If you’ve found yourself saying, “I can’t sell my house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” this article is for you. Everyone knows the market is hot right now. Inventory is low, and most houses that are priced correctly are selling in days or weeks. Maybe you’ve been trying to sell your Baton Rouge house for a while now and haven’t received any offers, don’t panic! There are a few reasons this could be happening, and we will go through them all. You still have a few options at your disposal to help you sell your house for a fair price.
The first one and most obvious one is probably one you’ve already tried at least once: Lowering the asking price.
Everybody wants to sell their house for more than they paid for it but if housing prices in your area are low, or your home has some sort of structural or locational problem, you may have to reduce your asking price. Baton Rouge is so interesting with house prices, one street will have homes for $200k and two streets over they are $50k. If you are in between the two streets, it can be confusing and hard to get the right price.
What are my options if I can’t sell my house in Baton Rouge?
Here are five other things you can try when you can’t sell your house in Baton Rouge:
1) Take It Off the Market
You may be trying to sell your home at a bad time, such was when there are a lot of other houses just like yours on the market, during the winter months, or during the holidays.
If this is the case, you might be best served by taking your home off the market for a few months – if you can afford to keep paying the mortgage – and wait until market conditions improve.
2) Take Out a Second Mortgage
If you have built a lot of equity in your home, you may want to take out a home equity loan — if you can afford to pay the higher monthly payment, that is. If not, you may be able to renegotiate a loan modification plan with your lender or convert your adjustable rate mortgage into a fixed-rate mortgage that has a lower interest rate. The loan can be used to fund other things, including real estate investments.
3) Rent Out Your Home
A lot of real estate investors get started this way. They can’t or don’t want to sell their current home and move to a new one, sometimes because their family grew out of it or they moved. Whatever the reason, if you can’t sell your home and don’t want to hold two mortgages (your old home and your new home) one option may be to rent out your home at or near the price of your monthly mortgage payment. You can keep the house and your tenant will cover the mortgage. You still will probably have some expenses though, like upkeep, maintenance and repairs.
4) Consider a Short Sale
“I can’t sell my house in Baton Rouge because I owe too much!” This can happen if you purchased your home within the past few years and currently owe more than the home is worth (called being upside down).
In some instances, you can negotiate with your lender to accept less than what you owe on your mortgage. If it looks like the other option is foreclosure, your lender probably will accept a short sale.
To do this, you’ll need to have a buyer on board who can close quickly. Fortunately, we can! Give us a call today at (225) 288-7209 for a no-hassle offer on your house.
Keep in mind, however, that short sales can affect your credit. Redeeming a pre-foreclosure on your credit history might disqualify you from getting another mortgage, at least for a little while.
5) Offer a “Lease to Own” Option
A lease to own option is when you rent your house to somebody with the option to purchase your home at or before the lease expires. This is a good option if you can’t find qualified buyers because you can collect rent plus a lease option fee from a tenant while giving them time to save up for a down payment and establish their credit so they can get a mortgage to buy your home down the line. We also are sometimes interested in this option.
You also can add a lease premium to their monthly rent that can either be applied to the down payment later or – if they don’t end up exercising their option to buy your home – you can keep it as income.
I Can’t Sell My House in Baton Rouge Louisiana!
If you are interested in learning more your options for selling your home in Baton Rouge Louisiana, call us at (225) 288-7209 or fill out the form on this page to get more information sent to you right away.