How to Sell a Home As-Is

Can you sell a home as-is?

Whenever I get this question, it’s usually from a seller who wants to make sure they don’t have to make a bunch of repairs to the property before listing it. For example, they may have a property they inherited that they don’t want to spend time fixing up and would rather just sell it as it is.

In any case, you can absolutely do this. In fact, with the way residential purchase contracts are written, whenever a buyer submits an offer on a home, the contract already states that the property is sold as-is.

Any buyer who’s buying a home as-is will need to do a fair bit of investigation on it while it’s in escrow to find out why it’s being sold that way and what it will cost to fix it up. A good agent will help them investigate things like the roof, foundation, sewer line, and order a general inspection to highlight any additional inspections that need to be done.

According to the residential purchase contract, the buyer has the option to make requests for repairs. If they find out that the roof has major issues that will cost a lot of money to fix, for instance, that might affect their decision to move forward with the transaction. They can, therefore, request the seller to make certain repairs.

On the seller’s side, you have the right to decline this request and cancel the transaction if the buyer doesn’t want to purchase the home as-is. You can also agree to give the buyer a certain amount of credit in the contract so they can take care of repairs themselves.

Even if you’re selling a home as-is, sometimes it’s best to put a little money toward a few repairs or upgrades. If you decline any repair requests, at that point it’s all a renegotiation, and if you lose one buyer, the next one might offer $50,000 less.

Right now we’re in a seller’s market and we’re seeing a fair amount of properties being sold as-is, so it’s important to keep these things in mind.

If you have any other questions about this topic or you’re thinking of buying or selling a home soon, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to help you.