise your home by using FSBO listing sites.

• Print flyers are old school, but they’re effective. Circulate these at local brokerages and to prospects whom you show your home. Digitize these to send to interested buyers online.

Pros of Marketing Your House Yourself

• You’ll skip listing agent commission fees. That’s the largest part of your Connecticut closing costs. However, you may still have to pay the buyer’s agent.

• You are in charge of everything related to the listing, marketing, and sale.

• If you have enough time to dedicate to the sale of your home, you can be more focused than an agent would, because agents have to serve multiple clients at the same time, and you don’t.

It helps to be realistic about working as an FSBO. Following are some of the downsides to selling by yourself.

Cons of Marketing Your House Yourself

• The legal requirements and formal paperwork can be overwhelming for an untrained FSBO seller.

• You’ll need to master the details of the home sale. If you need to pause to research, your buyers may walk away from the sale while you delay to decide what action you should take.

• FSBO closing costs in Connecticut can be negotiated. Unless you know which ones, and how to do that bargaining, you’ll miss out on some cash savings.

• FSBO sellers often net even less money than people who chose to pay a Realtor to manage their sale. This is due to the lack of experience pricing real estate and negotiating with buyers and their agents.

Our last sales method has the homeowner sell and buy almost at the same time.

If you need to sell your house before buying another one, Connecticut iBuyers offer a good solution to that problem.

An iBuyer will sign a purchase contract to buy your property. You can take the cash equity from that sale to purchase your new house before you finalize the sale of your current home.

Once you’ve closed on your new home, your iBuyer will close the transaction on your current property.

This arrangement allows you to buy without making a contract offer based on the contingency of your home sale.

Sellers aren’t excited about contingency offers. If you make one, you can lose the opportunity to buy a house you like before another buyer does.

If you use a “buy before you sell” service from an iBuyer, you make a cash offer instead of a contingency offer, which is very attractive to sellers.

Those are the four common approaches to selling property in the Nutmeg State. Our next segment guides you through the stages in a typical home transaction.

It doesn’t matter which sales method you select — there are some steps that are essential and must be completed to close the transaction.

Before Signing a Purchase Contract

Prior to listing your property for sale, see if you need major work to make your home turnkey-ready for the general public. Or, if you choose to sell it to a company that buys houses as is, you may skip this step.

You’ll then need to set an asking price, complete the property disclosures, and decide on a sales approach.

Our article, “Selling a House As Is in Connecticut,” provides more detail about disclosures and the requirements.

Marketing the Property

Your real estate agent will handle the marketing duties when you list with a brokerage. If you are an FSBO seller, you will need to develop a plan and carry out all the marketing details.

If you sell to an investor, there’s no marketing involved. Simply contact them to request an offer.

Accepting an Offer

Offers will come directly to you when you sell as an FSBO or to an investor. Your agent will wrangle all offers and counter offers for you based on your direction.

All offers will have earnest money deposit attached. That’s a payment that shows your potential buyer is serious about the offer that’s been made.

Buyer Due Diligence Period

The due diligence time is a period for your buyer to complete some basic research.

They’ll hire a licensed inspector to examine the house by using the property disclosure as a guide, although these inspections may have taken place before the offer was made.

The buyer will contract for hazard insurance and an insurance policy on the property’s title. This is required for buyers taking out a home mortgage.

Several days prior to the closing, your escrow officer will review the closing costs with you. You’ll note the deductions for Realtor commissions and closing costs when you use an agent to sell.

If you sell as an FSBO, you’ll save your side of the commission fee, but if your buyer uses an agent, you’ll have to handle those costs. You’ll also have closing costs that need to be paid.

When selling to an investor, your tally won’t show any commissions or closing costs. Investors don’t charge a commission, and they typically pay all of the seller’s closing costs.

Your buyer has the right to walk through the property before the final closing. This is arranged directly with you when you’re not using an agent.

Your agent will handle the walkthrough for you when you’ve listed your home with their brokerage.

Closing

If your buyer is borrowing money from a lender to purchase your home, they’re required under state law to have a real estate attorney at the closing.

When you sell to a cash buyer, they may have a lawyer present, but it’s not required. You also have the option to have legal representation at the closing.

Both buyer and seller sign the official paperwork during the closing, and the funds are then transferred to complete the sale.

The new property deed will then be notarized and filed with the Town Clerk’s Office transferring ownership of the home.

It’s recommended that you confirm that the new deed has been filed several weeks after the closing. You can do this by contacting the office, or by using one of the online public portals.

That’s it. We’ve tracked the basic steps in a home sale. You have closed the transaction on your property!

You now know four selling methods and an overview of the sales process in CT under your belt. It’s time to decide on a selling direction and to begin your research.

We can help you with finding trustworthy investors. We’ve vetted the professionals partnering with us for their expertise and ability to buy houses fast and for cash.

Request cash offers now. It’s a simple process that only requires you to complete a short online form so we can match your home with professionals interested in properties like yours and in your location.

There’s never a fee, and never any obligation to sell, regardless of how many offers you receive.